All serial ports unsupported all of the sudden

[rugman66]

Hello,

We have many VM's on a number of ESXi hosts configured with network connected serial ports set as listening server. This has been working for years, and today all of the sudden

all the serial ports on all VM's are offline, and in the VM properties windows they all show "Unsupported" and to the right when the port is highlighted it reads,

"This type of virtual device is supported, but the backing for it is not supported on the current host."

"the virtual machine can still be used on this host, but this device will not be present"

"You can remove this device, but if you wish to keep this device for when the virtual machine is moved back to a host where is will function, you don't need to do anything"

What ever happened it's on the vCenter side. I restarted the VC host, and confirmed all the VMware services started and are running, but no change.

Anyone run into this before?

ESXi 5.1

VC 5.1

Thanks

-John

[thale13]

I have the same problem sporadically.  All the VMs on a single host will become unsupported until they get vmotioned onto a different host.  Then they are supported again.

The main problem it causes is because we use a vSPC for console access.  When a DRS vmotion occurs, the Remote Serial Port Concentrator can't acknowledge the migration and cancels it.

Anybody got any ideas?

T.

[Pcarrillo01]

I experienced the same issue,

I solved it in this way:

- go to host configuration

- security profile

- services properties

- select vpxa, options

- restart the service

wait a little, then the serial ports of all VM in that host appear again ok.

I hope this is useful for you