[Beowulf] recommendation on crash cart for a cluster room: full cluster KVM is not an option I suppose?

[Rahul Nabar]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 8:19 AM, Hearns, John <john.hearns at mclaren.com> wrote:

> It depends. Supermicro use the shared-socket approach (actually it is a bridge
> somewhere on the motherboard), or with Supermicro you can have a separate
> socket using a little cable with a minu-USB connector onto the IPMI card.
> Other manufacturers use (a) or (b).
> On a blade setup the IPMI is carried over the backplane Ethernet links.
>
>
> If you have a separate IPMI network (ILOM, DRAC, whatever they call it) you
> do not need the same type of switches. What you need is some cheap 10/100 switches,
> one in each rack. Say Netgear or D-Link. Not a central switch with a huge backbone capacity.
> Then you just connect the switches together in a loop.
>


I like the shared socket approach. Building a separate IPMI network
seems a lot of extra wiring to me. Admittedly the IPMI switches can be
configured to be dirt cheap but it still feels like building a extra
tiny road for one car a day when a huge highway with spare capacity
exists right next door carrying thousands of cars. (Ok, cheesy
analogy!)

-- 
Rahul