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

[Andrew Robbie (Gmail)]

On 30/09/2009, at 3:23 PM, Rahul Nabar wrote:

> Any good recommendation on a crash cart for a cluster room? My last
> cluster was small and we had the luxury of having a KVM + SIP
> connecting to each compute node.
>
> I doubt that will be feasible this time around , now that I have 200+
> nodes. How do other sys admins handle this? Just a simple crash cart?
> Or there any other options that make life easier in the long run.

I suggest getting some KVM over IP boxes. You plug them in to the  
computers
you need console access to then go somewhere quieter. If you have IPMI  
that
works (rare in my experience) great.

For when you absolutely have to have local access (i.e. everything is  
broken)
make sure you have it at the right height. There is nothing worse than  
trying to
type standing up at a KVM drawer at the wrong height (and unless all  
your
administrators are all the same height it will always be wrong), so  
make sure
there is always a rolly chair. I actually have an UPS on my cart to  
power the
monitor, which saves draping power across the floor; you brain filters  
out the
UPS beeping pretty quick.

Andrew