19" Console Server running Linux

Question

I'm searching for a hardware platform or hint for building a console server running Linux. I'd need

• 8-32 Serial Ports (DB9 or RJ54)
• Linux as OS
• 19" chassis

I don't really care if this is some custom hardware or a regular Console server where I can access the Linux/OS Layer (incl. building own kernels!).

Any hints?

Answer 1

I would buy a 19" inch rack case and mount a PC with a motherboard with a good number of pci-e slots, then you can buy PCI-e cards with serial ports up to a number of [available slots] * [number of serial ports per card]. If you buy hardware with well known chipsets for the serial ports any modern Linux distro will detect them and add them to the /dev dir