USB switch - sharing a USB drive with multiple hosts

[shephga]

Hi,

I'd like to ask you, the collective if you're aware of a switch like device that would share 1 or ideally more USB devices with a number of host like devices which run linux. The use case is 8 - 16 host like devices connected to a USB switch which would allow only one server at a time to boot from or copy data to a USB drive. Once the operation is complete the end user could remotely switch access to the USB drive to either another host like device or no device.

Main reason for the above is to re-install the operating system on to a device remotely as / when required. Access to the device after the reinstall would be via serial connectivity. The devices have specific hardware which is of interest which is why we can't do this with VMs.

Anyone know of such a device please ?

Thanks

Greg

 

[demonix]

If all the computers are capable of booting from the network, you only have to build a PXE boot server that will allow each computer to access the OS installation media without requiring any form of switching (I don't even think the device you want even exists) and all that would need to be done is for the boot order on the computer to be put back to the hard drive being the first item to be booted from.

 

[shephga]

Hi,

Thanks for the response demonix, sadly PXE isn't an option due to specific design requirements.

Cheers again.