I was helping a small IT team upgrade their server room when an interesting debate started. One engineer insisted everything should move to fully remote management tools, while another quietly pointed to the rack console already installed.

During a power and network outage test, most systems became unreachable through software. That old hardware console suddenly became the only way to access critical machines.

That’s when the conversation shifted. Even with modern cloud dashboards and automation, the datacenter kvm switch still had a place in their setup. Not as the main tool, but as a reliable backup when everything else fails.

It changed how the team thought about “old” infrastructure.