[Opinions Wanted] Dell PowerEdge 2950 Servers ...

[Bill Moran]

In response to Jerry McAllister <jerrymc at msu.edu>:

> On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 08:59:43AM -0500, Bill Moran wrote:
> 
> > In response to "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy at freebsd.org>:
> > > 
> ...  <Some excised>
> > 
> > We have 4 1950s and 3 2950s in use around here.  Only one is actually in
> > production so far, the rest are still being configured, etc.
> > 
> > We're mostly happy with them.  The following is a list of caveats:
> > 
> > *) The version 5 DRAC is nicer than the version 4, _except_ that you have
> >    to use a Windows client to connect to it.  May not be an issue for you,
> >    but all our admins here use FreeBSD on their workstations :(
> 
> Have you tried 'rdesktop' in the portst at /usr/ports/net/rdesktop
> or /usr/ports/net/xrdesktop?
> 
> I don't know if it would apply to this, but it works for me in
> some other situations or similar MS annoyance.

The Dell DRAC is not based on the RDP protocol.  It uses some kind of
Dell-specific communication that seems to mimic VNC -- but standard
VNC clients don't work with it.  Version 4 DRAC provided a java client
that worked fine on just about any OS we use, but the DRAC 5 requires
some ActiveX component and doesn't run on non-MS systems.

Luckily, there's qemu, but it's still not a perfect match.  Qemu tends
to be s l  o    w.

-- 
Bill Moran
Collaborative Fusion Inc.