Datacenter@home: Part 14

There has really only been one important thing missing with my setup of servers. KVM switching.

I’ve had no KVM switch cabable of having all servers connected to it at the same time. Neither have I had any remote, network KVM functionality.

So I got some new stuff. A 16 port rack mountable KVM switch would definitely do the trick. The one I got is a ATEN ACS1216A. It has no buttons on the front, but it instead it has an OSD.

It can actually control up to 512 servers by setting up a daisy chain/cascade. Not that that’s gonna happen though… =)

The KVM switch does however not have builtin network support. Such switches usually costs a whole lot more. Instead I purchased yet another device from ATEN, a CN8000, which extends the capability of any KVM switch or even an ordinary computer, in such a way that it becomes remote controllable.

Mounted and hooked up to the servers…

That blue LED is really, really bright. A bit annoying even.

Remote controlling the servers using ATEN’s Windows application works better than I had expected.

This pretty much makes the data center complete. =)

I guess I wouldn’t mind having some sort of remote controllable PDU’s as well though. Another time.

2 Replies to “Datacenter@home: Part 14”

    1. IPMI is rarely found on commodity hardware though… and this ain’t a large enterprise after all ;D
      My Supermicro server got onboard IPMI though, but I’ve actually disabled it since it otherwise listens to connections directly from the Internet, without any firewall in between 😉

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