On 5/25/05, Dan Rue <drue at therub.org> wrote:
> So I think i'm looknig for a clean multi-port config.  I found this
> device by doing a google search, and it looks perfect:
> http://www.digital-loggers.com/ss20.html
> 
> What do you think?  At least that would scale for the whole rack.. where
> as if i had to buy something more expensive i'd cheap out and just get
> an 8 port which may or may not be sufficient in 2 years.

It looks pretty nice.  I'd definitely take advantage of that 15 day
free trial to be sure it fits your needs.

> Set that up from one server connecting to all others.  Then set up one
> of the others to access the first directly.  If the firewall goes down
> i'm still SOL.  So i guess just make the firewall the main guy and
> forget that secondary connection.  Still better than KVM only - in which
> case if any machine went down i had to drive downtown.

If you run Cisco firewalls/routers, you can use the AUX port to get
console to another device.  One of our network admins did that so he
could get console on the firewall via the outside router (if a
firewall config change somehow locked us out).

> By the way, all boxes are freebsd (don't stone me!  i've run linux..
> uhh, before..)

I suspected that :)  Setting up the serial console on FreeBSD is much
easier than Linux IMO.  The FreeBSD handbook should have all the info
you need.  If you get stuck, email me off list.

Scot