Member
Polish hosting is underrated
OVHcloud Warsaw is not Polish hosting, it is French hosting in Poland. But the latency to Krakow is excellent.
I have a box there too. IPMI failed once, I used their ticket system, tech rebooted it in 20 minutes at 2am. No charge. Maybe I am lazy but for one box, this is my "backup access method." Not scalable, but it worked.
20 minutes? My last ticket to OVHcloud Warsaw took 4 hours for a reboot. You got lucky or I got unlucky. This is why I keep the train schedule bookmarked.
Please do. I have a Prusa MK4, can print PETG. This is the gap in my setup -- I have the Pi, the bridge, but it's sitting in a cardboard box. Rackmount is the missing piece.
Also: has anyone used PiKVM with OVHcloud's remote hands? Like, can I ship them a unit to install? Or is that a fantasy. I used https://www.ovhcloud.com for colo once and their remote hands was a nightmare to arrange.
OVHcloud remote hands is 70 EUR/hour last I checked, and they won't install customer equipment that isn't rail-mounted and documented. A Pi in a cardboard box? No.
You could colocate a 1U shelf with PiKVM, switch, and PDU. Then you're paying colo rates. At that point, is the PiKVM saving money or just moving the cost?
Stable > testing
I have been running PiKVM for three years on a Pi 3B+. It has outlived two IPMI firmware updates that broke Java, one motherboard replacement, and a move from one rack to another. The Pi just keeps working.
The IPMI? Always something. Java, ActiveX, browser blocks, password resets. Vendor iKVM is a liability, not a feature.
Member
Vou migrar pro selfhost ainda esse ano
I am in São Paulo, my "datacenter" is a closet with 30A power. No remote KVM needed because I am already remote from nothing. But I built PiKVM anyway for learning. Now I understand why you all care.
When I finally colo somewhere, I will already have the skill. Preparation.
RAID is not backup
Neither is IPMI. I learned this when my RAID card took the IPMI bus down with it during a firmware flash. Both dead. PiKVM saw the whole thing, recorded it. I watched the server panic in 480p from my phone.
Best $50 I ever spent. The RAID card was $300 and dead.
Member
This is the nightmare scenario. Shared bus, shared firmware flash window. I have seen LSI cards do this, Broadcom too. The BMC reboots to update, RAID card is in the middle of something, both hang.
PiKVM doesn't care. It watches the HDMI and presses buttons. Simple. Robust.
Has anyone tried the commercial PiKVM alternatives? Lantronix Spider, Raritan Dominion, those sorts? I see them on eBay for $200-400 used. Wondering if the extra cost buys reliability or just older problems.
I have a Spider Duo from 2014. Works, but the web interface needs Flash. Flash. In 2024. I keep a Windows 7 VM just for it. This is not reliability, this is archaeology.
PiKVM's web UI works on my phone. Modern TLS, no plugins. The old KVMs are technically functional, practically obsolete.
