Glad I bought a JetKVM, it's been great (other than the HDMI adapter, lol)
I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab
21–30 of 99 posts
Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab
#22It will never make sense to me why KVMs are such a hard problem to solve. It seems like something we should have a good answer for by now but we still really just don't without dropping hundreds of dollars, and even then it still feels like a crap shoot.
Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab
#23Radxa also released their ipkvm product last week called radxa linkr. It costs by $55
Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab
#24It will never make sense to me why KVMs are such a hard problem to solve. It seems like something we should have a good answer for by now but we still really just don't without dropping hundreds of dollars, and even then it still feels like a crap shoot.
They aren't a hard problem to solve. In the server market it's completely solved with a BMC. The problem being solved here is someone wants to make a product using some commodity product like a raspberry pi, perform video capture on a VGA/HMDI/DP port. This is not actually a problem end users have.
If you want to plug into a system that isn't server class, then they should be producing a video card that hooks into the USB bus, the always on rail of the power supply, the power switch pin of the power supply, and has an RJ45 jack. The contents of the card should be an off the shelf BMC chip.
But realistically if you want this kind of functionality, just buy server class systems that come with it.
Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of the problem is the absolute crap that most vendors throw on an AST2600 is even worse. I will say iDRAC has been a lot more reliable for me, but the chance I'll ever buy a Dell server for home use is basically 0.
Always a fun adventure when you buy an old server motherboard to see what state of disarray the BMC is in. Or if you have to patch the license on older boards just to get into it. Usually I just ignore the BMC on any hardware more than 5 years old.
Have you played around with OpenBMC or any of the open-sourced BMC firmware alternatives?
ETA: specifically on older server/workstation boards instead of the stock firwmare
Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab
#26Okay, there were two things that bothered me with these KVM switches: the power adapters are massive so there's too many cables, and the cables don't go always in the same side of the thing. Your post covers both and I'm thrilled. The final thing I recognize is a bit of a nice to have but the only thing that I want to rack that doesn't have a BMC is my Mac Mini which I've hesitated to put in the Sonnet RackMac and run because I don't know how to KVM power it on/off. My cabinet is an hour away from me and the Mac Mini runs the family AI agent so I need it to be available all the time. So far, it hasn't ever needed any attention (it comes back on after power outages at home) but I'd prefer to be able to turn it on/off remotely ideally.
Do you know which one of these works well with that?
Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab
#27It will never make sense to me why KVMs are such a hard problem to solve. It seems like something we should have a good answer for by now but we still really just don't without dropping hundreds of dollars, and even then it still feels like a crap shoot.
It’s bizarre that one needs to do all this via a keyboard/monitor interface.
Nearly thirty years ago when I used to work on Silicon Graphics kit everything from powering on and off a server to installing the OS from scratch over the network could be done out of band via serial - and automatically, using expect(1)
That’s progress, I guess.
Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab
#28I have a mild distrust of some of the cheap IP KVMs. I don't think vendors are malicious, but I don't expect they get it right every time either. Admittedly, I haven't looked at any open-sourced firmwares either which could have improved things. I have found the Sispeed USB KVM very useful, the convenience is well worth the $50 it cost me. The UX isn't great but you don't really need it to be. It works (most of the t…
I went with Sipeed NanoKVM (PCIe) units across my homelab as well and I've also been happy with them. For a while it's been the best value option (not to mention the most consistently available option) cf. GL.iNet, PiKVM, and JetKVM. The PoE versions are great in a rack and the integrated ATX control is fully-featured (including the little power switch icon in the web UI turning green when the system is powered on). I set up an isolated OoBM VLAN with no Internet access and any switch ports assigned to it are isolated by default as well.
Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab
#29The JetKVM picture is aggravating to look at. It shows IPv4 address in large print and the IPv6 address in small print. That’s fine, but the IPv6 address is truncated with an ellipsis. How is that useful? A truncated IP address doesn’t work. Do the developers expect autocomplete for IP addresses? (And the IPv6 address is a ULA, so it could have been much shorter if SLAAC was involved in creating the address. Otherwise blame the DHCPv6 server I guess.)
Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab
#30Okay, there were two things that bothered me with these KVM switches: the power adapters are massive so there's too many cables, and the cables don't go always in the same side of the thing. Your post covers both and I'm thrilled. The final thing I recognize is a bit of a nice to have but the only thing that I want to rack that doesn't have a BMC is my Mac Mini which I've hesitated to put in the Sonnet RackMac and ru…
Could you get a kvm connected to a networked PDU with per-outlet control? Then a power cycle on the plug for the mac would accomplish the same thing. Or just use the network port on the PDU directly w/o kvm.