[Gllug] just a quick question

[Tethys]

"Martin A. Brooks" writes:

>Yep.  HP server kit has proper serial BIOSes these days.  I believe even 
>the cheaper H^HDell stuff does, too. All x86 blades have it too. As does 
>the Sun x86 kit I was installing last week.

Really? Last time I tried, you needed to buy an extra Remote Insight
PCI card in order to get remote access with HP kit (for the Compaq
derived stuff, at least). Even then, it's browser based, rather than
being a proper serial console. But it's still beside the point. The
claim was the for the price of a Sun memory upgrade, you could buy an
x86 server that outperforms it. True, you almost certainly can. But
you won't get one that supports remote management and proper headless
operation.

>I recently got to play with Dell's remote KVM-over-IP kit as well.  It's 
>a dongle that plugs into the mouse, keyboard and monitor that then 
>presents an RJ45 connector that you then cable just like ethernet.  Very 
>neat.

Neat, yes, when you have a high bandwidth connection to it. But you're
completely screwed if you're out on the road, and you get a call saying
the server's died. With a Sun, I can fix *everything* in that situation,
easily, and indeed have done so on many occasions. I'll be the first
to admit that Sun kit is underpowered, and indeed overpriced (although
they've come a long way on that score in recent years). But for many
applications, they're good enough in terms of performance, and the
added benefits of using sensible hardware easily justify the cost.

Tet
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