Low-Bandwidth, Truly Remote Management? 215
kaiser423 writes "I'm looking to integrate some highly critical solutions into what would essentially be a remote, moving datacenter. No operators will be allowed at the site, and we may be able to have a high-speed INMARSAT data link. As a backup, we're planning to have multiple redundant low-speed Iridium data links. Essentially, we're looking to be able to power up/down and reboot some computers, and be able to start/stop some programs. We're willing to write the terminal interfaces necessary for our programs, and possibly do the remote desktop thing with some of our 3rd-party programs. But what is out there that would give us this type of access, work robustly over a high-latency, low-bandwidth stream, and would be tolerant to intermittent network outages? Please hold the pick 2 of the 3 jokes, I know they're contradictory goals; I'm looking for a compromise here! These boxes would regrettably nearly all be running Windows (with some VxWorks). Does anyone out there remember those days, and have any solutions that they preferred?" Read on for a few more details of this reader's requirements.
We've been looking at remote in-band and out-of-band management solutions, and really have found a ton of products. However, the "low-bandwidth" solutions still exceed our potential Iridium bandwidth (~10Kbps). Even if we have the INMARSAT link (192Kbps sustained, higher burst), a number of these solutions would hit that limit. We're starting to look at going old-school with some terminal-style applications, but haven't found much of a market for it; it seems to be a market that died with 56k modems. PC Weasel looks kind of like it might work, but the demo doesn't work for Windows.
Some possibilities... (Score:3, Interesting)
a: Remote management cards often have command line interfaces for resetting, system health, etc, through SSH. True, SSH with 800ms RTT times is a pain-in-the-ass, but if scripted, should work fine.
b: Once you can power cycle/machine health remotely, now you use SSH to connect to a command line shell on the system itself (yes, even windows) and do all further tasks from the command line.
A couple of things... (Score:5, Interesting)
You may be able to run RDP across even the low speed links - choose the bare minimum screen resolution and color depth possible. It will still be pretty frustrating and slow, but you could use it with enough patience. Or you can run VNC, though I believe its performance will be less than RDP.
For CLI access, install an SSH server on the Windows box. If your code runs as a service, you can interface to it through a CLI client. It's some development work, but possible.
For power, I like APC's smart power strips. They support HTTP and SSH access.
Whatever solution I used, it would have to be run over an encrypted satellite link.
IP aware KVM (Score:2, Interesting)
Get an IP aware KVM.
Using these you are separated from the operating system completely. You can see the machine boot, get into its BIOS, do a power reset (with a compatible power strip).
They have encryption and use a Web interface. Some have a fat client.
And try to run things from a command line as much as possible. Have the machine start a full screen command session upon boot, and hide the task bar. That should minimize the initial screen scrape.
Its the next best thing to being there...
Re:Linux would be better for this, but.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The ONLY Correct Answer (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't MS Server 2008 heavily scripted? My understanding is that you now have almost as much control in a 2008 environment with no GUI (CLI only) installed as you do with a GUI.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/powershell-faq.aspx [microsoft.com]
This may be the way to go.
Re:IPMI + DRAC or similar? (Score:1, Interesting)
A cheap current alternative is Intel AMT, which can easily give a logical serial-over-LAN interface for the OS and power control from any host power state other than "no power wired in".
It's a little lower rent, in that it reuses the host's NIC as well, sort of like wake-on-lan used to do. But the AMT coprocesser runs even when the host is off or during BIOS POST etc. Some versions support booting from LAN-based virtualized storage as well.
Even my cheap $120 Intel motherboard includes it. I've used a $50 openwrt enabled Linksys router as an SSH bridge into a LAN where I then could manage an Intel AMT device.
Re:RealWeasel? (Score:3, Interesting)
We call these frame buffer cards.
I remember when the PC weasel first hit and I was like this is so awesome.
Now, there are cheaper bolt on or integrated solutions.