[Beowulf] recommendation on crash cart for a cluster room: full cluster KVM is not an option I suppose?

[Nifty Tom Mitchell]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 07:48:28AM -0500, Rahul Nabar wrote:
> 
> 
> Thanks! This is exactly what I will shop for then. I used the term
> "crash cart" in a more generic sense. I've seen crash-carts parked in
> cluster rooms before and they do look  unwieldy. What you suggest
> seems a better option.

It does help to have a single "crash cart"; i.e. Display, Keyboard, mouse
on wheels to debug systems that do not respond as expeceted to console servers,
KVM etc...   

Toss an old desktop comuter on the cart and you can also connect to the
networked KVM/terminal server and have a finger on the reset button or power cable at
the same time.  You can also have a small old style unswitched network hub and 
snoop on the net that a problem system is camped on to debug MAC address collisons,
DHCP, kickstart and other odds and ends.

When things are 'normal' you can stay at your desk 99% of the time but
when that does not work you may need a real keyboard, mouse and display.

Some errors never make it to the terminal server or log system but the video card
may still shows the last message as long as it is still powered on.

YMMV.


-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
	Found me a new hat, now what?