this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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It's good for critical systems that you might need to reboot and do things like see the BIOS (which you can't see if you're using a normal VNC-type remote access solution). It's probably not necessary for most setups, but it can be very useful in certain situations. I made one myself, then literally never used it, and I'm now using that Pi in a different project.
I thought about setting one up for my main server because every time the power went out I'd have to reconfigure the bios for boot order, virtualization, and a few other settings.
I've since added a UPS to the mix but ultimately the fix was replacing the cmos battery lol. Had I put one of these together it would be entirely unused these days.
It's a neat concept and if you need remote bios access it's great, but people usually overestimate how useful that really is.
Right, a KVM's usefulness is narrow and you're ideally using it as a sort of backup to a backup of critical systems. That means you usually only hear about them in server environments, and that means that sysadmins pay a LOT of money for enterprise-grade KVMs.
But it's very cool that we can build a dirt cheap, half-decent KVM out of a Pi nowadays. I might have just left mine running if I there wasn't a Pi shortage; I wanted that Pi for other stuff.
This is exactly my fear 😆