New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Looking for something like Lantronix Spider, but for serial console
AlexBarakov
Patron Provider, Veteran
in General
Hi everyone,
So title says it all - I am looking for something, similar to the well-known Lantronix Spiders, but for serial consoles of network equipment. Ideally, it would be portable and have 1-2 serial ports. If possible, I'd like to avoid wasting a full unit for a non-portable console server.
Having some sort of 3g/4g for real OOB connectivity would be a plus, but not mandatory.
If anyone has any experience with such hardware - please share, it will be hugely appreciated!
Note: I do not want ot build my own with raspberries and etc.
Note2: I know that I can use a server in the rack and hook it's serial port and use it for configuration, but that's not really practical for my use case.
Alex
Comments
I like to use Airconsole when we need something like this, check https://www.get-console.com/shop/, I have always one in my backpack... really small device with a lot of features
I have had good experiences with the moxa n port series for this. Particularly https://www.moxa.com/en/products/industrial-edge-connectivity/serial-device-servers/general-device-servers/nport-5100-series
However they also have models with wireless connectivity such as:
https://www.moxa.com/en/products/industrial-edge-connectivity/serial-device-servers/wireless-device-servers/nport-w2150a-w4-w2250a-w4-series
another potential option would be a mikrotik router for 3g that also has a serial port. As you can configure those to access other devices: https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Serial_Port_Usage
Sorry if my answer is a bit late.
My suggestion is "make your own". You can do it with an OpenWRT supported 3G Router, with an USB port and an USB to serial converter.
Spiders have a serial port on them. You can use it for switch configs. You can ssh to the spider IP and one of the options is to connect to the serial console.
You can also get a Cisco CISCO1941 + Cisco HWIC-8A
that will give you 8 console ports you can ssh directly to.
We've used the Moxa devices at my workplace for years, probably had thousands of them and they are pretty solid.
Thank you for the suggestions guys. I am buying a Moxa device to test out and if it works properly for my use case, I will probably buy a lot of these.
https://tripplite.eaton.com/products/console-servers~22