Jim Davis jdavis@CS.Arizona.EDU writes:
We've been using some flaky old Wyse terminals for consoles on our netapps; I'd rather hook them up to a terminal server of some sort. I assume most any terminal server should work, but are there any favorites people have? (Or ones that should be avoided?)
What we use, and are very happy with, is a piece of software, combined with a lot of serial ports on a computer. The software (conserver/console, from Purdue), gives us things like
- logging of all activity on all ports, - the possibility for operators to "hijack" console connections, in a controlled fashion.
And lots of other cool stuff. Basically, we're extremely happy with it. We use conserver both with a linux box with multiport serial boards (Stallion), and with a Sun using terminal servers (we've had luck with Central Data Etherlite, there are probably oodles of others out there that work just as well.)
If you want to use the conserver package, the only thing to keep in mind is that the server part of the software wants to see local devices, this might exclude some of the terminal servers out there. (The Etherlite comes with drivers that makes it appear as local devices on a Solaris box)
What we use, and are very happy with, is a piece of software, combined with a lot of serial ports on a computer. The software (conserver/console, from Purdue), gives us things like
I definitely agree! The conserver software is one of the most helpful things for SysAdmin's to use. I have been using it for 4 years now, and it is the best way I have found to manage serial consoles.
If you want to use the conserver package, the only thing to keep in mind is that the server part of the software wants to see local devices, this might exclude some of the terminal servers out there. (The Etherlite comes with drivers that makes it appear as local devices on a Solaris box)
This is not true. We use a version of the conserver package which works with either local ports, or with "telnet ts-1 5016" type of terminal server ports.
We have used the following Ethernet-based terminal servers with this software with much success:
- Cisco 2511 - Xylogics Micro-Annex & Annex-3 - IOLAN+ rack-mount
Of these, the IOLAN+ seems to be the most cost-effective.
You can get our (publically available) version of the conserver package from:
http://www.gnac.com/conserver/
On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, Greg Kulosa wrote:
If you want to use the conserver package, the only thing to keep in mind is that the server part of the software wants to see local devices, this might exclude some of the terminal servers out there. (The Etherlite comes with drivers that makes it appear as local devices on a Solaris box)
This is not true. We use a version of the conserver package which works with either local ports, or with "telnet ts-1 5016" type of terminal server ports.
We have used the following Ethernet-based terminal servers with this software with much success:
- Cisco 2511
- Xylogics Micro-Annex & Annex-3
- IOLAN+ rack-mount
I know someone was able to get conserver to work on a Sun (Solaris) and using a portmaster for the physical connections. I do know he had to work on it for quite a while to get it work...
We use Portmasters for console access. It's a pretty basic setup and the things just plain work... can't really argue against reliability... :)
------------------------------------------------------ Craig Sebenik craig@netapp.com Webmaster / System Administrator (408)367-3296 Network Appliance www.netapp.com
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