

Ask HN: Data Center Hardware - Start Up Idea - symkat

I don’t roam around data centers much anymore, but one thing I recall
from the emergancy visits is a “Crash Cart.”  Basically a keyboard, mouse
and monitor on a card that you push down the row, plugin and off you go.<p>Configuring a server now I’ve got a monitor and keyboard plugged into it,
but I’ll have to move it soon and I started thinking about what a pain in
the rear it is to move hardware around when you need to see what’s going
on with a headless server.<p>The idea:<p>Imagine a laptop.  Now instead of ports that you plug stuff into, imagine
retractable cables in the back.<p>A VGA, DVI, PS2 (maybe?) and USB cables that you plug into a server and
the laptop essentially becomes the monitor, keyboard and mouse.  All running
off a battery.<p>Of course there are other methods to manage this type of situation from a DRAC
card to just a normal ethernet port and a VNC client, but from a pure hardware
standpoint, I imagine this might be very useful to some data centers.<p>What do you think of the idea?<p>If you build it... give me one.  :)
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jpmc
All of the data centers I have worked in or have visited have had a KVM in
each rack or cluster of racks. Many servers even come with a IP based KVM
built into them ...HP does this for sure. It is a good idea but I think there
are other products or methods that would reduce your target market.

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Altreus
Ah, the only viable use for an iPad.

Except of course you can't write software for the iPad without spending money
so screw it.

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mvip
I would imagine most serious data centers have either rack-mounted KVM's (the
one that fits in a 1U) or some IP KVM.

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zppx
The majority of data centers that I visited generally does had a 1U KVM in the
rack.

