Serials card in a server

[TDSAL2]

Hi there,

We are consoldating a clients servers and using two HP Dl380 G5's attached to a storage solution, and using Enterprise version of ESX.

They currently have a pc with three fax modems connected to one of their old servers, talking to a program called faxmaker. This receives timesheets from many staff. We would like to hook the modems up directly to one of the servers, and then just run a virtual pc (thats right.. program will only work on xp! ), but we havent had experience with ESX working with three physical faxmodems before or aditional serial cards? Has anyone dealt with this? Does it just look at serial ports as a resource?

I'd love to hear other peoples experience with this please?

Kind regards,

Todd

[Texiwill · Accepted solution]

Hello,

THe most important reason not to use serial ports within an ESX host is that you can not use vMotion on the VMs attached to the serial ports. The next reason is that not all serial ports are supported.

The solution is to use either a USB overy IP or Serial over IP solution. Here is a solution that worked for a customer of mine in pretty much a similar situation http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Modems_and_VI3

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[TDSAL2]

Hi Edward,

Thank you very much for the great solution (not to mention sound reasons for not going conventional method). Much obliged,

Kind regards,

Todd