(no subject)

[theweaselking]

There's nothing quite like "Uh, the NAS came up after the reboot but it isn't talking to anything. Looks like all four NICs are down. Do we even OWN a machine with a serial port to go talk to it?" to give you a nice dose of adrenaline in the morning.

Comments

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

What is this machine that its fallback is a serial port? Is this a very old machine or is this still a Thing?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

NetApp FAS. And yes, that's very much still a Thing. There's no GUI on a filer, so why put in a video card and video ports and USB ports and all the rest when you can just run the console out via serial?

(Because NOBODY USES SERIAL DAMMIT! But that's not the point - serial actually has some major advantages if you've got a hundred devices using it, but most of those vanish when it's more like "two")

But yes: Serial communications are VERY much a thing with high-end network devices. Routers, NAS devices, all kinds of things.

[thornae.livejournal.com]

As someone working with embedded devices, every time I hear "Serial ports are dead," I laugh heartily. Then go and buy another few dozen USB to Serial converters for my hoard.

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

Serial ports are still *everywhere*.

From embedded via routers&switches to Real Servers (though the latter's dying).

And as a sys-/net-admin I'll take a (tried and stable) 16550 UART over a USB chipset that needs special drivers any time.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yeah. My "nobody uses serial" was not intended to ACTUALLY mean "nobody uses serial", more "*I* don't use serial, this is a weird requirement for me, dammit."

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

First of all: I wasn't replying to you, but to a comment someone else made.

Otherwise:
you can not imagine my joy when I discovered that the new HP 'orkstations we got last year had *real serial ports*, and with a bog-standard, tried-across-the-ages, 16550 UART even.
Meaning I could startup-configure those pesky routers without constantly swearing at those damn usb2seraial converters.

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

Odd quirk of the market there. This is mostly on high-end gear? That is, those items where the pricetag is such that integrating a USBus into the system-- or even bolting on a serial-to-USB converter-- would be an insignificant markup. It would also be a great convenience, possibly a lifesaver when Something Bad is Happening and you forgot your bag o' converters at home and you loaned out the one you had in your desk drawer. But no one's doing that, possibly because serial ports are The Way It's Done.

Yeah you stock up on converters, but that incurs the cost of buying converters to have them redundant everywhere you need them ($15*X becomes significant cash pretty quickly), and it's still an extra point of failure in a workflow that could be mission-critical.

The cost of serial vs. USB in less expensive devices can be a significant factor, but as soon as the pricetag is anywhere near a grand there really isn't much excuse.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

It's not just USB, it's also video that you need - in an industry where serial is the standard.

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

I'm not understanding something here. The machine as it is does 'console out' over a serial port. I assume this to be some variety of terminal emulation or textmode stream. Okay, that's a straight bitstream over serial, as has been done since the days when big iron ruled the earth. Is there no way to send that stream natively over a USBus?

Even if that's the case, then they should just bolt on a USB adapter you're using over the serial port.

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

There are a couple points here.
First of all: serial is trivial and tried, and the codebase has matured. Native-console-over-USB is neither of those. The codebase, which needs to reside in some sort of BIOS, would also need quite more space. Then there's the range issue - nothing easier than plugging a serial port into a good old-fashioned modem, and you got your out-of-band access.
For all of these reasons (and some others, probably) noone does console-over-USB.

Serial for console access is slowly but steadily eaten away by other things, though (IPMI, iLO, LOM etc.) all with native IP stacks and their own network ports. But not by USB, and probably won't be.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Also: If you're big into automation and remote manangement (like my $work is), serial is much easier to work with than video. Or USB.

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

That depends. If you're a one-vendor shop, the natively-speaking-IP-solution of your vendor (IPMI, iLO, LOM etc.) might,m just might, be easier to handle than serial (range restrictions, port multipliers (think PortMaster2 of ages past!)).

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

At said $work, we use (IP-based) console servers to solve the range issues. Actually preferable to IPMI so far, as the IPMI implementations we've had to deal with have been flaky.

[secretagentmoof]

Serial is dead-simple to implement and use, even when things go kablooey; USB requires an awful lot of stuff to work and be in a consistent state. This is one of the major reasons why serial consoles are (still) so popular.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Also: USB serial-port-onna-stick thingies only cost like $15, and let you plug a serial cable into your laptop. Which is why I own one. But still.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

My current work laptop (Dell D630) still has a native serial port, which is quite handy for several of my company's expensive data backup systems, especially while doing updates to Linux things wherein webguid is shut down and/or the system is being rebooted but needs monitoring...

... but the hinges are broken on my laptop, and I should ask IT for a new one, but I believe the replacement IBM has no native serial port and relies on a USB adapter. Meh.

[thornae.livejournal.com]

I was going to recommend my preferred work series of laptop/ (http://us.toshiba.com/computers/laptops/tecra/a11/A11-S3540/), but it looks like the most recent iteration has succumbed to the trend and finally lost its serial port.


They do sell a (rather pricey) addon express card that'll do the job, but it's just not the same...

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Regardless, I'm saddled with whatever laptop my company opts to provide, which has been a Dell D600 and then a Dell D630, with a period of Thinkpads that I missed, and I'm not certain what they're doling out now, or if they have a serial port.