4 ms·
The VGA output would be part of the IPMI solution for remote management, serial would be for out of band management too. Both are useful if you don't want to dr
by LIV2 6y ago
The VGA output would be part of the IPMI solution for remote management, serial would be for out of band management too. Both are useful if you don't want to drive to the datacenter
- rbanffy 6y agoFor a very long time I joked that no self-respecting server had a VGA, keyboard or mouse ports. Serious metal should have serial ports for the operator console. That didn't age too well...
- mshook 6y agoWell technically you can often ssh to the BMC and connect to the OS through an emulated serial link... Serial port is awesome to me just because you can copy/paste...
- p_l 6y agoIt gets better thanks to UEFI, since it provides serial-safe approach for system management. IBM PC compatible systems had no serial console and it shows in abominations like some Intel RAID controllers that required mouse to get through their graphical UIs. Even if you used one of the special "UI-over-serial" cards that were used on some PC servers, lack of support meant that it was perfectly normal for some option from to expect bitmapped graphics and want to use it :( With UEFI providing a basic UI framework that covers all that firmware needs (and which still allows for fancy looking UI if you connect to framebuffer) serial console is back in use :)