"conserver" (which the author is hsing) is really handy for quickly and easily accessing and/or monitoring the (serial) console of not just physical machines (l

"conserver" (which the author is hsing) is really handy for quickly and easily accessing and/or monitoring the (serial) console of not just physical machines (like the author is doing) but also virtual machines as well. I've used it with virtual machines running on both vSphere and QEMU/KVM to make their serial consoles available over the network... to access the serial console you can just connect to the corresponding TCP port. Just make sure to lock down / restrict access appropriately and ensure you don't send sensitive info over the network in clear-text! It works the same way with physical devices too (Cisco devices, primarily). It's great when you want to a "permanent record" (on disk) of any output that is sent to the console. As mentioned, it's really nice when you need to provide "shared" console access and/or access to multiple devices and/or users simultaneously. It's really an under-rated tool.