Re: Console Servers

[James Bensley <jwbensley () gmail com>]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 at 15:26, Saku Ytti <saku () ytti fi> wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 at 16:39, Alan Hannan <alan () routingloop com> wrote:
>
> > Long ago I used Cisco 2511/2611 and was fairly happy.  A little later I used portmaster and was less so.  Recently 
> > I've been using Opengear and they work fairly well but the price is fairly high.   I use the CM7100 and IM7100.
>
> Out of curiosity, how do you connect them? I see quotes around
> 200USD/MRC for ethernet in US, implying 12kUSD 5 year cost on just
> connectivity, add rack rental, and power and Opengear price is maybe
> 10% of TCO?
>
> Personally I still prefer Cisco, as not to have new operating system
> to automate. Add conserver to connect persistently to each console
> port, so that you get persistent logs from console to your NMS, and so
> that you can multiplex your console sessions.
> It's hard to recover the CAPEX benefit if you need OOB platform
> specific OPEX costs.
>
> --
>   ++ytti

Hi Saku,

I forgot to mention, it also depends how "out" of band your OOB needs
to be. We use Ciena 6500s for our DWDM infrastructure and they have a
wayside channel (like various DWDM vendors), so it's a separate
channel over the same physical fibre. For anything except a fibre cut
it seems to work.

Cheers,
James.