Managing Remote Servers in 2004

[@markpriceful]

Console servers like these aren't outdated, they're still used today for managing network devices out-of-band

[@clabretro]

Definitely. And I've kept this one busy in my homelab rack 😅

[@Jamesaepp]

I might be in the minority, but I've watched a few of your videos now and I want to show some appreciation for how your content feels "honest" compared to a lot of other stuff out there. The patchy drywall, the exposed studs, unprotected work box, stack of keyboards in the corner - this feels like a REAL home-lab. A lot of creators seem to have such insane production value and crazy lighting, etc - whereas your "studio" has a distinct charm to it with all its imperfections. Keep up the good work. :)

[@clabretro]

thank you! I appreciate that.

[@ethanleonard1719]

Crazy enough theses are still used in the enterprise world. I work for a large bank and they use similar devices at every branch and back office buildings to access network equipment (routers switches APs, etc.) remotely. Most of them now have built in LTE for connecting if the site is hard down.

[@clabretro]

Very cool! I think I severely underestimated how relevant these are when I made the video. The irony is I actually use this one all the time in my home lab haha.

[@elesjuan]

Hah! I too work for a large bank, and our datacenters are full of appliances remotely administered OOB by these types of devices, albeit significantly newer and much fancier. These days, these terminal servers have all kinds of protocols available via their rj45 ports for all kinds of excitement! He could’ve had a little more fun with these if he’d connected the console port of his unifi equipment to a couple ports. 😅

[@donaldwilliams6821]

Yup still valid today. I work for a storage company, each controller has its own serial port. There are a number of circumstances where serial access is required. If you have a bunch of these storage units a serial mux like that is really needed. Great video. Love the old stuff too, but a lot of what you shown I've worked on. Time goes fast Thanks.

[@doctorwade927]

Cool vid! I worked 20 years for an ISP/Datacenter. We used rackmount Watchdog 100 environmental monitors for 3 datacenters that were around 150 miles apart so we had to do a lot of stuff from remote! We converted our old Livingston Portmaster III devices from dial up concentrators to serial console devices. I don't recall ever connecting to a server serial port but rather to our Cisco routers and APC power switches. We connected an old external USR 56k modem connected to a POTS line on one of the Portmasters serial ports to connect in case the ethernet connection was down. It was cheap, crude, and it worked! Saved me from having to drive remote sites more than once.

[@clabretro]

very cool!

[@stephendouglas684]

Great content everytime! Pleasant, clear presentation. One of my new favorite channels!

[@clabretro]

Thanks!

[@smileymattj]

The Dell Server's aren't accessible over serial after boot due to the BIOS handing off control to the OS. The OS has to activate the serial port. Windows doesn't do anything with serial by default. But Linux/Unix/BSD should, and if not by default; you just need to start a tty service like getty on that port and it should make it active. Just like you need an SSH or telnet service/daemon running to be able to remote in via IP. You need a tty service running to remote in via serial.

[@clabretro]

Took me way too long to figure that out. They do have iDRAC so not terribly necessary, but I do want to get serial access working just to be able to access them via that MRV console for fun. The TrueNAS server is BSD and the proxmox linux, but I still wasn't able to connect after they booted - so either I was doing something wrong or I do need to get a tty service running.

[@jessestrobel2]

Ah man, really dug this. Interesting to see how systems were managed around the time of my birth

[@stonent]

We use similar devices by Tripp Lite. That device is wired into a spare ethernet port on the main router that connects our site to the "mother ship" so any serial addressable device in our data center can be reached even if the core switch is offline, as long as that router is running. So even if someone breaks the uplink on the core, they can just get in via serial. (Just don't break the main router though if you did disconnect it, you never had the chance to do a write to memory on it and anyone in IT could power cycle it to bring it back up.)

[@br3nd4n]

This is a great video. A great look back at some retro-ish tech. Keep making great content.

[@clabretro]

Thanks! More on the way.

[@andrewnoonan5786]

Back around 2002-2007 I was managing an Alpha cluster that started on 2100's and then upgraded to DS15's. We had the consoles connected to a Moxa Terminal server. Not dissimilar to this thing.

[@randydinglehopper62]

This is super cool, thank you

[@colinstu]

I swear Cisco made a thing that had a bunch of serial connections on it, so that it could be used to connect to every management port in a whole rack of networking gear, and give folks a networked/remote way of managing it all prior to gear being telnet/SSH-able. Also not sure if related or not, but cisco also made "octal" cables, some that broke out from a funky serial thing to a bunch of RJ45s, or some that convert to more serial connections.

[@clabretro]

Oh yeah I'm sure Cisco made tons of similar serial stuff!

[@TomStorey96]

The Cisco 2509AS is an old box with I think 8 aerial ports. But there's also the NM-32A that you can put in their modular routers like the 2600, 2800, 3600, 3800 series. I think you can cram enough of them in to the bigger models and get 128 serial ports if you really wanted to..! Cabling nightmare no doubt.

[@andydelle4509]

Correct. There is no standard for RS232 (or RS422/485) on RJ45 connectors. You can buy those adapters unassembled and you pin the DE09 connector as needed.

[@krisclem8290]

If it's a linux machine you should be able to redirect or duplicate your standard TTY over serial. I often do that with virtualbox since it doesn't really support copy and pasting in text based oses.

[@macdememe]

Thank you for that!I love your videos so much! They are what I would like to do myself, but I can't because such things are expensive and hard to get. Thank you for that! What specs your proxmox server has?

[@clabretro]

Thanks! The proxmox machine is a Dell R720 with two Intel Xeon E5-2680 and 192GB of RAM.

[@johnstevens6223]

I am enjoying your videos 😁😁

[@arjovenzia]

I bought a similar rack divorce a few years ago, $10, couldn't resist. At the time we were using alot of Moxa boxes for connecting industrial hardware to networks (also 56k, fibre, 3g, satellite) so I thought it could be a useful test bench item. It kinda was, but impractically large when a cigarette packet sized box could do the trick. N I had a stack of those that had been removed from service. I'm still trying to think of something cool to do with it tho. Didn't think of microcontrollers tho, could have a bunch of sensors all over the place and have them all on the network. Hmmm

[@tompointdll]

8:00 and it even have IPV6 👀

[@philipdavis_ie]

Console server in locations ive seen as mostly used for remote access to networking devices rather than servers. They would in turn be connected to a management network which would be seperate to the production network should the worst happen (bad config push). Folks could comnect to the badly configured network gear and push a new config remotely. I've seen these connected to trusty old modems. Serial cabling standards being different from mfg to mfg was a pain. Most enterprise network gear will still have serial ports, usually presented as RJ45 for use with initial config and then management with serial consoles like this.

[@pdarrell]

What old kvm over ip are you looking at? I have four Avocent kvm ip 16 port units I purchased for around $50 - $70 each. All bought at different times and different sellers. They are not too expensive used.

[@clabretro]

I last looked about 3 years ago so maybe things have dropped. Those prices seem reasonable, how do you like them?

[@pdarrell]

@@clabretro I like them a lot. They are easy to setup and they can be accessed remotely from network or on local console. They do need a serial cable and port for initial reset of the console but after that the ui can be used locally to setup everything else. They remote console is Java based and needs old 1.6 version and old IE 9 to work. I setup a VM of Windows Server 2008 for access of they consoles remotely. I can see the computers boot process and OS access to from them. They need access units for each computer to connect to it, but they can be found for around $5 - $10 each. If buy in bulk cheaper. And the connect to console with standard Ethernet cable. Look into it. It is worthwhile and gives remote access when you don’t want to or can’t access locally.

[@andrewnoonan5786]

​@@pdarrell Dell rebranded the Avocent ststem as their own too.

[@imark7777777]

Yeah windows it's kind of the exception And required the gooey. Where as a lot of stuff was Linux or routers and switches with built in Consol.

[@onkelfabs6408]

After all, this is from 2004, not from the 90s. So this device is not crazily out of time.

[@dandraeg3679]

Do a vid on that PlayStation proxmox thing

[@clabretro]

I actually have a video going over my proxmox setup here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/onWkeIWkgcmqmpo

[@dandraeg3679]

@@clabretro I've seen that already wanted a more in depth video on the PlayStation 2 Games boot off the network, also have you done any home assistant stuff if so I'd watch a video on that too an lastly what AP's your running.

[@clabretro]

Ohhh, sure! I'll eventually have a video on that PS2 NAS boot. I haven't dove into home assistant, but I am running some home-grown automation which interfaces some Shelly 1 relays with my Philips Hue setup, I'm planning a video on that as well. Currently running five APs throughout the house, all Unifi: U6-Lite, UAP-IW-HD, UAP-FlexHD, and two UAP-nanoHDs. Been really happy with all of them.

[@AdrianuX1985]

+1 1:17.. Is the remote connection via 56k modem secured by encryption? Is it a dial-up connection and then a connection over SSH?

[@clabretro]

You can either dial-up into the machine for admin or port management access, or if you're on the same LAN as the console you can telnet or SSH in for admin or access to each port. You can configure users + passwords + keys. From their marketing docs "Per port password, multi-level password, RADIUS, access control lists, PAP, CHAP, SecurID, IP Filtering, Secure Shell V2.0, TACAS+" I haven't played around with any of those options though. I imagine for the dial-up it's just a regular user/pass, not sure if it's encrypted.

[@imark7777777]

The modem connection is basically a serial dater over phone no security but remember it's illegal to eavesdrop on phone lines so you're secure by obscurity. Nobody illegally tap a phone line unless you're in the stock trading business. So access is restricted by needing to know the phone number and the username and password which for the most part is probably enough unless you end up I'm really getting the attention of somebody.

[@Sigmatechnica]

Shame about that aincent java interface, i'd be interested in getting one for micros and test gear if it wasn't going to be such a hassle with java versions