On (2012-01-30 11:08 -0500), Ray Soucy wrote:
What are people using for console servers these days? We've historically used retired routers with ASYNC ports, but it's time for an upgrade.
This is very very common thread, replaying couple times a year in various lists, with to my cursory look no new information between iterations. I'd be more curious if people listed what do they think good console server should have, and if or not given model has them. For me, required features are - multiplexed connect to console port, console port should never, ever be busy, blocking. You don't want to find your most competent people blocked from accessing console, because 1st line is in lunch keeping the port busy. - console port output always buffered persistently (if devices crashes and burns, at least you have post-network-reachability logs puked in console stored, good for troubleshooting) - IP address mappable to a console port. So that accessing device normally is 'ssh router' and via OOB 'ssh router.oob' no need to train people Nice to have - Configuration import/export as ascii, from single place, so configuration backups are easy - DC PSU support, redundantly - No moving parts - TACACS+ support - 3G support with IPSEC tunneling - Some clean and well designed webUI I also have to ask, why do we even need these? Why do we still get new gear with RS232 console only? Why only Cisco Nexus7k and SUP2T have seen the light? Dedicated management-plane separated from control-plane, so regardless of control-plane status, you can connect over ethernet to management-plane and copy images to control-plane, reset control-plane, check logs etc. Ethernet port is lot cheaper than RS232 port, so OOB gear would be cheaper. RS232 console on control-plane is ridiculously useless, you cannot copy images over it (even if supported, images are several hundreds megabytes). It is completely dependant on control-plane working which is very poor requirement for OOB. When 50bucks intel desktop mobo has proper OOB, why does not every router and switch have? -- ++ytti