remote boot management

[ecosta]

Hi,
I hope this is the right place for this, if not, feel free to move the thread.

As all people doing remote admin, we find ourselves at risk when we need to do changes to a kernel or simply when a disk dies. My question is simple:

How do I manage boot options remotely?

I have seen it done! A french hosting company have a web interface that allows you to chose if you want to boot from your box or from a cached LiveCD. This is the ideal and as they have done it, it's possible!

Do any of you have any idea on how this can be done? I'd like to try it out. Any ideas are more than welcome!

thanks,
-Ed

[Katphish]

I suspect they are probably using virtual machines.

The next best thing on single purpose, decent hardware is console redirection:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/s ... 387ad0.htm

or server management cards:

http://www.progent.com/remote-server-ma ... -cards.htm

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=se ... gle+Search

[ecosta]

Sorry for the slow reply.
I'll have a look at it all. They say these are dedicated servers but I guess if they gave me a virtual server from a 'blade server' then I guess that technically they'd be right.

Thanks for links!
-Ed

[nixnut]

Moved from Installing Gentoo to Other Things Gentoo.
Not about getting gentoo installed, so moved here.

[Katphish]

Here is another package that looks to be closer to your goal. It looks pretty sweet actual

http://qemudo.sourceforge.net/

[asiobob]

I've used DRAC on dell (Direct Remote Access Controller). Basically the controller gets its own ethernet (you can configure it during boot, via the web, or using OpenManage).
You can connect to the DRAC via the web and power cycle the box, turn it on / off, view the screen etc.. you can view the livecd / windows installation whatever remotely, quite nice