Is there a "alternative" way of doing kvm-over-IP

Joseph S D Yao jsdy at center.osis.gov
Wed Jul 20 21:28:53 UTC 2005


On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 04:53:36PM -0400, Drew Weaver wrote:
> 	Buying the hardware boxes sounds pretty attractive, but I
> wondered if any industrious open sourcers have come up with anything
> that any NANOG-ers have come across that would do something similar to
> what the Dell 2161DS box would do. I realize we would need a server with
> some cards in it to terminate the connections and then some cards to go
> in the boxes, we just need a bit more density than 16 ports.

If you just need KVM to a number of Unix systems, you can use remote
X-Windows logins via 'xdm'.  Or just 'ssh'.  This does not serve the
problem of using the remote console when the system is not up and
running the X client programs.

If you want console access whether up or down, and are willing to settle
for serial console access, Cyclades has stackable boxes with 48 ports
each, and there exist cards ("PC Weasel", <http://www.realweasel.com/>)
that allow you to work with PC systems whether they are up or down, as
if on the video console.

The Dell 2161DS can stack to up to 16 X 16 ports.  I realize this
doesn't change the density, but it might help.

-- 
Joe Yao
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