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I feel like I should know this, but can anyone ELI5 what a KVM is in this context?
by rattray 13d ago
I feel like I should know this, but can anyone ELI5 what a KVM is in this context?
- jsnell 13d agoA keyboard/video/mouse switch.
- rattray 13d agoI've never entered a datacenter before – what does that mean / what is it for?
- paulfurtado 13d agoThere are really two types of KVMs... classic ones were used by consumers to plug multiple computers into one screen, keyboard, and mouse and flip back and forth between them. Networked KVMs let you remotely access a computer or server. It's like VNC except by physically plugging into the ports. This is useful because it allows you to have remote access to a server when its OS is offline, tweak bios settings, watch it boot, reinstall the OS, etc. Most true servers have this functionality and more built in (ipmi, idrac, redfish, etc are terminology for the feature). These plugin ones allow you to add that functionality to any machine. You're not likely to see tons of them in an actual data center, but they are incredibly useful for systems without remote management built in.
- rattray 13d agoGot it! So I could for example plug this into my mac mini at home and reboot it after a power failure or something while traveling?
- paulfurtado 12d agoYes, exactly. And even do things like inject virtual USB drives so you can reinstall an OS or something
- gschizas 12d agoYou can even boot it from powered off, but (at least for mac mini) this probably needs Wake-On-Lan to work.
- hypercube33 12d agoIn this context its not a switch - its a Keyboard / Video / Mouse - but over IP - remote control of a PC (including boot and bios)