Recommendations

[Rev.Bubba]

As for 1) most older workstations just cold reset when you powercycle by either pressing the button or pull and reconnect the plug.

I had planned on using a switched PDU to allow for a system not in use to stay offline until needed and also for reboots. That would be rather simple as well.

You could automate the earliest stage of installation by using a terminal server connected to each machine's console port.

That was my thought as well. It was about the only use I thought I may have for the SGI 1100 server. Add one of these pci cards and you should be good to go.

http://www.comtrol.com/rocketport-multi ... i-octa-db9

It would have many other uses as well.

[jan-jaap]

I had planned on using a switched PDU to allow for a system not in use to stay offline until needed and also for reboots. That would be rather simple as well.

You could automate the earliest stage of installation by using a terminal server connected to each machine's console port.

I have much of this in place: I have a pair of APC 7953 PDUs (one in my 19" rack, one behind the workstations). This allows me to remotely switch power to just about anything. Admittedly, my motivation was not having to bend over an Onyx ever again to reach for the breaker, but it works really well.

I also have an Cyclades ACS48 Console Server connected to just about anything with a serial console port. The amount of wiring is .... something.

Both of these I picked up for reasonable amounts of money and because they are enterprise hardware they come with neat goodies like scriptability, support for Radius etc in addition to a web interface.

As far as RoboInst is concerned: I believe it works best if the dist server and the target run the same IRIX version, and I also believe it requires a license. But I never messed with it myself.

[SAQ]

At this point I would replace any accessible services with ones from xBSD or Gnu/Linux. Probably even consider a SSH or VPN host to go through to get to the SGI. Not sure about client apps on the SGI - I do occasionally use Firefox, but generally for "trusted" sites (for whatever degree of validity "trusted" is ... not much).