Serial ports on ESXi

[tsvedin]

I have installed ESXi on a Fujitsu Siemens TX120 and it runns without any problems. I'm going to viritualize a old machine with a serial connection to a PBX. Now to the problem. I can't select Physical port in the machine properties. I can only select file or pipe.

Doesn't ESXi support physical serial ports? On a older ESX 3 installation i can select physical port but that is also on another machine.

[Alexpalt]

I have the same problem: installed ESXi 3.5 U2 on a DELL 2900 without any problem, I'm running a VM with "windows server 2008" and a VM with RedHat Linux to be used as fax server with Hylafax: but If I want to send and receive faxes I need to connect one serial modem-fax to the host serial port, and then redirect it to the linux VM serial port (no problem to do this with VMware server).

Is there any workaround to connect a serial modem-fax to a VM with ESXi 3.5 U2?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Alessandro

[Dave_Mishchenko]

See this KB article - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003129.

[Alexpalt]

I have found this "serial device server":

It seems I can connect my serial modem fax to it and then see it from the network seamlessly:

did you ever tried something like this?

Do you think it's a good solution or do you know something better?

Thank you,

Alessandro

[david_martin1]

Hi Dave,

can you say us if VMware will support parallel and serial port in the future releases of ESXi ?

[RobBuxton]

We're using the Lantronix MSS100 boxes to connect Serial Devices over the LAN to our VMs. That works well.

They also have an option to redirect the COM Ports to the IP Address, we had less success trying that option, so now we just connect via IP to the Serial Device.

The coding was done in-house, but I'm not a developer so I don't know the details.

[tyamadajp]

The KB article says "You can configure and use a virtual serial port as a named pipe or an output file.", but how can I actually use that "virtual serial port" on ESXi?

I'm trying to use virtual serial port for debugging/managing guest OS, but I can't find any officially supported way to access virtual port created on ESXi host.

I even tried ALT-F1/ssh logon, edited /etc/vmware/configrules, configured guest to create named pipe at /vdev/com1, but still couldn't see the port (although guest VM booted successfully with this modified configuration).

ESX Server 3.5, Patch ESX350-200806405-BG: Update to VMware-esx-vmx

-

This change makes the socket file (named pipe) visible and available on

a local, non-VMFS, ESX service console file system directory. (PR 225832)

I'm wondering this patch might fix the "invisible" issue, but even if made visible, I still need to find a way to access named pipe as serial port.

Is there anyone who has succeeded using "serial port" (of any kind) on ESXi?

[ROMCH]

We are using for our PBX successfully

There you can connect up to 4 Serial- and/or Prallel-USB-Devices. On the VM-Guest you have to install the

Lantronix USB Device Server and the needed USB-Device Drivers.

[Alexpalt]

As I told in a previous message,I have purchased MOXA serial device server Nport 5110 (96 Euro):

Installed and configured it in a few minutes, and now is running perfectly.

Now I can send and receive fax using a serial modem connected to the serial port of MOXA Nport 5110, My linux Virtual Machine wiht HylaFax see the modem as a normal "tty" (ttyr00).

Obviously I have installed Nport5110 drivers for linux on the Linux VM.

[tyamadajp]

Thanks for the replies.

But since both require additional product (and driver (and $)), I decided

to look further into software-only solution, and succeeded to connect

two VMs over still-invisible named pipe port.

So I guess the best I can do is to deploy companion VM, and let it

bridge access to virtual serial port of the target VM. But as this require

unsupported operation on ESXi, I still wish VMware to provide more

straightforward solution for serial port access.

[RobBuxton]

It's not going to be easy providing a different solution without compromising VMotion. That's why the Serial over Ethernet option is attractive, it moves the device away from a physical connection to the host. You have the same issue with USB devices.

[z3k0]

We have a Moxa Nport 5650 serial over IP server and don't to how to configure the VM. We are trying to get it work on a windows xp VM. What kind of serial port must we present to the VM. Thanks for your help!