IP-KVM is overrated for homelab

Ok so heres my hot take and I know people are gonna disagree but ive been running my homelab for like 7 years now (started with a dell r710 I got off ebay for $200, upgraded to r720xd then r730 and now ive got a proper rack with 3 servers and a switch and a pdu and everything) and in all that time ive used ip-kvm maybe twice and both times it was because I messed something up that I could have fixed with serial console if id just configured it right (which I do now, ipmitool serial over lan is a lifesaver and also for reinstalls I just have my pxe server ready to go with a custom ipxe menu that boots into whatever I need, debian, proxmox, whatever, and for the rare cases where the network config is so broken that I cant reach the box I have a fallback script that resets network to dhcp and reboots after 10 minutes if no connectivity so really what im saying is ip-kvm is a nice to have bu

We see this perspective often from smaller operators. Industry-standard practice remains out-of-band management for production infrastructure, and upstream hardware vendors continue to include IP-KVM as baseline functionality.

From a personal standpoint, I have recovered systems via serial where IP-KVM would have failed due to framebuffer issues. :) Both have failure modes. The question is which failure mode aligns with your risk tolerance.

For our hosting customers, we maintain IP-KVM as standard. For my own homelab, I use a PiKVM alternative. Cost is not the only factor.

I agree with @Petra in practice but Walt has a point for very small setups! I have used serial console many times, is very reliable for headless servers. But last month I had motherboard issue where serial did not initialize at all, only IP-KVM showed me the BIOS error. Was very lucky I had it.

For homelab I think depends on how far you are from the machine. I am 2 hours away from mine, so for me IP-KVM is worth it. If you are in same room, maybe not so important.

I made test order with PiKVM parts last year, total was about $80. Not too bad if you build yourself. Cheers!