Lantronix Spider provides secure KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) server management over an IP network. Unlike any other product on the market, Spider offers a flexible, scalable and affordable CAT5-based remote access KVM solution in a cable friendly, compact “zero-footprint” package.

irt-back is a python application that uses the libvirt API to safely shutdown, gzip, and restart guests.

The backup process logs to syslog for auditing and virt-back works great with cron for scheduling outages. Virt-back is in active development so feel free to give suggestions or branch the source.

virt-back has been placed in the public domain and the latest version may be downloaded here: https://bitbucket.org/russellballestrini/virt-back
Installation:

Step 2 when using Microsoft-provided VMs for IEx interoperability testing