How to connect a Server to a Monitor and a Keyboard?

Hello,

I am a "rookie" in IT, and relatively new to a lot of stuff. But I am growing and I want to learn more.

I would appreciate any feedback here on the following 2 questions:

Q1:

How do I connect a Server to a Monitor and a Keyboard?

Q2:

How would I check or verify if a server has "hot plug" connections?

Appreciate any suggestions.

Thank you.

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Comments

cyberguypr

Q1: same place as any other computer; VGA port and USB port.

Q2: a number of things are hot swappable. spec sheet should list those.

MTciscoguy

All of my servers, including my Dell poweredge servers have VGA, USB and Keyboard ports on them, which all of them also work just fine hot swapping, in fact every single computer I have owned in the last 20 years has no problem hot swapping on those types of ports. My Dell 1850 has ports on the front and the back, my 1950 has USB on the front and the other two ports on the back, in fact, I can even hot swap HD drives on the poweredges.

Plantwiz

Peripheral devices are generally 'hot swappable'. But they also are not typically called 'hot swappable'.

Hot swappable (HS) usually refers to HDD that can be pulled our and replaced without the device skipping a beat. Since a HDD generally contains the OS and NOS code running the device, it would seem a bad idea to remove said device, however, over the years HS HDD have been used in environments where servers need to remain operations 24/7...usually in a RAID design, a drive could be pulled and replaced without rebooting the entire server...something that could take as long as twenty minutes.

Peripheral devices, I have never heard of as hot swappable, and last heard of it from one of the young people we had working in the shop as he wanted to 'hot swap' the monitor on the machine he was working on

It made me wonder why he was hired to do service work, not that there is anything wrong about your question...at the time, USB was new technology and only about 20% of our systems had it available. He was supposed to know what he was doing (and yes, all these years later it still bugs me he was hired).

FWIW I have successfully 'hot swapped' HDD that are not supposed to be HS, such as the old 40 pin IDE and some internal SCSI without damaging the machine or the device...however, the system (OS and NOS) does not always like one to do this type of procedure (and a reboot was needed regardless). And I only performed this on test machines, never in live production. Purely a does this work, test?

As far as 'verifying' what is Hot swappable, the server will be sold as such. Power supplies and HDD are the most common internal components that would require such a feature. The power supplies that support this feature are redundant (meaning the unit contains more than one power supply) and the HDD that are HS are externally swapped and built in a raid.

Older OS and NOS (prior to windows XP and W2K) almost always require a reboot, but sometimes, one could get lucky...then again, who is using W98 or W95 or W NT these days?

linuxlover

Using one of these:

--chris--

linuxlover wrote: »

Using one of these:

Where space permits, those are nice. The last place I worked had me working on a lot of AIO touch screen displays with no desk in sight. I preferred one of these:

Wireless and easy to roll up/carry around. Push it onto a wall, semi-flat surface or even sit on the ground if you have too...

Shdwmage

Remote desktop for the win? I don't need any keyboard or mouse at the terminal. VMWare server base though, so its all remote management anyhow.

awitt11

USB connections are generally "plug-and-play". There are still some servers and pcs that have PS/2 style connections (think purple and green) along with USB. The older style connections require a reboot if you unplug the keyboard or mouse.

MTciscoguy

awitt11 wrote: »

USB connections are generally "plug-and-play". There are still some servers and pcs that have PS/2 style connections (think purple and green) along with USB. The older style connections require a reboot if you unplug the keyboard or mouse.

Wrong, both of my power edge servers allow me to plug and play my keyboard and PS/2 style mouse with no reboot