PCI card (faxboard) available to VM

[jbroedel]

Hi folks

I have a ESX Server 3i box up and running with one production VM on it. This is a HP365 server with one PCI slot.

Aside from high availability issues, can I install a device in this slot and make it available to a particular VM? The card would be a brooktrout faxboard.

Thanks!

Jeff

[JohnADCO]

We are currently migrating our fax server to VM.

Unless the fax device is rarely used, I don't think I'd put it in the host.

We are putting in a FOIP (fax over IP) solution for this. Zetafax 2009 is said to fully support esx with foip solution.

I'll chime back in from time to time, to let you know how it's going. I hope to have it in production in the next 2 - 3 weeks.

[jbroedel]

Thanks John,

Yeah thats the issue, its only used by 7-10 people at any given time. Statistics show less then 20 faxes sent on any given day for any given week. I hate having this seperate fax server for such a small workload. It uses nothing for resources (memory, disk space, cpu all minimal).

We are a very small non profit shop (12 servers) and I inherited this ESX server and I really need to utilize this device more.

I may just power it off, pop the card in and see what happens.

Thanks!

Jeff

[JohnADCO]

I sort of figured it must be light use.

Hard for me to pull back on that one. We send on average 1000 fax pages per day, and also recieve on average 1000 fax pages per day.

In your scenerio? I'd think about just using Write Fax and sending them out a workstaion fax board / fax modem.

[mcowger · Accepted solution]

Wont work - PCI devices are not directly visible by VMs.

--Matt

VCP, vExpert, Unix Geek

[hstagner]

The VM can only see virtual hardware (the VMware drivers). Specialty PCI cards (like the faxboard) are not supported. I wouldn't even waste time cracking open the ESXi server.

Don't forget to use the buttons on the side to award points if you found this useful (you'll get points too).

Regards,

Harley Stagner