Comments on: VMware ESXi – Serial & Parallel Port (use physical serial port on the host) Greyed Out

By: Phillip Windell

Phillip Windell — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:54:46 +0000

It’s been a long time since I visited this thread. But the best solution is to attach a Serial-over-IP device (like a Moxa DE-311 or similar) to the APC’s Serial Port. Then the Serial-over-IP Device would include software that you install on the VM which creates a Virtual Serial Port on the VM and then communicates with the Device. So the Device receives the serial data directly via being physically connected to the APC and then encapsulates the Serial data into IP packets and passes it over the LAN to the software you installed on the VM, then the software on the VM passes the data to the OS through the virtualized Serial Port.

Now in a non-VMWare environment you usually use a pair of Serial-over-IP devices (one at each end). But because of the VMWare visualized situation here you have to use the Software installed on the VM in place of what would have been the 2nd physical device. I’m pretty sure that most of these Serial-over-IP device come with software for doing exactly this type of thing. I know my Moxa DE-311s do.

By: Frank

Frank — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:41:35 +0000

Have anyone a solution for ESXi 4.1 or 5.0 to connect a parallel dongle (Optiplex 750)

Integrate any one a driver for the Hyperwiser? Or win with an other hack? Thanks for the Blog!

By: izdelava strani

izdelava strani — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 21:03:46 +0000

Thanks for the Post

Izdelava spletnih strani je super, posebno ?e je brezpla?na.

By: Kiwi Si

Kiwi Si — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:49:43 +0000

Hi Phil,

Nice work! I’m going to give that a go on my home lab. I’m sure others will definitely find this useful also.

Thanks,

By: phil

phil — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 23:07:40 +0000

I got this to work using Free ESX 4i and serial passthrough.
You have to turn off the VM initially to get the serial mapping mapping to work in the VM settings. I had an issue where two COM2 ports were listed as available devices in my VM (this may have been a result of the P2V process). I had to disable one – leaving one COM2 device available on I/O range 03F8-03FF IRQ 4.

I then had to restart the APC PBE Agent Service, and then my Business Edition Basic Software (version 7.0.5).

I could then add the Device for management successfully.
Configured a shutdown Command in the device properties, that would remotely instruct the other VM’s to poweroff after power had been out for 10 minutes (shutdown Sequence Properties).
The command file looks like this for a 2003 system;

shutdown /m \\targetserver /s /t 60 /d p:4:1 /c “UPS Outage”

By: Petar

Petar — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:58:29 +0000

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?
[img]http://img525.imageshack.us/content_round.php?page=done&l=img525/8880/addserialport.jpg[/img]