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

[Rahul Nabar]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 1:26 AM, Mark Hahn <hahn at mcmaster.ca> wrote:

>
>> Note that for my head nodes etc. I do plan on having a small (4 port)
>> KVM in the main rack with its console and rackmount keyboard. I guess
>
> not worth it imo - I'd use the crash cart, since the need is so rare.

Good point! If "IPMI over LAN" works so well I might as well get rid
of this mini KVM.

>
> ipmi ipmi ipmi.  try to avoid the obnoxious nonstandard proprietary POS's
> that vendors push.


Thanks for the comments Mark.  I'll try and not offend any vendors
this time around! :) I had stayed away from "remote manage" precisely
because most of what I had heard seemed vendor specific, proprietary
systems. I wasn't aware of this public implementation of remote
management!

>you want remote power on/off/reset, then serial
> redirect and hopefully bios redirect too.  then temperature monitoring,
> and SEL access.  this should be in every entry-level server IMO.
>
> you know the vendor has jumped the shark if/when they provide xml-based
> scripting and offer licensed extended features rather than standard ipmi
> support...

There are indeed a large number of vendor specific GUI solutions out
there. I had played with one of those and it sort of put me off
"remote manage" [Again, no offense vendors.] But I'll definitely toy
with getting "IPMI over LAN" especially since all of you are so
unanimously happy about it!!

-- 
Rahul