[Shared VMs] How to share hardware across multiple Hosts?

[fullofentropy]

How to share hardware across multiple Hosts?

Use case for which the question is based:

Device 1: 

Hardware:

Desktop computer at a separate location.

8 Serial ports connected to various RTOSes

5 RJ45 jacks connected to various RTOSes

Software:

Workstation Pro 12 Host

Ubuntu Linux Guest VM

Win7 Guest VM

Device 2: 

Laptop in a dynamic engineering test environment that changes location often.

2 Serial ports using "USB" dongle

1 RJ45 Jack

1 WiFi

Software:

Workstation Pro 12 Host

All Shared VM's are on Device 1

Desire:  Share Hardware from Device 2 with multiple Device 1 VM Guests for use with testing.

Added bonus:  Simultaneous integrate hardware from Device 1 and Device 2 with one running VM guest.

What I am avoiding:  I do not want to copy or clone a VM from Device 1 to Device 2 unless it is the only option available.

[continuum]

> What I am avoiding:  I do not want to copy or clone a VM from Device 1 to Device 2 unless it is the only option available.
With WS 12 I consider using physical serial ports at all inside a VM as highly experimental.
With patience and lot of trial and error getting one or two ports functional inside a VM sometimes works.
Your wishlist is way more advanced.
If you need remote serial ports look for an external solution like a "serial ports over LAN" device.
I would not expect that you will ever be able to do this in Workstation

Ulli

[fullofentropy]

Hello continuum, thanks for responding.

I like the serial over LAN device suggestion, I will see if this can get me the same desired end result I am looking for.  [My desire is to have a portable engineering dev laptop with minimal "extra stuff" to carry around with a consistent configuration]

Device 1 and Device 2 already exist.

I have been operating with multiple guests on Device 1 Host using multiple serial ports and nics simultaneously without having any problems (yet) for a few months now. 

It is part of a proof of concept to establish an automation of FW/SW testing integrated into a DevOps environment I am also building.  Since I am a team of one and have other projects, things are moving along at a turtles pace.

I am interesting in reversing the traditional host/guest functionality.   Rather than have a Host with multiple Guests, have multiple Hosts with a Guest spread across them sharing interface points across hosts with the real world.  I am looking to remove the overhead to copy a guest from one system to another and then deal with making sure each VM is setup the same when going out to a field to troubleshoot something or used in the bench test automated environment.

Thanks Again!

Richard

[wila]

Hello,

A guest with multiple hosts -> that is basically a description of VMotion on vSphere.

However as you're using Workstation, it is not that likely that you want to use vSphere.

Using vSphere would mean that your "devices" would be servers and can no longer be used for anything else as vSphere is the host OS instead of Windows/Linux.

The suggestion of Continuum to look into serial over LAN functionality is probably your best bet.

There's a number of companies that offer such product, I'm thinking about Lindy, Startech etc..

For example: Serial over IP

Note that I have no affiliation with the above product, nor have I tested it.

--

Wil

[fullofentropy]

Hello wila,

I'm only using WS Pro 12 because that is what I had access to.  I started working at a 100 year old company in a department that has never used a virtual machines before, trying to get them to warm up to the idea.

Our company uses Moxa for serial over IP when integrating some of our legacy products, I will probably grab a few of these from inventory and see if I can get them to work. 

I have not had to use vSphere or VMotion, in reading some info on these a few ideas have surfaced.

I maybe able to setup a cluster of ESXi machines in each of our engineering test areas and have vMotion migrate an engineers development environment (currently these are physical computers that get rolled around) from one host to another (Each host being exactly the same in hardware configuration) and have them access the dev environment via their laptop.  The Serial over IP connections could be integrated into the common equipment that is agnostic to which engineering test area the developers are located.

Sorry if my train of thought doesn't make much sense not having the entire context, I'm brainstorming out loud.

Cheers!

Richard

[wila]

Hi,

Yep that could work. I would suggest in that scenario to still use the moxa devices for providing the serial interface to the VMs.

While technically you can provide the hosts serial port to the VM, I'm not sure if it interferes with VMotion capability of that VM.

Details here:

Using Serial Ports with vSphere Virtual Machines

The serial passthrough functionality might work with vMotion, but if you have the hardware already, then I would personally stick with the moxa devices.

--

Wil