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Comment by MichaelBurge | Hacker News Reader

> Every few months, I'll screw something up and prevent the server from booting or joining the network, effectively locking me out of the machine. To get things running again, I have to disconnect everything, drag the server over to my desk, and juggle cables around to connect the server to the keyboard and monitor at my desktop.

It's worth a couple hundred extra dollars to get a server motherboard with a management port. Just open a web browser to the management IP and it has a KVM.

All my newer servers use server motherboards. The older ones before I learned, always take extra effort.

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I mean, IPMI is nice, and I'd love to have it, but a thrift store monitor ($20-$50?) and a $10 keyboard is an acceptable emergency console as long as you've got space to put it near the server. And you save money on every build. Now, if someone would make an IPMI add-in card or cheap IPMI boards, I would probably do that. I'm also going to take a look at the vPro stuff mentioned elsewhere in the thread (and I think AMD has something similar)... that might work enough and may be available on inexpensive parts??

I've just replaced the main board in my storage machine with a supermicro board, and although the ipmi web UI isn't great, it still allows me to fix issues without having to dig out the monitor and keyboard I used to keep around for things like this.

Do any of the server motherboard manufacturers (I’m thinking Supermicro, I don’t know who else sells ~1) make mini-ITX boards? I’d like to have remote management for my NAS, but I don’t have space for something larger than the mini-ITX case I have.

My last one was a ROMED8-2T from Asrock Rack. They have a catalog with standard and also weird motherboards(mine came with 7 PCIev4 slots because it's a GPU server, and 6 of them had dedicated lanes to the CPU. Most motherboards try to share bandwidth with a PCIe switch, so not ideal for machine learning)

A quick search shows 2 Intel motherboards with mini-ITX form. There was also a micro-ATX.

https://download.asrock.com/Download/e-catalog/ASRockRackPro...

I've also bought from Gigabyte before. The selection isn't as good, but I see an AMD and 3 Intel with mini-ITX. You might have to get separate embedded versions of the processors.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Enterprise/Server-Motherboard

I think Intel has more options with smaller boards here. Always check the block diagram to see if the IO matches how you'll use it.

Yes. Basically any motherboard Supermicro release which has F in the model means, that there is IPMI which allows remote management. X10, X11 and X12 motherboards have html5 viewer, which doesn't require java. I just ordered X11SCL-IF for my NAS and it is mini-itx. There are couple from Asorck rack available as well, and also mini-itx and with ipmi.

Also if you want specifically a NAS, get a prebuilt model from e.g. QNAP and it will come with a management interface already.

I got this one for $600:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FB5LBJP

If you outgrow a 9-bay NAS, they also sell full storage servers with management.

I was very tempted to build a NAS too, but ultimately prebuilt was better I think.

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