Console Servers

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

Hi,

It's been a while since I last saw this thread...

I'm looking at a few listed below and looking for comments:

Lantronix - http://www.lantronix.com/products/cs/scs820_scs1620/index.html
Looks good, can't find a price on Ingram.

Cyclades - http://www.cyclades.com/products/ts_series.php
Looks to run about $2100 for 16 ports

Digi - http://www.digi.com/solutions/devtermsrv/cm/index.shtml
Looks to run about $1800 for 16 ports

All of the above do sshv2, and that's a requirement. I haven't found much
else. For the time being I'm ruling out old stuff like a Portmaster or
Xylogics.

I'd also appreciate pointers to any "roll your own" parts, esp. IDE ->
Flash adapters and multiport serial cards that will work with FreeBSD.

I can summarize to keep the noise down...

Thanks,

Charles

2

I just went through this exercise. In POP a) where space is a premium, I bought a 8 port RocketPort PCI serial card to sit in the FreeBSD firewall that was there. ebay $50 and made the rj-11 to {rj-45|db9} cables in house (connections to other PCs and cisco gear).

In POP b) where space is not a problem, a PM2 with an existing FreeBSD box in front of it which we can SSH into, and then telnet to the individual serial ports.

Have a look on ebay for Livingston PM2s. About $150-$200 US for upto 30 serial ports. At under $200, buy and extra one for your "cold standby" spare. Then, put a surplus PC in front of it (or an existing one) from where you can SSH from. On the PM2 just for the archives,
set s1 device /dev/network
set s1 service_device netdata 6001
set s1 override xon off
set s1 modem off
save s1
reset s1

where 6001 is the port you would telnet to in order to get the serial session. These are about 4U, so you will require space to spare.

         ---Mike

3

Hello all,

Here's what I've found out. It's a mix. If any one solution looks to
be the "winner" it's the roll-your-own solution. This is what I'm going
for since it's relatively cheap for low-density installs. The only
problem I'm finding is that it's tough to get a 1U box that has 2 PCI
slots open. 2U seems overkill. Since Compact Flash adapters are cheap
(about $20) and the cards themselves can be had for $59 (128MB), I'm going
to go diskless. I'll probably use conserver, but I'll be giving rtty a
try as well.

If anyone has pointers to cheap 1U or 2U's, I'm all ears. Just need a
minimal box, don't need much CPU for this.

With about 13 replies, I can report the following:

Lantronix - http://www.lantronix.com/products/cs/scs820_scs1620/index.html

1 vote for, one against. The complaint was that the Lantronix has a very
bad management interface.

I also noted that BBC is using a mess of these at Telehouse...

Cyclades - http://www.cyclades.com/products/ts_series.php

4 for.

"Under the covers, it's your average linux box with ttys0-ttys31. The
portslave software is pretty nice, too. Offline data buffering and the
ability to stick a hostname relationship with a serial port. [Ex: ssh2
bob:myserver@cyclades to connect to server myserver ]"

Another poster is using the cyclades and the digi, and if I'm reading him
right, uses the Cyclades 48 port for smaller installations and the digi on
larger.

Digi - http://www.digi.com/solutions/devtermsrv/cm/index.shtml
Looks to run about $1800 for 16 ports

1 for (kind of). The poster has a large installed base and it mostly
works and has a very high density. Apparently it's a two-piece system
where a cable fans out to boxes that further split it. But if one of the
splitters locks up, everything dasiy-chained through it locks up. This
person is now using Cyclades (please correct me if I'm wrong on this one).

Equinox - 2 folks using these (cards).

"We use the Equinox SST-128P (theoretically expandable to 128 ports,
comes in 16-port chunks) on Linux. Their linux drivers work well [...]
It's aPCI card with a cable to an external plugboard with the 16 RJ-45s."

"I have had a bit of experience with Equinox (http://www.equinox.com/)
gear and can recommend them. Their serial hubs will talk serial to almost
anything out there and when plugged into cat5, tunnel those serial ports
back to physical mappings on a host system. [...] Geared more towards
industrial applications (what I'm using them for) but I have often
considered slapping one in our telecomm rack to map serial ports
on my local box to our various gear."

Cisco -

2 suggestions to use a 2511 or a 3620 with 16 port async cards. The 2511
would probably be a bit too slow if you enable ssh though...

Livingston -

2 for an old portmaster behind an ssh-able box (if you have the space)

Arula Systems (www.arula.com)-

1 vote for this, apparently a new company.

Build your own -

5 for this solution. Everyone is using FreeBSD, and the RocketPort cards
seem to work better than the Cyclades cards under FreeBSD. 3 people are
using conserver (www.conserver.com) to make it easier to manage. Paul
Vixie shared the following (he gave permission to quote in full):

"We use RocketPort, FreeBSD, IronSystems, and ISC rtty.

        http://www.rocketport.com/products/specs/rack16_foto.asp
        http://www.rocketport.com/products/specs/specs.asp?product=rp_pci

        http://www.freebsd.org/
        http://www.ironsystems.com/

        ftp://ftp.vix.com/pub/vixie/rtty-4.0.shar.gz

This puts a BSD box in every POP, which is very useful for many reasons."

So there you are... Thanks for all the responses.

Charles

4

> Lantronix - http://www.lantronix.com/products/cs/scs820_scs1620/index.html

1 vote for, one against. The complaint was that the Lantronix has a very
bad management interface.

I also noted that BBC is using a mess of these at Telehouse...

"...a mess..." ?

  http://support.bbc.co.uk/support/standards/rack_top.jpg

We do indeed use the Lantronix, have done since '97 or before. Not really
had any reliability problems with them. The odd fan bearing has gone, but
they keep running none-the-less.

The CLI is very VMSish, but not bad when you get used to it, plenty of
online help.

Only minor niggle is that they changed the authentication procedure in
a recent code version, without flagging it in big letters.

Cisco -

2 suggestions to use a 2511 or a 3620 with 16 port async cards. The 2511
would probably be a bit too slow if you enable ssh though...

I use a 2610 with the 16 port async card for personal colo, and it works
well. Not noticed any performance problems for occasional use. Biggy niggle
is that you can't easily setup ssh to a port with per-port passwords. Had
to fudge it thus:

  username port1 noescape password 7 **************
  username port1 autocommand telnet 123.45.67.89 2033

  interface Loopback0
    ip address 123.45.67.89 255.255.255.255

  access-list 1 permit 123.45.67.89
  
  line 33 48
    access-class 1 in
    no exec
    transport input telnet

Simon

5

> I also noted that BBC is using a mess of these at Telehouse...

"...a mess..." ?

Just to be clear, when I say "mess" I don't mean messy, but "a lot",
"bunches", "oodles", etc.

You have a very nice neat setup there, one of the better organized open
cabinets I saw in the facility. I was working about 3 cabinets down. I
also was wondering where that Axis cam was displayed, now I know.

I did see on major carrier there with a bunch of Juniper equipment and
about 3 OC-48, 2 OC-12 and 2 or 3 OC-3 interfaces. No door on the
cabinet. Very frightening given the recent "security" thread. It was so
messy I'd be worried someone walking by could accidentally take out a few
OC-48 lines...

Charles

6

Hi

Try looking at this company's line of products:

http://www.itouchcom.com/

they used to be Xyplex.

Arie