[geeks] Remote power management on the cheap

[Steve Haavik]

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006, Alex Feinberg wrote:

> What would be a cheap solution for remote power? What I need is the
> ability to reset a machine (when it is hard frozen) on the fly, on
> the cheap :-) The machines that I deal with at work have various
> sort of serial console power management tools available for them
> (particularly the ones supplied by rackable), but I'd imagine these
> are very machine specific and expensive. What I'm looking for is a
> cheap way to reset a couple of machines I have colocated in a rack
> (without paying the rather exuberant fee the upstream provided would
> charge to provide their own power management) -- basically a "power
> strip over ip". No ipmi is not an option (requires a dhcp server to
> be present and available, requires the motherboard/chassis to
> support it -- not always an option).

We've been using the Baytech (www.baytech.net) boxes for most of the time 
I've been here. If you get the DS2-RPC 
(http://www.baytech.net/products/showprod.php?prod=DS2-RPC) you get 4 
power ports, 4 serial ports, and it can take a modem card or a network 
card. In the almost 8 years I've been here we've only managed to fry 2 or 
3 of the 40-something we have. I don't like the pin-outs they use for 
their cables. The cables are different from Cisco and Cyclades so we have 
to have yet another box of adapters. I really wish there was a standard 
for serial RJ-45 cables.