[Sheflug] Console management for linux clusters etc

[Richard Ibbotson <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For some reason Mailamn doesn't like Ian Durkacz 
<I.Durkacz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> .  I've forwarded his e-mail for him so 
that everyone can read it.....



Hello sheflug,

I have a question about console management that I'd like to pose here 
in order to find out how other people solve the problem.

My question is: what is a 'good' way to provide a 'console service' to 
racks of many Linux machines? (That is, the objective here is to 
allow remote access to the system console of each machine.) 

Where I work, the current solution for this is to use 
single-point-of-access linux boxes that run conserver 
(www.conserver.com), and which are fitted with 32-way serial cards 
that go to all of the client machines. So the idea is that you can 
ssh to a conserver box, then run 'console' to get a console on any 
target machine. But the problem is that the 32-way serial cards aren't 
being manufactured any more (they *were* made by Cyclades) - so this 
is no longer a supportable option.

I have been doing some experimentation with KVM-over-LAN (this works, 
but has limited scope), and also IPMI serial-over-lan (this works 
very nicely at IPMI v2.0 - but most of our boxes only have IPMI 
v1.5); but what I'd like to know is what other people are doing to 
solve what must be a very common requirement.

I do *not* have any experience with commercially-available terminal 
servers; any specific recommendations involving those would be most 
helpful. (One concern I have about those in general is how well they 
can be integrated into our current authentication environment; cost 
per console is also another concern.) But I would appreciate any 
advice, information and/or pointers - really what I am asking here 
is: what do other people do?

In detail, if it matters, the h/w I am looking at this in this context 
are racks of Dell PowerEdge machines (mostly x8xx models), all 
running Fedora Core 5.

Thanks in advance!


Ian

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