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

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