Doesn't meet #3 but I'm testing Banana Pi BPI-R3 and seems way better than RPI for this purpose.

You need to add the mini-pci modem of your choice but their 2 SIM card slots on board. There are also 5 RJ45 ports if your devices have OOB ethernet ports.

There are 2 onboard storage (NOR and NAND) and you can add a M2 SSD so it is possible to have failover disks.

I also like the fact that there are 2 SFP ports. There are some places in our area where the LTE / 5G network is really awful so we can use a fiber wavelength instead. It depends on the same fiber but at least, doesn't depend on any active devices on site.

The bad is that you still need a USB to serial ports adapter. Also, you can customise OpenWRT as much as you like.

For me, it's an advantage but in your case, it seems like an issue. For the OP, having several VPN options like zerotier seems like an advantage. 

Le ven. 26 avr. 2024, à 12 h 44, Warren Kumari <warren@kumari.net> a écrit :




On Fri, Apr 26, 2024 at 12:43 AM, Saku Ytti <saku@ytti.fi> wrote:

On Fri, 26 Apr 2024 at 03:11, David H <ispcolohost@gmail.com> wrote:

Curious if anyone has particular hardware they like for OOB / serial management, similar to OpenGear, but preferably with 5G support, maybe even T-Mobile support? It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get static IP 4g machine accounts out of Verizon, and the added speed would be nice too. Or do you separate the serial from the access device (cell+firewall, etc.)?

You could get a 5G Catalyst with an async NIM or SM.

But I think you're setting up yourself for unnecessary costs and failures by designing your OOB to require static IP. You could design it so that the OOB spokes dial-in to the central OOB hub, and the OOB hub doesn't care what IP they come from, using certificates or PSK for identity, instead of IP.



Yup, I agree — but that simply rewrites the question to be:
"Curious if anyone has particular hardware they like for OOB / serial management, similar to OpenGear, but preferably with 5G support, which can be a spoke that dials in to the central OOB hub, and the OOB hub doesn't care what IP they come from, using certificates or PSK for identity, instead of IP."

I've been on the same quest, and I have some additional requests / features. Ideally it:

1: would be small - my particular use-case is for a "traveling rack", and so 0U is preferred.

2: would be fairly cheap.

3: would not be a Raspberry-Pi, a USB hub and USB-to-serial cables. We tried that for a while, and it was clunky — the SD card died a few times (and jumped out entirely once!), people kept futzing with the OS and fighting over which console software to use, installing other packages, etc.

4: support modern SSH clients (it seems like you shouldn't have to say this, but… )

5: actually be designed as a termserver - the current thing we are using doesn't really understand terminals, and so we need to use 'socat -,raw,echo=0,escape=0x1d TCP:<termserver>:<port>' to get things like tab-completion and "up-arrow for last command" to work.

6: support logging of serial (e.g crash-messages) to some sort of log / buffer / similar (it's useful to be able to see what a device barfed all over the console when it crashes. 


The Get Console Airconsole TS series meets many of these requirements, but it doesn't do #6. It also doesn't really feel like they have been updating / maintaining these.

Yes, I fully acknowledge that #3 falls into the "Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do this" camp, but, well…

W



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++ytti