"Console server" as it was originally known, was written by Tom Fine, and was presented with source code to the world at large during LISA IV, in Colorado Springs in 1990.

Bryan Stansell later merged the forks with most features and added TCP Wrapper access control, SSL encryption, UDS networking and PAM authentication support; as well as accepting patches submitted by others.

Modern day setups (generally) use separate management Ethernet networks and console servers.

conserver is not limited to any one form of network protocol, and can handle these setups,[5] as well as log the console output of virtual machines.

Conserver is generally used in computer cluster setups too, logging messages either via a terminal server[6] or with an instance running on every node monitoring the console of the next machine, known as daisy-chaining.