hardware for home use large storage / remote management KVM card

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 02:30:54PM +0100, Miroslav Lachman wrote:
> Svein Skogen (Listmail Account) wrote:
> >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >Hash: SHA1
> >
> >On 09.02.2010 15:37, Miroslav Lachman wrote:
> >*SNIP*
> >>
> >>I can't agree with the last statement about HP's iLO. I have addon card
> >>in ML110 G5 (dedicated NIC), the card is "expensive" and bugs are
> >>amazing. The management NIC freezes once a day (or more often) with
> >>older firmware and must be restarted from inside the installed system by
> >>IPMI command on "localhost". With newer firmware, the interface is
> >>periodicaly restarded. The virtual media doesn't work at all. It is my
> >>worst experience with remote management cards.
> >>I believe that other HP servers with built-in card with different FW is
> >>working better, this is just my experience.
> >>
> >>Next one is eLOM in Sun Fire X2100 (shared NIC using bge + ASF). ASF
> >>works without problem, but virtual media works only if you are
> >>connecting by IP address, not by domain name (from Windows machines) and
> >>there is some issue with timeouts of virtual media / console.
> >>I reported this + 8 different bugs of web management interface to Sun
> >>more than year ago - none was fixed.
> >>
> >>Next place is for IBM 3650 + RSA II card (dedicated NIC). Expensive,
> >>something works, somthing not. For example the card can't read CPU
> >>temperature, so you will not recieve any alert in case of overheating.
> >>(it was 2 years ago, maybe newer firmware is fixed)
> >>
> >>Then I have one Supermicro Twin server 6016TT-TF with built-in IPMI /
> >>KVM with dedicated NIC port. I found one bug with fan rpm readings (half
> >>the number compared to BIOS numbers) and one problem with FreeBSD 7.x
> >>sysinstall (USB keyboard not working, but sysinstall from 8.x works
> >>without problem). In installed FreeBSD system keyboard and virtual media
> >>is working without problems.
> >>
> >>On the top is Dell R610 DRAC (dedicated NIC) - I didn't find any bugs
> >>and there are a lot more features compared to concurrent products.
> >>
> >
> >I think the general consensus here is "nice theory lousy
> >implementation", and the added migraine of no such thing as a common
> >standard.
> >
> >Maybe creating a common standard for this could be a nice GSOC project,
> >to build a nice "remote console" based on SSH and arm/mips?
> >
> >p.s. I've seen the various proprietary remote console solutions. They
> >didn't really impress me much, so I ended up using off-the-shelf
> >components for building my servers. Not necessarily cheaper, but at
> >least it's under _MY_ control.
> >
> >//Svein
> 
> Does anybody have experiences with ATEN IP8000 card?
> I found it today
> http://www.aten.com/products/productItem.php?pcid=2006041110563001&psid=20060411131311002&pid=20080401180847001&layerid=subClass1
> 
> It is not cheap, but it seems as universal solution for any
> motherboard with PCI slot.
> 
> "Host-side OS support - Windows 2000/2003/XP
> /NT/VistaRedhat 7.1 and above; FreeBSD, Novell"

There's also the PC Weasel[1], which does VGA-to-serial and provides
reset/power-cycle capability over the serial port.  100% OS-independent.
The concept itself is really cool[2], but there's 3 major problems:

1) PCI version is 5V; some systems are limited to 3.3V PCI slots (see
   Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PCI_Keying.png) -- not
   to mention lots of systems are doing away with PCI altogether (in
   servers especially)
2) Limited to 38400 bps throughput (I run serial consoles at 115200),
3) Very expensive -- US$350 *per card*.

I'm surprised no one else has come up with a similar solution especially
given the regularity of DSPs, CPLDs, and FPGAs in this day and age.

[1]: http://www.realweasel.com/intro.html
[2]: http://www.realweasel.com/design.html

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |