KVM over IP Suggestions?

Wed Aug 24 13:23:13 UTC 2005

Here is an article that addresses some of these very
issues, naturally there is always a costing factor,
because non of the sought for solutions are easy to
come by.

http://www.networkcomputing.com/showitem.jhtml?docid=1616f3

-Henry

--- Daniel Senie <dts at senie.com> wrote:

> 
> At 12:41 PM 8/22/2005, Aaron Glenn wrote:
> 
> >On 8/22/05, Simon Hamilton-Wilkes
> <simon at jettis.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > They support P/S2 / USB / Sun and serial -
> though are a very expensive
> > > way to do serial.
> >
> >And (last time I looked, at least) they required an
> expensive,
> >proprietary, Windows-only authentication server
> (DSView) in addition
> >to the client software licenses and hardware costs.
> 
> Avocent makes several products in the KVM/IP space.
> Not all of them 
> are tied to Windows Server authentication. At the
> low end, they've 
> got a sub-$1000 single port box that works nicely
> for front-ending 
> existing KVM switches that have on-screen controls.
> 
> We've used and tested 4 or 5 products in this
> "single port" space. 
> Results have been fair, bad and ugly. I would not
> consider any of 
> them to be acceptable or better.
> 
> There are several issues. As someone else noted,
> these usually push a 
> viewer to you over either Java or Active-X. The
> little Avocent uses 
> Active-X, so I have to remember to load up IE before
> accessing it.
> 
> Internal authentication is, in my experience,
> essential. After all, 
> if you're connecting in to deal with the server
> that's doing your 
> authentication, you're screwed, yes, there are
> likely expensive ways 
> to avoid that situation.
> 
> Serial redirection and terminal servers are an
> option, but only if 
> all of your servers support that.
> 
> VNC isn't an option, unless you like your terminal
> sessions going 
> over unencrypted pipes or set everything up to
> tunnel over SSH or VPN.
> 
> Solutions that use VNC direct to the target server
> are insufficient. 
> If you can't talk to the BIOS of a server that's not
> feeling well, 
> what's the point? Once a server is actually up, SSH
> into the server 
> gets you all you need, or VNC over SSH if you must
> do some graphics.
> 
> Mouse control: all of the KVM/IP products we've
> tested have had 
> serious issues with mouse control. With Windows
> boxes, we generally 
> do our best to get boxes far enough up to use RDP,
> and switch to that 
> because it's much cleaner. With Linux machines we
> find this less of 
> an issue as we don't run consoles in graphics mode,
> thus bypassing 
> the mouse sync issue.
> 
> For the original poster, if you want to have the
> ability to let 
> customers at the console of their server, but not
> others, you're 
> going to be stuck using expensive equipment, with
> the ability to 
> handle multiple simultaneous users, or go with
> servers that have 
> KVM/IP as an on-board option (Intel's is the one I'm
> personally 
> familiar with. Someone else mentioned Dell has such
> too).
> 
> We made the move to KVM/IP and APC power
> cycling/control equipment a 
> few years back and have never regretted doing so.
> 
> Dan 
> 
> 