6.0 on Dell 1850 with DRAC4 management card?

[Marian Hettwer]

Hi there,

Scott Mitchell wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> 
> I'm thinking about getting the machine with a DRAC4 remote management card.
> This looks to be OS-independent (you can configure through the BIOS) so I
> expect it will just work.  I've seen various posts talking about how it
> tends to take over the keyboard and render the real console inaccessible,
> but there are workarounds for that.

I don't know about the DRAC with FreeBSD, but I assume that the BIOS of
this Dell still supports BIOS redirection to serial port. If so, you can
have Monitor and Keyboard connected locally and use the serial console
remote.
Just get a small console server (depending on the amount of servers you
have remote), for instance an old cyclades TS. Connect them and you can
get on your serial port through the console server via ssh.
There you go ;)

ssh username:yourserver at console-server

A pretty nice way to do remote management.

HTH,
Marian

PS.: If you need additional informations, ask me. At work we have approx
1000 servers (appr. 300 dell's) remote managed with console servers. And
it's working fine.