It's possible to use a serial port now on your physical host in ESXi 4.1
Few months back, way before the ESXi 4.1 went out I wrote an article about ESXi 4 which was not supporting serial ports. Serial ports are used for locally attached serial devices like a FAX/modems or some UPS devices. This changed in ESXi 4.1 since with this release of VMware Hypervizor now you have the possibility to attach and use the Serial port of the physical host.
The serial port is “seen” in the VM and the VM can use any device plugged into the ESXi 4.1 host. In my case it's a FAX/modem use by one of those VMs. So for me I could move my VM to the host with ESXi 4.1 installed and use my fax software installed in my VM. And I can prepare the migration of my ESX 4.1… to ESXi 4.1
Thus, of course for VMotion it's…. not possible.. A VM configured with serial port can't be VMotioned elsewhere, unless I configure passthrough… ? I'll test…
Also vSphere 4.1 introduces a Serial port concentrator. What is a serial port concentrator? Eric Sloof had already posted an article on Serial port concentrators.
Here is a quick quote from Eric SLOOF's blog….
Administrators use physical serial port concentrators to multiplex connections to several hosts. vSphere 4.1 enables support for virtual serial port concentrators to provide similar functionality for virtual machines. The feature allows you to redirect virtual machine’s serial ports over a standard network link using telnet or ssh. This enables solutions such as third-party virtual serial port concentrators, like the new virtual appliance-based Avocent Cyclades ACS 6000.
Another think, but this is common to VMware upgrades. After the upgrade to the 4.1 version there is the necessity to upgrade your VMware tools, which by the way changes the icon in the taskbar, like in the VMware Workstation 7.1, which I reported too.
All those changes and new features in vSphere 4.1 makes the whole package more attractive for customers.
This is useful to know. We have a VM on vmServer that needs a serial port connection to an external monitoring device, so I know that 4.1 can handle it. Do you know if USB is the same? In 4.0 they allowed a VM to have a USB controller, but you could not attach a USB device. Has this been changed in 4.1? Thanks.
Is this only for serial ports or is there now support for parallel ports as well in ESXi?
USB pass through to the VMs is also supported in VS4.1. USB pass through does support vMotion. See VS4.1 HTML docs for details.
Thanks to point this out. Those 15 devices on the list there supported are quite few for now…. what do you think?
Vladan
I perform an upgrade of ESXi 4.0 host to ESXi 4.1, and the option “Use physical serial port on the host” is unavailable (Greyed Out).
Any idea?
Try to update your VMware tools on the VM, and then retry. If not try to add another serial port.
OK, I’ll Try
Tnx
I installed the VM tools on the VM and still can’t enable the option “Use psyhical port on the host. Let me remind that updating ESXi 4.1 and VM tools passed successfully, without errors.
I dont understand?
I’m having the exact same problem.
Does anyone know if ESXi 4.1 supports physical parallel ports or not???