Uptime vs. Kernel updates (was Re: [TriLUG] Prosperous New Year)

[David A. Cafaro]

Oh, I've seen those solutions (or similar), and while I've used them for
Corporate deployments, I can't justify the cost for my own personal
server that hosts a couple of friends/acquaintances website (enough to
cover colo costs).  

The ones you list cost just $100-200 less than what my server cost brand
new (465 days ago), and some of the ones I looked at previously were
more expensive.

Thanks for the heads up though, I'll add them to my list of components
to check up on for other deployments.

Cheers,
David

On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 13:57 -0500, Ron Joffe wrote:
> We have been utilizing a number of IP based KVM switches like:
> 
> ATEN CN-6000 KVM on the Net  (~$450)
>   http://tinyurl.com/b79eq  
> 
> Avocent SwitchView IP Remote Access Device (~$580)
>   http://tinyurl.com/9bbh5
> 
> This allows us to have servers all over the place. We have just recently 
> utilized one of these units to remotely install a server.
> 
>  Procedure:
>    1. Customer Installs new server in Rack
>    2. Customer Installs IP KVM
>    3. We upload an ISO image of the boot media (CD)
>    4. Customer Burns ISO
>    5. Customer Inserts ISO, and powers on the server.
>    6. Customer calls us, and we install configure RAID devices, BIOS settings, 
> and OS remotely.
> 
> This has worked out very nicely, and has saved allot of travel time and costs. 
> In addition these devices support remote reboot power strips, which allow us 
> to reboot these servers if they hang.
> 
> Ron
> 
> 
>