UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi Gurus,

Can some one explain me the difference between a IP console and a serial console.

maybe... your question really isn't all that clear.

You might mean with regards to some kind of network remote access to the console head (which would be my favorite guess on this).

In that case, a serial console device is like an Avocent/Cyclades applicance that allows multiple machines to connect via serial cables to that applicance and then you are able to use ssh (for example) to go to the applicance and establish a serial session to the connected hosts. I like this and use this style for a lot of out of band stuff...

Then the IP console solution would likely be some kind of KVM over IP or some kind of access directly to some kind of IPMI like thing (doens't have to be a standard IPMI, could be Sun's ALOM/ILOM, HP's ilO, Dell's DRAC, etc). The IP support through that (the latter IPMI-like case) could come in a myriad of forms... could be some kind of web based access... might fire up a Java based app for the console, etc.).

so... here's hoping I guessed correctly... your question could mean many things!!