On Sun, Feb 26, 2023 at 9:52 PM Ted Mittelstaedt <t...@portlandia-it.com> wrote:
> However during the entire pandemic I was still out and about - since you > can't do IT consulting on a server that's down remotely. By "server", I am assuming that you mean some system on rails in a rack in a datacenter with raised flooring, hot/cold aisles, redundant power/networking, and physical security. In that environment, you usually can ( and want to ) be able to work on a downed server remotely. For example, Dell has iDRAC/DRAC and HP has iLO. For those systems that don't have built-in out-of-band ( OOB ) management, there are multi-port KVM over IP switches with many having virtual USB/CDs and power control.[1] For single use, there is the Lantronix Spider which is also available with remote power control.[2] In other words, you can connect over the internet to the DRAC/KVM ( e.g. ssh ), upload an ISO of your OS onto the virtual CD, power cycle the box, and have full remote control from BIOS to RAID to OS repair/installation. If the issue is hardware, e.g. bad drive, bad power supply, you put in a service request to remote hands at the data center and have them hot-swap your cold spare for the bad device. You've given them a copy of your runbook. They know what to do. lf the system has truly failed, you have a new system sent to the data center. When it arrives, have remote hands swap the bad for the good, plugging it into the OOB so you can once again access it remotely. And they package and send the bad system back to wherever. On the other hand, if by "server" you mean the five year old box that's out of warranty, sitting under the CEO's desk, and gets kicked every time they reach to answer the phone, then that's a different scenario. Although, attaching a Spider to it would be a nice option. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVM_switch [2] https://www.lantronix.com/products/lantronix-spider/ Regards, - Robert
