DRAC and VNC?

[Adam Nielsen]

Hi all,

We're about to buy a new Dell server to replace an old one that's just 
gone out of warranty, and since it'll be hosted in a data centre I'd 
like to have out-of-band remote access to it.

I'm looking at getting a DRAC card, but it seems that for some reason 
you still need to use a web browser to get remote access to the console. 
  I've used this before with HP RACs and it's a nightmare trying to get 
the Java applets working properly in Firefox under Linux.

I've seen a few tantalising hints that the DRACs use the VNC protocol 
internally, so I was wondering whether it's possible to use a VNC client 
and do away with the web browser altogether?  This would make it *much* 
easier to maintain under Linux.

Alternatively is there another way to get to the remote text-mode 
console?  I would've thought that SSH'ing into the DRAC would be perfect 
to use the remote Linux console, and the BIOS, if that's still text mode 
on Dell's servers.

Failing this, does anyone know of any third party remote access devices 
that work with Dell servers and are easily accessed by Linux clients?

Many thanks,
Adam.