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JetKVM – Control any computer remotely

jetkvm.com

121–130 of 220 posts

Re: JetKVM – Control any computer remotely

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think products like JetKVM are targeting hobbyists and small outfits; corporations who aren't on a public cloud are using stuff like idrac, ilo, or dedicated rackmount KVM hardware.

Implying idrac, ilo and similar are somehow reputable?

There’s no way to know for sure, since they are closed-source and closed-hardware implementations. But they are backed by billion-dollar companies that lawyers can squeeze if they cause some sort of legally cognizable injury.

Re: JetKVM – Control any computer remotely

#122

I wish there was a KVM out there that didn't need HDMI, where it sat on PCIe bus and presented a really dumb framebuffer/kb/mouse to the BIOS/OS, but sent it out over the network

That seems to be one of their products

https://jetkvm.com/products/atx-extension-board

Re: JetKVM – Control any computer remotely

#124

I wish there was a KVM out there that didn't need HDMI, where it sat on PCIe bus and presented a really dumb framebuffer/kb/mouse to the BIOS/OS, but sent it out over the network

That seems to be one of their products https://jetkvm.com/products/atx-extension-board

That’s not what that is

Re: JetKVM – Control any computer remotely

#125
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think products like JetKVM are targeting hobbyists and small outfits; corporations who aren't on a public cloud are using stuff like idrac, ilo, or dedicated rackmount KVM hardware.

True. Small outfits can be a pretty big category of companies that don't have a fully locked-down enterprise security environment with clout who can insist that everything like that racked and put under their control. Homelabbers tend to like rackmount. (I've owned multiple servers with such dedicated remote management/access hardware built in.) JetKVM seems designed to be more a shadow IT at individual desks solutio…

Home lab is a subset of hobbyists. And many of them like mini PCs.

Re: JetKVM – Control any computer remotely

#126
post #24
post #6

Just a FYI - many people[0] (including myself) have had serious issues with JetKVM. In my case, I found it is not compatible with all HDMI sources but others just have unknown "Loading video stream..." issues. [0] https://github.com/jetkvm/kvm/issues/84

It's difficult for me to tell how many of the issues in that thread are serious, because there also seem to be a surprising number of people who come back to say "I solved it by enabling h264 in my browser". On the other hand there are people who say "I ordered three, two work and one doesn't" which seems like pretty good evidence there can be real issues with the hardware.

Ordered 2, one was fine, other required a reflash to resolve a black screen. Worked fine across a variety of SBCs and desktops since.

Security is not top priority very obviously, but for a quick kvm on a system without bmc, it’s fine. Picks up DHCP quickly and responsive web UI.

Re: JetKVM – Control any computer remotely

#127

My company runs on GL.iNet Comet GL-RM1 KVMs to manage servers deployed at remote customer sites and I'm about to deploy more tomorrow

"GL Technologies (HK) Ltd & GL Intelligence, Inc & Shenzhen GuangLianZhiTong Tech Co.Ltd"

Since there's no independent audit of these and no way to prove that these aren't being intercepted, I wouldn't be bragging about voluntarily installing potential infrastructure vulnerabilities.

Re: JetKVM – Control any computer remotely

#128
post #6

Just a FYI - many people[0] (including myself) have had serious issues with JetKVM. In my case, I found it is not compatible with all HDMI sources but others just have unknown "Loading video stream..." issues. [0] https://github.com/jetkvm/kvm/issues/84

I’ve been using the glinet comet kvm for my homelab and have no complaints. Their cloud is optional and I don’t use it. The built in tailscale client does what I need it to. I use it with their ATX power accessory to manage physical power on/off when needed. Given that these things have bare metal access, keeping them off of the public internet seems wise no matter what though.

Keeping these kind of management devices off the Internet seems prudent. But how do you do that and still get Tailscale to work? Assign the device to a separate vlan that is restricted to only talk to Tailscale? Otherwise, if the device is on your regular network, it will still be connected to the internet.

Re: JetKVM – Control any computer remotely

#129
post #57

Please forgive my ignorance, but what advantage does this have over RDP/VNC?

Add-on, almost lights-out remote management.

Without lights-out management, eventually physical access to power cycle will be needed.

For systems people care about, they already have BMC (Supermicro), iLO (HP), iDRAC (Dell) controllers.

Anything that can capture HDMI and spit it securely over a wire without some cloud-dependency bullshit, present "virtual USB" or input over the network, and close a RST circuit momentarily would do the job. The problem is, in the name of consumerishism and convenience, none of these home-gamer "solutions" have been independently audited that I know of by any reputable firm. (A competitor, NanoKVM, is known to be shady AF downloading serialized binary crap. It talks to tailscale without user permission, communication, or approval. Never use it for anything.) Don't trust something simply because there's press release or social media hype about it. I have to endure constant Cloudflare CAPTCHAs because it's probable that a large fraction of other customers on my ISP have pwned IoT (cameras, doorbells, whizbang startup weather station, etc.) DDoSing and hacking the rest of the world.

PSA: For the love of the sysadmin gods, please don't use desktops as servers. ECC RAM, HA, duty cycle, lights out management, and vendor support are completely different beasts compared to retail gear.

For non-lights-out, host-based remote desktop that can be self-hosted, RustDesk is able to work locally without relaying to any clouds. And using WG (non-TS) for "VPN"/remote network bridging, that's a pretty compelling option. I haven't yet checked if it can work in an air-gapped environment but I think it might work; but if it doesn't, that would be sad.

Re: JetKVM – Control any computer remotely

#130
post #80

Provenance and trust are relevant for a remote KVM. But I can't find any information on their Web site about who runs the JetKVM company, not even a partial name or handle of anyone, nor even what country they are in. Which seems odd for how much this product needs to be trusted. Searching elsewhere, other than the company Web site... Crunchbase for JetKVM shows 2 people, who it says are based in Berlin, and who also…

If you do this sort of thing often, I'd love to chat further. I'm basically trying to automate this sort of manual research around companies with a library of deep research APIs.

Had a show HN last week that seemed to go under the radar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45671087

We launched corporate hierarchy research and working on UBO now. From the corporate hierarchy standpoint, it looks like the Delaware entity fully owns the Estonian entity. Auto generated mermaid diagram from the deep research:

  graph TD
    e1[BuildJet, Inc.]-->|100%, 2022-12-16|e2[Buildjet OÜ]
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