Are Physical Serial Ports supported in ESXi?

[Esso1968]

Are Physical serial ports supported in ESXi? I was thinking of installing Windows 2008 SBS on a HP Proliant ML350 G6 running ESXi (HP USB stick version). The server comes with one onboard serial port. I was hoping to plug a external modem into that and expose it to Windows 2008 SBS virtual server for use as a network fax. Is this possible? Any alternatives if not supported?

[RParker · Accepted solution]

That would be a no.

There are TCP/IP USB devices, not sure if there are similar devices for Serial, but NO Physical devices, sound cards, usb, serial, parallel can be passed to a VM. This is because ESX uses vmotion, and it was designed to let the VM's move between machines, so allowing physical connections would therefore interfere with this operation.

http://www.tacticalsoftware.com/products/dialoutez.htm

That should be a solution for you however.