Opengear console servers are considered one of the best options out there. Delivering a reliable Out of Band solution however you need it. But what happens when you try and connect Opengear and Sonicwall – easy, right? Wrong.
Sonicwall use a custom serial console pin out for their devices. This is detailed over here on their official support pages.
Opengear use their own standards as well, named X0, X1 or X2 – Depending on the generation of the Opengear device you have, it will support one or more of these. You can find more info here. This is so that they have options on connecting to many devices.
So 2 devices, each with their own pinout. You would expect the Sonicwall to be like anything else and use a known, documented standard – but no, that would be too easy. We tried Rollover cables, Straight cables, Ethernet Cables and Crossover cables – nothing worked.
Sonicwall have published this pinout which is supposedly the correct one, but I made one of these cables, and it just didn’t work. This was frustrating, but I needed to make it work. After tracing out what pin did what for both pinouts, and matching them up – success!
I made up the below diagram that shows how to make a Sonicwall Opengear Console cable for your devices – this shows both the X1 and X2 pinout.
I have confirmed both work, at least on our device after selecting the correct pinout (X1 or X2).
Note: The “Normal” ethernet pinout (the left table) should connect to the Sonicwall device.
This is a modified image which was posted online. I am unable to find the original poster, but credit remains with them.
