KVM-over-IP

This is an interesting technolgy, but most likely only to those who

1. work in a datacenter environment
2. wish to start a datacenter
3. already have a mini-datacenter at home (i want to start my own as a personal project)

For the uninitiated, KVM stands for Keyboard Video Mouse. Its a very silly name i know, but it is quite appropriate to what it does. KVM was designed with the datacenter in mind (it should be, i cant fathom that it was designed for home use), that faced the problem of physically accessing many computers. Just imagine if there was a routine maintance task, that involved accessing the BIOS. Viewing the BIOS settings, or even viewing the startup of a server is not possible via Remote Desktop or PCanywhere. One can only do this by pluggin in the monitor directly to the server.

Now imagine further, that you had to do this to 10 of your servers. Imagine even further, what its like in a datacenter that hosts hundreds of server....~PHEW~.

What KVM does, is simple. It simply hooks (connects their keyboard, video and mouse) up a bunch of servers to a small flat device. From that flat device, you can hook up a control pc, or even laptop, to centrally manage those bunch of servers. The drawback is that those datacenter workers (like me), will be locked to their screens even longer, getting lazier, when they could be running around pluggin in their little trolleys of monitors, mouse and keyboards to hundreds of servers. They could even cancel their monthly gym fees. In fact, who's to say that the next Carl Lewis could have come from datacenter?

Now that you understand (do you? if not, it doesnt really matter does it?), you may ask "so whats all the fuss about KVM-over-IP"? Glad you asked.

Simple (i keep saying this..whats another word for simple?). Now you can control that whole bunch of servers, from the comfort of your home! Isnt it great? Take a look at the diagram below:

Sweet. Read more about it at RealVNC