[GLLUG] Power control over IP

[Tim Woodall]

On Tue, 1 Jun 2021, Marco van Beek via GLLUG wrote:

> As many others have already said. the ideal is if this is part of the 
> baseboard management tool of the servers. Although both DELL and HP call it 
> by their own names (and often charge extra for additional features)  the 
> generic term is IPMI, or Intelligent Platform Management Interface 
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Platform_Management_Interface).
>
> However, you do have to buy servers that support this, but it gives you a lot 
> of control, and is a lot cheaper that a compilation of a networked KVM and a 
> networked PDU. In most cases it is brought out as a separate Ethernet port on 
> the back of the server, which means you can run it on a completely separate 
> network should you wish for security purposes.
>

I've been working on a rpi 4 version of this. The pi4 supports gadget
mode and host mode simultaneously so I have a HDMI framegrabber (and
VGA->HDMI for the machines that don't support HDMI) along with a 4 way
HDMI kvm switch to allow me to control four machines from a single RPI
(for circa 100GBP).

There are other solutions on the web but all of them use the standard
USB keyboard gadget that doesn't work with every bios that I have so
I've had to build my own.

Let me know if you're interested but it's not quite "production ready"
yet - the electronics to control the power and reset switches and
monitor the power and HDD led are on a breadboard at the moment...

Tim.

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