Linux is an amazing server operating system. A remote user can control nearly any aspect of the computer.
The company where I work has servers hosted at a location in south Denver, about 70 miles away. I can do almost all of our maintenance from our, the only difficult thing is updating a kernel.
Fortunately Lilo has a neat little trick for completing a kernel update.
The 'lilo -R' command sets a one time default before you shutdown. This allows remote testing where you don't have access to the console at boot.
Just specify the kernel label on the command line
lilo -R
If the kernel fails it can be a remote support person can hit the button and the previous default kernel loads on the next boot.