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What do you use for emergency console access when IPMI is down?

Dedicated Servers by adam20 24 replies 1.3K views
adam20

Member OP

Ex-Abuse Desk

#1

Bmc died during critical maintenance last night. The ticket said "ipmi unreachable, please investigate." I was the one investigating. Had to drive 40 minutes to pop a crash cart on a machine that was mid-kernel-update. This is a CloudCone colo, their "remote hands" wanted $150 for fifteen minutes of console work. So: what do you use for emergency console access when ipmi is dead? Serial? Intel amt? Something else? I am not driving again at 2am because a bmc decided to take a vacation.

reported. resolved. repeat.
Viejito

Member

retired & rooted

#2

The terminal is your FRIEND no? I always keep a usb serial cable in my bag good, old school, no bmc needed. But for remote location I use intel amt on some servers good. Is not perfect but works when ipmi is dead no? @adam20 you try the vpro thing? Some boards have it hidden no?

DH

Member

#3

Ipmi = | mas tem solução | tipo | | jajaja | 5️⃣/ | | | | nice

pablo

Member

#4

Wey wey I know this guy | he has a dial-up modem backup for real | 56k to his colo rack | "for the aesthetic" he says jajaja | no te creo at first but it works wey | 5 dollars month to some ancient isp | when everything else fails the screech saves you | I tried to set up same with Hostinger https://www.hostinger.com but they laughed at me | "is 2026" they said | yeah well bmc also thinks is 2006 when it bricks | double standards no?

declarative or death
adam20

Member OP

Ex-Abuse Desk

#5

Viejito said:
Some boards have it hidden no?
Not on this SuperMicro board, sadly. Checked after the fact and it's the non-vPro Xeon E-2300 series. No AMT, no SOL redirection that works without the BMC. Lesson learned: next build I'm paying the vPro tax even if I think I'll never need it.

reported. resolved. repeat.
walt22

Member

Austin

#6

Intel AMT saved me more times than I can count when I ran the ISP. Had a tower in a co-lo in Dallas where the IPMI would lock up every 60 days like clockwork. AMT over the business cable modem, hit the web interface, power cycle, back in. Never drove once for that box.

debDebi

Member

6 #7

I use Serial over LAN from Dell iDRAC but when iDRAC also die I have nothing. This is problem. In my work we have two person on call and one must live near datacenter in Warsaw. Is not good solution but is what we have.

apt-get install everything
pablo

Member

#8

adam20 said:
Paying the vPro tax
Wey the vPro tax is real, but check this: some used Fujitsu Celsius workstations have vPro and go for cheap on ebay.de. I got one for my homelab, AMT works beautiful. Not rackmount but for colo who cares, put it on a shelf jajaja

declarative or death
cpanelliw780

Member

shared hosting survivor

#9

Following this thread hard. I'm in Phoenix and just moved from Hostinger shared to a CloudCone VPS (https://cloudcone.com). Now I'm reading this and wondering what happens when I can't reach my instance. Do they have any console besides the VNC in the panel?

lee_mcr

Member

#10

The VNC in the panel is usually tied to the hypervisor, not your BMC. Different problem. If CloudCone's whole node goes down you're waiting on them, but if it's just your VM locked up that VNC should still work. IPMI is for bare metal.

Honey badger don't care... about downtime

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