That doesn't solve the problem of having to create each one manually, when there is a perfectly good list (known_hosts) lying around. I have several dozens host

That doesn't solve the problem of having to create each one manually, when there is a perfectly good list (known_hosts) lying around. I have several dozens hosts I connect to almost daily. (Yes, I do use tools like Puppet and dsh for configuration management, and probably should use them more, but sometimes you have to get your hands dirty.) Unfortunately iTerm's solution is even less useful than Terminal's remote connections, since in iTerm each profile have associated settings like colours and cursor type, things which should be the same across all connections.