Patent ID: 7398293

Claim:
A computer system, comprising: a mid-plane including a shared bus, the mid-plane having a plurality of server slots, each server slot operable to receive a server module; at least one server module coupled to a mid-plane server slot and including a keyboard, video, mouse (KVM) device in communication with the shared bus, the KVM device operable to transmit a video signal over the shared bus and to receive control signals from the shared bus; a management module in communication with the shared bus, the management module operable to receive the video signal from each server module connected to the mid-plane via the shared bus and to provide the control signals through the shared bus to each server module to activate and deactivate the KVM device on each server module; wherein the management module is configured to receive a KVM connection from a user interface and further configured to enable communications between a particular server module and the KVM connection via the shared bus.