Cloud computing: the paradise of KVM over IP

As cloud computing becomes more and more accepted and is expanding from the public domain to the private or internal IT environments, the natural question arises “so what does this move mean to KVM over IP technology?”

At first sight one can argue that the answer is “nothing” - the need of an IT admin to control his servers remotely (over IP) from the BIOS level, has been around for over ten years, since networks became the main means of communication between man and machine. In recent years software based remote access applications like RDP and VNC have pushed IP KVM to being the spare wheel of the data center truck. You forget it’s there until the flat tire or server crash – then you better have it handy and full of air and ready to go, otherwise you’re into some deep trouble… Or as we earlier described it, KVM over IP can be viewed as the IT manager’s life insurance.

Servers in a cloud environment are no different than any other server out there. The IT infrastructure is the same, they require the same “looking after” by the IT staff and thus need some kind of IP KVM  technology hooked up to them to be ready when the OS crashes and RDP/VNC are not functional.

At second sight there might be something more. This might refer more to private or internal cloud setups, in which applications provided by the servers to the entire organization go beyond the standard shared e-mail or ERP applications, and include other “local” applications like Windows office for example.

Now, wouldn’t you say that this puts a little more responsibility on those servers NOT to be downed? Because now, every second of down-time directly influences the productivity of multiple workers across the entire organization, who suddenly cannot finish the next presentation, or report or price analysis. We are all accustomed to not receiving emails once in awhile, and while the IT guys work like crazy to get the server up again we continue with our daily tasks, sometimes we even see this as a blessing…   but when it comes to our daily work outside of emails, this is already a whole new ball game that we will do anything to avoid.

So this little extra reliance on servers in the cloud means to IT one thing – double check and make sure that the spare KVM over IP wheel of yours is intact.