If someone is doing this, especially wrt to 1U servers, perhaps someone
could provide a pointer to a reboot solution that would allow a single
reboot device to control 42+ 1Us in a single rack. From my occasional
interest in this area, I've seen lots of reboot solutions. Most of them
take as many as 4-10 U to reboot 40 machines, which sort of obviates the
need to reboot 40 machines in a single rack in the first place. Unless
you use 10ft racks, I guess.
IMHO the right way to do this is to build the power cycling
capability into the individual 1U boxen. Again, we
should be talking to the embedded systems folks to
give them a standard set of requirements that everyone
can support. This may be worth having a workshop
discussion at a NANOG meeting to define requirements.
I envisage a standard control module with two external
serial ports. One serial port is for a daisy-chained
serial bus that can allow one control module to talk
to other boxen. The other serial port is where the
modem connection goes and could probably be designed
to take either an RJ11 phone cable or an RJ45 serial
terminal cable. The 1U box's power supply has a
built-in relay that is switched by the control module.
All external switches and indicators go through the
control module.
--Michael Dillon