Member
Self-hosted IPMI replacement: TinyPilot. Similar to PiKVM but I found it easier to build. Used it when my Hetzner box iKVM died during Debian upgrade.
Hetzner has no local datacenter in Moscow, so driving was never an option. PiKVM or TinyPilot is mandatory for anyone east of their German facilities.
BGP Dreamer here. I run everything in two sites with anycast anyway. If one box is unreachable, traffic fails over. I still need console access to fix the broken one, but users don't care.
For console: IPMI primary, PiKVM secondary, and a third trick -- serial over LAN to a dedicated management VM on a neighbor host. Old school but it saved me twice.
I rewrote my PiKVM case in OpenSCAD once. Never again. The language is a time machine to 1985.
FreeCAD is bad enough.
Mi homelab tiene homelab
I use PiKVM on a Pi 4 because the Zero 2 W was out of stock in Buenos Aires for six months. Overkill but I had it. The 4 runs hot, needs a heatsink, draws more power. Not ideal for 24/7 but it works.
Import taxes here make the "fifty bucks" build cost about $120 USD equivalent. Still cheaper than one cab ride to a datacenter, if we even had colo here.
Stealing this for my signature. Never thought of it that way but it is exactly right.
Primary, secondary, and the "one offsite" is my brother's PiKVM that he lets me VPN into for emergencies. Not tested in six months. Hypocrite, me.
Member
Serial console. IPMI iKVM dies, BMC usually still answers on port 623. IPMITool sol activate gets you a text console. Enough to fix networking, reboot, check dmesg.
Not pretty. No BIOS access. But it is the actual fallback I have used more than any hardware KVM.
☁️ multi-cloud mess
I pay for OVHcloud in Gravelines, Vultr in Singapore, and AWS for the thing I actually care about. Each has different iKVM or serial console behavior. I have three different emergency access methods and I test none of them.
At least the cloud ones have web serial. Dedicated is the wild west.
Member
Amsterdam. Thirty client sites, mix of dedicated and VPS. For dedicated: IPMI plus a cheap IP-KVM switch from ATEN for the ones where IPMI is flaky. The ATEN was 200 EUR used, handles 8 ports. Not PiKVM cheap but it works with everything, no HDMI-CSI compatibility guessing.
For VPS: provider console or nothing. Different problem.
Not last night. BMC was completely dead, no ping, no nothing. That's why I asked about the case -- I need something that doesn't share the BMC's power rail or network path.
PiKVM is galvanically isolated, separate network. That's the point.
This is the scenario. IPMI NIC shares PHY with host, or BMC crashes with host, or firmware corrupts. Happens.
PiKVM is on WiFi or separate Ethernet. Completely out of band. That's why I built it.
