I am just wonderring, does anybody know a solution (preferabbly affordable one) to remote KVM and/or remote serial console? Basically, this will enable you to have the physical presence from remote area (i.e. you can see the boot up process, change BIOS setting, etc remotely).

Some that I know:

remote serial: http://www.baytechdcd.com/products/dsrpcseries.shtml
costs as low as $295 (not including modules, I think).

KVM over IP:
http://kvmoverip.com/buy_avocent_dsr1161.asp
costs as low as $4000 (With softwares)

I am not quite sure the following will work:http://www.compaq.com/manage/remote-lightsout.html
price: ??

any other suggestions?

cheers,
:beer:

Only certain BIOS support use over serial ports, but if your servers do. You should check out this, http://www.cyclades.com/products/stdalone/ts1_2000.htm

Although, it's not exactly cheap... you might want to search on google for ethernet terminal server.

Because of a server outage and the recommendation from my sen. admin Jasen, i called up Amax and both Amax and jasen confirmed that Intel boards are the only ones that would support the console, which would act like your sitting right there at the monitor with a keyboard. Also, all sun boards support it as well

Originally posted by JTY
[B]Only certain BIOS support use over serial ports, but if your servers do.

This is not entirely true, the ones that have bios support for
serial allows you to log in and do things in the bios.
But, they do absolutely nothing after lilo is loaded.
After lilo is loaded its up to your configuration of linux to
support serial console (which is fairly trivial)
So, essentially usually you have no need for the bios support.

Yes you do, I do not think lilo loads the serial subsystem. It is after the boot process is underway that that loads. Without BIOS support, you would not be able to boot into other kernels and suchwhat.

My goodness, it's a three year old thread! Let it have a rest :D

Sheps: yes, lilo does load the serial subsystem

FhDave, hmm never looked at that ;)