IMHO the right way to do this is to build the power cycling capability into the individual 1U boxen. Again, we should be talking to the embedded systems folks to give them a standard set of requirements that everyone can support.

See Sun Netra LOM. Done.

This may be worth having a workshop discussion at a NANOG meeting to define requirements.

Won't that lead to an over complicated kitchen sink (see Sun RSC)? This should be simple it's supposed to be more reliable than the system it's managing.

I envisage a standard control module with two external serial ports.

One serial, rj45 is fine The major complication is that 1U boxes are really built for Windows where this is useful but only does part of the job. As it doesn't remote the Windows desktop they don't bother including it. Likewise we're still stuck with Windows centric BIOS rather than an OPENBOOT alike. Both need doing to make 1U X86 worthwhile. Is the linux market isn't big enough to be worth designing for properly? brandon