WW: Colo Vending Machine

Mon Feb 20 17:51:59 UTC 2012

On 2/20/12 08:54 , Matthew Petach wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 7:34 AM, Jon Lewis <jlewis at lewis.org> wrote:
>> Speaking of that sort of thing, I'd really LOVE if there were a device about
>> the size of a netbook that could be hooked up to otherwise headless machines
>> in colos that would give you keyboard, video & mouse.  i.e. a folding
>> netbook shaped VGA monitor with USB keyboard and touchpad.  I know there are
>> folding rackmount versions of this (i.e. from Dell), but I want something
>> far more portable.  Twice in the past month, I'd had to drive 100+ miles to
>> a remote colo and took a full size flat panel monitor and keyboard with me.
>>  Has anyone actually built this yet?

http://www.startech.com/Server-Management/KVM-Switches/Portable-USB-PS-2-KVM-Console-Adapter-for-Notebook-PCs~NOTECONS01

> I'm sure there would be dozens of companies
> that would order them in a heartbeat, to be able to
> do away with the constant need for crash carts
> rolling around the datacenter aisles.  Heck, even
> I'd order one--I could finally get rid of the old monitors
> I keep around the house for debugging random
> server problems in the rack upstairs.  :/

Dozens is a rather small market when a production run is a couple
hundred thousand units...

Things with legacy ports on them are on the way out. given an ipmi
manager that doesn't suck there should be no reason to connect to the
machine at all, to console in. the rats nest is a lot more tractable
when there is ethernet and power and nothing else.