[rescue] Small servers (was Re: WTT: 1.5G of PC2700 for 1G of PC100)

[Patrick Finnegan]

On Sunday 04 May 2008, Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Sat, May 03, 2008 at 10:52:32PM -0600, Robert Darlington wrote:
> > The HP servers have their Lights Out Management (or whatever HP
> > calls it).  You can log in, reboot the machine, and watch the BIOS
> > check and all.  It's really handy when you need to reboot a box
> > from home.
>
> iLO (or iLO Advanced, etc).  Sun's LOM for their Intel-based boxes is
> very similar.  Remote console, even remote media (CDROM/floppy).

I'd second that.  Having used Dell, HP, IBM, and Sun x86 boxes at work, 
Sun's lights-out management is by far the best of the bunch.  The bios 
sending stuff out the serial port even works "properly;" it doesn't 
just continuously dump the video memory out to the serial port.  It 
sends just the proper update when things write stuff out to the 
screeen, and IIRC, the cursor on your terminal actually follows the one 
on the display.

I've used that plus PXE to copy a production server over to a new one, 
and switch the service over, completely from home, sitting on my comfy 
reclining chair, even though I screwed up kernel stuff a few times that 
required some reboots into the Debian installer to fix... :)

Pat
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