Managing a motherboard with NO VIDEO - how?

[DolphinsDan]

We're looking at the new Brocade Vyatta distribution that has DPDK integration so that Xeon E3-1125C motherboard Patrick reviewed a few months ago is lookin' attractive.

The issue is that it doesn't have any video out. I'm used to iKVM so if a server panics, I can see what's going on. With no video, what do I do? If it reboots, hits the PXE loader, starts to grab an image and fails, how do I see what's going on?

A friend told me I can use the serial port to debug but I don't know if that makes sense even slightly.
I was looking at these: 1-port option or Amazon.com: StarTech.com 4 Port RS232 Serial Over IP Ethernet Device Server (NETRS232_4): Electronics

Would those work?

 

[PigLover]

Showing my age a bit I guess, but it wasn't really THAT long ago when almost no computers had any video out...serial IO to a terminal was the norm.

Linux is still A-OK with this. You just have to think like all you've got is a single 'console' xterm running on your terminal.

 

[Patrick]

Great tip @PigLover

@DolphinsDan this may not be too much of a help but you can install a video card if you really need the GUI.