On 2009-11-09, Henning Brauer <lists-open...@bsws.de> wrote: > err, they have console redirection, not a LOM. you can use the bios > over cereal, that's it. i haven't seen anything as good as sun's > LOMlite and ALOM anywhere.
HP iLO is surprisingly useful here - even the free embedded version on the cheap tower servers e.g. ML110 lets you switch a single physical serial port between an admin interface (with power control, reboot and basic access to monitoring) and the "real" serial port (the user interface and documentation are horrible, but it works). OTOH remote power bars aren't all that expensive and you have a consistent UI between machine vendors that way. (and HP rack servers don't seem to have the nice discounts that keep coming up on the low-end towers...)