Sam Schorr sschorr@homestead-inc.com wrote:
Does anyone have a recommendation for a console connection server? We have 14 filers and growing and I'm looking for some centralized, easy serial connection box. I have used Annex in the past for UNIX, but thought maybe . . .
What we settled on, with the goal of being self-contained, is one or two of the Central Data (now Digi) SCSITerminalServer ST-1032's, which is a 1RU unit supporting 32 serial connections (RJ45), connected via SCSI to an old SPARCstation. They have drivers for lots of Unix(-like) variants, and also for Windows systems if I recall correctly.
Anyway, on the SPARC system (we run Solaris-2.x) is an open-source package called "conserver", which both logs all serial traffic to individual logfiles, and allows one to connect an interactive session to whatever you happen to be logged in to at the moment.
We weren't happy about the prospect of passing console traffic or root passwords unencrypted over the network, so the typical ethernet- attached solution was not so attractive. For network access we use ssh to get to the Sun console server, which gives (slightly :-) better protection than telnet.
Here are some URL's: http://www.conserver.com/ http://www.gnac.com/consoles/
Note that we're running a 1997 vintager version of "conserver", but it looks like the "conserver.com" site derives from the same code.
Regards,