Haha, sometimes the stupidest things are fun when you manage large systems. In the last few months we’ve installed some serious remote management tools for our servers and workstations.

Yesterday I had to reboot a server. One that isn’t exactly easily remoted.

I VPN’d into the network. I then launched ConsoleONE from our Citrix environment. Then I remote-controlled my machine using ConsoleONE (from Novell). Then I opened IE and logged into the management interface for one of our IBM BladeCenters. Then I launched the Remote Management tool from there to take control of one of the blades. And I rebooted it.

It was a serious pain to have to scroll all over the place inside these 5 remote interfaces, but the mouse was fast, and the keyboard didn’t lag too much.

The structure was essentially VPN > Citrix > ConsoleONE > BladeCenter Remoting > Remote BladeCenter Administrator.

Just blew my mind that it worked. Saved me having to drive in!