[Wolves] Remote Power Management

[Don Cockman]

Hi Adam,

I'm presently doing some work at a client with some Sun v20z (now
end-of-life, so you can't buy them from Sun anymore) and v40z servers
albeit running RHEL3 U5.

The service processors are very useful for remote management and
troubleshooting purposes (although for some strange reason, the client
seem to think that the SPs should hang off the main LAN rather than a
dedicated management LAN :-(  Makes for all sorts of fun when the main
LAN dies.

The main problem I've found with the Sun boxes running anything other
than Solaris is that the error reporting (system crashes, over
temperature alarms and the suchlike) is somewhat lacking compared to
what you'd expect from a Solaris based system. Most of the problems I've
come across have meant delving into the service processor logs and
calling Sun to get them to decipher them..

HTH

Don

Adam Sweet wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I'm looking at putting some machines (a few initially,
> possibly lots eventually) into a data centre and
> managing remotely. I can do everything over SSH except
> shut the machines down or reboot them when they're
> dead and I don't know a great deal about this kind of
> thing.
>
> Does anyone have recommendations for devices and
> suppliers suitable for this kind of job. Price isn't
> an enormous issue, provided it doesn't run into
> thousands, but I need to know what I'm looking at and
> the price/features trade offs.
>
> I have 2 choices in mind, either a some standard
> x86/x86-64 servers and something like this (from a
> quick google):
>
> http://www.kvmpartnership.co.uk/remote-power-control.htm
>
> Or some Sun servers with a System Management Daughter
> Card or "Service processor with embedded Lights Out
> Management (LOM) standard". Does anyone have any
> experience of using these under Linux? Are they any
> good? Can you recommend any?
>
> Would I want an IP KVM? Why? What do they do that I
> couldn't do remotely over SSH, or locally using a
> regular KVM (should I need to go on-site)?
>
> I guess I'm going to have to get used to using screen
> as well...
>
> Can anyone guide me towards making the right choice,
> I'm in uncharted territory?
>
> Yours hopefully,
>
> Ad
>
>