Intel vPro or remote management alternative

[TravisT]

So I'm really liking the idea of being able to remote manage my FreeNAS box (think KVM-over-IP). I'm planning an upgrade anyway, but am trying to figure out a good solution to this problem since I have two servers that run headless and I'm trying to ditch the monitor that I have sitting around for when I need to get on the console/BIOS.

Intel offers the vPRO technology (or AMT), but I don't understand it very well. It looks like it should be able to do everything I would need it to, but Intel is very cryptic about the technology. There is a lot of talk about "licensed" processors and such. I'm not sure that this would work the way I intend it to out of the box.

I've searched and searched for a competing technology, but am coming up empty. DASH is the closest I've gotten, which appears to be an AMD solution that was introduced several years ago that never really took off. The other option is to buy a KVMoIP switch off of ebay or something, but from my research on that, there is often licensing costs for the software that must be used along with them. From my experience, these are pretty pricy options and it would require another piece of hardware on my network. It's a tradeoff I guess.

Does anyone have any practical experience with something that would meet my needs or specifically the Intel vPro technology? For background, I'm trying to build a FreeNAS box that can support up to 20-ish drives for a home media server.

 

[originalprime]

Does anyone have any practical experience with something that would meet my needs...

Walk downstairs.

:D

Sorry, had to sound a little smarmy. I enjoy automating as much as I possibly can, but I rarely (current experience excepting) have to physically interact with my FreeNAS box. In two years running, I didn't have to physically touch the box at all outside of initial setup or adding disks.

 

[TravisT]

Walk downstairs.

:D

I admit I have a tendency to over-complicate things, so that is actually a good solution. On the flip side, this server acts as my iscsi target for an esxi box, as well as serving up my media and files that my wife and I use. And the icing on the cake, I travel a good bit at times, so when something breaks, it's nice to be able to fix it without having the wife lug a monitor in to connect to the server (or in the past when I've had to walk her through installing a video card then hooking up a monitor). My cisco gear is the most reliable part of my whole network. The freenas box probably comes in second, but I don't trust it enough to not worry about it yet. Not a fault of freenas, more hardware related.

 

[moosport]

So I'm really liking the idea of being able to remote manage my FreeNAS box (think KVM-over-IP). I'm planning an upgrade anyway, but am trying to figure out a good solution to this problem since I have two servers that run headless and I'm trying to ditch the monitor that I have sitting around for when I need to get on the console/BIOS.

Intel offers the vPRO technology (or AMT), but I don't understand it very well. It looks like it should be able to do everything I would need it to, but Intel is very cryptic about the technology. There is a lot of talk about "licensed" processors and such. I'm not sure that this would work the way I intend it to out of the box.

I've searched and searched for a competing technology, but am coming up empty. DASH is the closest I've gotten, which appears to be an AMD solution that was introduced several years ago that never really took off. The other option is to buy a KVMoIP switch off of ebay or something, but from my research on that, there is often licensing costs for the software that must be used along with them. From my experience, these are pretty pricy options and it would require another piece of hardware on my network. It's a tradeoff I guess.

Does anyone have any practical experience with something that would meet my needs or specifically the Intel vPro technology? For background, I'm trying to build a FreeNAS box that can support up to 20-ish drives for a home media server.

I have a Q77 mATX board with AMT. Just plug in the IP address of the machine in the browser and login to the admin page. You can remote startup the server as long as the power switch on the power supply on on.

And yes my machine is down in the basement too. It saves me the trouble when trying to troubleshooting problems.