I'm wondering what options might be available for lights-out management of workstation machines. Mainly what I mean by lights out management is the ability to power on/shut down/reboot the machine over the network without any involvement of the host OS (so it works when the OS is hung, crashed, etc.), coupled with the ability to poke at BIOS and bootloader settings (grub, etc.) to change settings, select a different OS to boot, etc. (as in remote desktop/KVM over IP without an OS running). It's common for servers to have some sort of integrated management controller that's separate from the host CPU to provide these kinds of features. More recently, Intel AMT/vPro I think can provide similar features, at least when not disabled by the mfr at the factory.
So, given a workstation machine that doesn't have an integrated LOM on the motherboard and has had AMT/vPro/MEB/MEBx disabled at the factory, are there any decent solutions for this type of functionality?
I have seen Teradici PCoIP cards available which seem like some sort of a hardware remote access solution, and some seem to have wires to connect to the power switch of the host system, does anyone familiar with these cards know if they could be used in this way?
So, given a workstation machine that doesn't have an integrated LOM on the motherboard and has had AMT/vPro/MEB/MEBx disabled at the factory, are there any decent solutions for this type of functionality?
I have seen Teradici PCoIP cards available which seem like some sort of a hardware remote access solution, and some seem to have wires to connect to the power switch of the host system, does anyone familiar with these cards know if they could be used in this way?