[clug] remote power cycling many machines

[Neil Pickford]

I know there have been lots of high tech suggestions, however you could 
go real low tech.

Set BIOS for allways on, Power switch timer on the machine that turns it 
off for 1 minute at 00:01 weekly on a Sunday night. That way if a 
machine freezes you just have to wait for the timer reboot on Sunday 
night. Monday morning each device will be fresh for the week.

Also gives researchers remotely playing with their machines an incentive 
not to brick them early in the week.

On 4/04/2020 8:11 pm, Robert Edwards via linux wrote:
> 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
>