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

[Mark Hahn]

> (a)  a separate eth cable coming out of each server that takes the IPMI packets

yes.

> (b) or are the packets pushed out over the primary eth cable already
> consolidated at the eth card?

I don't have any of these shared configs, but they exist.
I'm not clear on how well they work.  obviously IPMI is low-traffic,
so I would think a shared config could work well.

> In case my option-(a)-picture is correct, then it means a doubling of
> switch ports needed which wouldn't be so nice.

switch ports are cheap.  if yours are not, you're doing something wrong.
especially since IPMI is always 100bT (afai seen) so we're talking any
old commodity thing: isn't $2-3/port worth it?

> Sorry, I probably sound a total luddite but no point pretending I know
> about the typical setup. [The stuff that I *have* used on servers in
> the past looked like this: a dongle that connects over the monitor-out
> and USB port; traps signals; converts them to I/P--> plugs into a
> separate switch--> console; But I suspect the solution you guys are

I've never used/seen a real kvm-over-ip (have some kvm-over-cat5 though.)