[Gllug] KVM-over-internet

[John Edwards]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 07:07:56PM +0000, John Hearns wrote:
> I guess what you mean is 'my systems don't happen to have BMCs John'
> All we have are standard tower type cases.
> 
> Yes, there used to be remote PCI cards which had serial interfaces on
> them - I forget what they were called. Probably died the death a long
> time ago.

They were called PC Weasels and were rather ugly hacks:
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Weasel_2000
	http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4557

If the machines don't have IPMI of similar remote KVM ability inbuilt,
then you could connect the VGA and keyboard/mouse to a single port
Aten network KVM and put it on the same subnet as a router that can
connect to the Internet using a 3G dongle (Draytek Vigors have already
been suggested).

The last Aten KVMs I used were about 4 years ago and they used VNC, so
you would need to configure the router to forward the ports to the KVM
for trusted IP addresses. Alternatively I think the some of the
Drayteks can act as OpenVPN servers so you can VPN into the LAN.

I suspect that the tricky thing in this combination would be the
difference between 3G Internet connections across different countries
and mobile providers.

Also if you need to power cycle then APC do some distribution boards
where you can switch individual sockets on/off via a web interface.

If you need to do a lot of this then buying servers with IPMI make
this all a lot easier, and will probably be cheaper in the long run.


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|    John Edwards   Email: john at cornerstonelinux.co.uk    |
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