Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab

jeffgeerling.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 99 posts

Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab

#31

Post by mwpmaybe »

arjie wrote: post #26

Okay, 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…

Add a PoE switch and PoE splitters for IP-KVMs that don't already have PoE-in?

Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab

#32

Post by ddritzenhoff »

gregsadetsky wrote: post #14

+1000 points for the PiKVM V4 Plus. We (Revise Robotics - a YC company!) refurbish laptops with robots and AI - as part of this, we (or rather, the AI) send(s) keyboard commands in software to the computers we're refurbishing. How/why? The AI needs to navigate the BIOS among other tasks - so we need a KVM to send arrow down and enter, roughly speaking. We were a GL.iNet KVM shop until we ran into a nasty issue with a…

Just wanted to give you kudos for having a hw company in nyc. You don't see to many of those around :p

Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab

#34

Post by tcdent »

There are certainly edge cases where you want native USB and display, but after initial bring up, the device is on the network, and can be managed over the network.

So, sure, nerd out and add more hardware to your rack, but I need a physical keyboard and mouse attached to a machine in my rack like once per year.

Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab

#35

Post by js2 »

All of these support a single computer only, so if your home lab has multiple PCs you need a remote control KVM switch too. And separately a remote control power strip/outlet if you need that also.

KVM switches are relatively cheap[^1] so I'm surprised there isn't an integrated solution.

[^1]: e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Computers-Switches-Supports-switching...

Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab

#36

Post by xxpor »

mwpmaybe wrote: post #25
geerlingguy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've been interested but the idea of SPI flasher recovery has always meant I've not bothered actually trying. Maybe I will finally on one of these old boards I have lying around..

Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab

#37

Post by geerlingguy »

gregsadetsky wrote: post #14

+1000 points for the PiKVM V4 Plus. We (Revise Robotics - a YC company!) refurbish laptops with robots and AI - as part of this, we (or rather, the AI) send(s) keyboard commands in software to the computers we're refurbishing. How/why? The AI needs to navigate the BIOS among other tasks - so we need a KVM to send arrow down and enter, roughly speaking. We were a GL.iNet KVM shop until we ran into a nasty issue with a…

I think if you can afford it, the PiKVM is still the gold standard... and also one of the best engineered devices, with the most flexibility. It costs a lot because it's worth it.

They also have a nice (if messy) solution for multiple device management with an external box (TechnoTim had some good coverage on his channel/website[1]).

Most other Pi-based KVMs use PiKVM's software anyway, and I'm not sure if any directly support PiKVM upstream (they should, IMO).

The other class is the JetKVM and its derivatives (many forked JetKVM's snappier Go software), and that's another reason I've stuck with JetKVM itself. It seems to have a nice community around it for mounts in almost any situation, and hacks to get weird things working correctly with it. They're also going to have a PoE + full-size HDMI version soon, I think, with microSD for expanded ISO storage.

[1] https://technotim.com/posts/pikvm-at-scale/

Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab

#38

Post by geerlingguy »

js2 wrote: post #35

All of these support a single computer only, so if your home lab has multiple PCs you need a remote control KVM switch too. And separately a remote control power strip/outlet if you need that also. KVM switches are relatively cheap[^1] so I'm surprised there isn't an integrated solution. [^1]: e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Computers-Switches-Supports-switching...

There are a few, like this add-on for PiKVM[1], a fully integrated version from Geekworm[2], and an as-yet unreleased 4-port IP KVM switcher from GL-iNet[3].

[1] https://technotim.com/posts/pikvm-at-scale/

[2] https://geekworm.com/products/pikvm-x680

[3] https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-rm4pe/

Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab

#39

Post by toast0 »

blipvert wrote: post #27
ryanmcbride wrote: post #22

It 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.

server ipmi includes serial over lan, which can work ... it's helpful if the console settings for early boot match the console settings for OS boot, and there's no standard for sharing them, so that's a bit of a mess... and then you have some where serial over lan drops out during boot, which is kind of terrible. :(

But, the devices here are geared towards people using consumer products as servers (which I do at home, not critizing), and serial console during early boot is not an option on those, and most boards don't even have a serial port anymore.

I will say, if you're presenting a usb keyboard, you might also be able to present usb storage which could be nice for booting off of.

Re: I tested every IP KVM in my Homelab

#40

Post by geerlingguy »

bobson381 wrote: post #30
arjie wrote: post #26

Okay, 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.

The annoying thing with Macs is they don't have the ability to 'Power on after clean shutdown and power cycle'. They can power on after a power fail, but that's not the same thing.

I want to be able to have power toggle on my Mac remotely, but without soldering in a jumper on the power button, AFAIK there's no way to do it :(

Post reply on HN