How do large shops handle consoles?

[paul courry]

One of my colleagues is suggesting we do away with all our consoles on our HP9000 boxes and replace them with a few carts with a console on them. We would wheel the carts to where we need them and plug them in.

My questions to those of you out there with large shops is how do you handle your consoles? And how well does your solution work? Please include the number of boxes in your shop that your answer applies to.

[John Bolene]

We have over 300 machines all around the world. Obviously, we cannot travel to each location to look at the console.

We have what is called the console network using HP console routers. We can either dialup or telnet to the console router and from there open the serial port of whichever machine we need to get to.

On the newer machines, we have been installing the web console interface.

If we are physically at the location, there are 2 monitors that can either be connected to the serial port or to the console router.

[Robert Gamble · Accepted solution]

I work in a big shop. We have a "Secure Web Console" for each HP9000/800 in the room. with this device attached, you can have /dev/console access from a web browser anywhere you want. We don't have room for normal consoles, so this is a great solution. It's only about $150-200USD more than a conventional console but it doesn't put out the heat or take up the space.
See http://www.hp.com/products1/eproducts/prodinfo/mgmt_console.html

Good Luck!

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

We have like 50 Servers at one location and anothe 20 at other , we have just added them as ports on network and specified unique port adresses on our telnet server , so that if we have access to that server we can go to that port for that particualr console , in case of some failures we compliment it using a physical console in the server room on a Bakelite/hard rubber cart which comes in handy . Ofcourse the new ones we are buying with the Web consoles so we just configure the new ones using the IP Address ( the screen is not good but better than not having a console at all )

Manoj Srivastava

[Peggy Fong]

With over 300 servers throughout the u.s. - each data center has 50-100 servers, we use a console for each system. We have a y-cable attached to the console with the 2d connection going to sun boxes where we run "Amity". These systems collect everything that goes to the console and archives the data. We can see anything on these Amity servers for any of our systems back 30 days - nice for trouble shooting. We can also gain console access through a telnet port on that Sun server to the HP system. Haven't moved to web consoles yet.

[Carlos Fernandez Riera]

This night i had update 4 servers. Two consoles sharing two servers. It is not comfortable for me, i need a console but it is busy and i must wait to finish the actual task to change cable.

I like 1 console 1 server. Some times it show messages of events that alerts you. If you are in problems it is ready to use.

I have 6 sites with boxes and consoles are the simplest.

Lan consoles are too usefull too, but it do not replace phisical consoles.

[Dan Zucker]

We have 25-30 servers and have setup Secure web consoles for each. We use seperate Web boxes for each server so there aren't problems with upgrades.

We also keep a console on a trolly in the computer room, with all the various cables.

We are also attempting to put a obsolete PC in the room so there will be easy access to more than one server at a time.

[Stefan Farrelly]

webconsoles as theyre a bit more secure (but not perfect) or switch boxes. With the switch box we have multiple consoles connected to it, then when you connect to the switchbox do a CTRL-T to select the console number you want, this way you can have 1 webconsole connecting to lots of physical boxes.

[John Bolene]

I disagree about one machine/one console.
That takes a bunch of space and dollars that can be used for other things.

With the telnet solution, you can have several windows open to different machines at the same time.

Are we not in a windowed/gui remote environment? Or are some of us still into text screens in the computer room?
You should only need one computer on your desk (wherever your desk may be at the moment) to access any number of servers anywhere in the world at the same time. We don't have to live in the computer room.

[paul courry]

My thanks to everyone who shared their experiences with handling consoles in large shops.

Given that there was no one right answer I awarded 8 points to everyone equally.

Thanks!

[boley janowski]

Paul,

I saw you closed it out, but I thought I would let you in on our environment, just for another reference point.

We use the webconsoles on are production boxes, but we use a digi on the development boxes, its pretty cool, set up a 16port digi, one port uses a straight through cable to a concole in addition to the setting the digi up with an ip for telnet. then we run straight through cables to each one of the dev server console port with a 9pin to rj45 addapter. from there we can

telnet

the limitataion is we can only connect to 4 different servers at a time but thats never been an issue. let me know if you want some more info on this, i think the digi's only cost about 1200-1500 which is not much more than the cost of a single web-console. You can look at the digi by going to www.digi.com and search for "Port Server II"