[clug] remote power cycling many machines

[Robert Edwards]

Hi all,

Hope you are all keeping safe and healthy.

During these strange times, I find myself responsible for a larger
than expected cohort of random machines spread across multiple
buildings in various peoples offices, which they are no longer
permitted physical access to.

These machines have been left running but seem to randomly need to
be power cycled for various reasons - some are running 'doze and
others, running Linux, seem to get randomly shutdown by various
remote users for whatever reason.

Many of the servers in machine rooms that I am responsible for
have various forms of Lights Out Management (LOM), such as iDRAC
or BMC etc., so can be remotely managed, as required (generally
don't need it, though).

So, for this vast array of random machines in offices, I have been
researching various generic options for LOM and/or remote power
control.

There used to be some PCI cards that could do much of this (eg. 
https://www.startech.com/support/SV1110IPPCI) but seem to be largely
discontinued. These days Remote KVM over IP seems to be the
preferred option, but generally has no provision for power control/cycling.

There are instructions on the web to set up, eg., a RaspPi to do
this, but making up 20 or more seems like a big job (eg.
https://github.com/Fmstrat/diy-ipmi).

I could go for "smart" power-boards, but need a wired way to
control them (I don't want to rely on WiFi or other wireless
technologies).

What have others tried/can recommend?

cheers,
Bob Edwards