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Comment by ectoloph | Hacker News Reader

I have a mild distrust of some of the cheap IP KVMs. I don't think vendors are malicious, but I don't expect they get it right every time either.

Admittedly, I haven't looked at any open-sourced firmwares either which could have improved things.

I have found the Sispeed USB KVM very useful, the convenience is well worth the $50 it cost me. The UX isn't great but you don't really need it to be. It works (most of the time) via WebUSB for the keyboard mouse.

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Part of the problem is the absolute crap that most vendors throw on an AST2600 is even worse.

I will say iDRAC has been a lot more reliable for me, but the chance I'll ever buy a Dell server for home use is basically 0.

Always a fun adventure when you buy an old server motherboard to see what state of disarray the BMC is in. Or if you have to patch the license on older boards just to get into it. Usually I just ignore the BMC on any hardware more than 5 years old.

Have you played around with OpenBMC or any of the open-sourced BMC firmware alternatives?

ETA: specifically on older server/workstation boards instead of the stock firwmare

I've been interested but the idea of SPI flasher recovery has always meant I've not bothered actually trying. Maybe I will finally on one of these old boards I have lying around..

Same here; trying to get OpenBMC flashed onto older motherboards can be a rabbit-hole. I generally throw an IP KVM on top if I really need remote control and can't settle on just SSH and a remote power cycle if that fails.

I went with Sipeed NanoKVM (PCIe) units across my homelab as well and I've also been happy with them. For a while it's been the best value option (not to mention the most consistently available option) cf. GL.iNet, PiKVM, and JetKVM. The PoE versions are great in a rack and the integrated ATX control is fully-featured (including the little power switch icon in the web UI turning green when the system is powered on). I set up an isolated OoBM VLAN with no Internet access and any switch ports assigned to it are isolated by default as well.

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