adding serial port

[dmini]

I'm trying to add a serial port to a vm to point to the ESXI hosts physical serial port. I have to repeat this about a hundred times, so looking to script this. I can find scripts for doing this with other types of serial ports, but been unable to adapt this to a physical serial port mapped through.

Thanks

[LucD]

Can you try like this ?

You will have to check the "devicename"

$vmName = <guestname>

$dev = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualDeviceConfigSpec

$dev.operation = "add"

$dev.device = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualSerialPort

$dev.device.key = -1

$dev.device.backing = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualSerialPortDeviceBackingInfo

$dev.device.backing.deviceName = '/dev/char/serial/uart0'

$dev.device.connectable = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualDeviceConnectInfo

$dev.device.connectable.startConnected = $true

$dev.device.connectable.allowGuestControl = $true

$dev.device.connectable.connected = $true

$dev.device.yieldOnPoll = $true

$spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec

$spec.DeviceChange += $dev

$vm = Get-VM -Name $vmName

$vm.ExtensionData.ReconfigVM($spec)

[dmini]

Thank you SO MUCH!!

I struggled with the syntax - haven't got my head around these registry type settings at all!

Debbie

[VMwareGeek_]

Hi LucD,

Can we add serial port to any VM with physical device set as "'/dev/char/serial/uart0'" with this script?
Manually it requires to perform this on vcenter if the vm is power-off, and if we have for example 300 VMs and run this script to add serial port all of them, will it work for us?

[LucD]

Afaik the VM is required to be powered off for this.

[VMwareGeek_]

Thanks for this script, it is worked on vCenter 7.0u3

[VMwareGeek_]

And what if we select "Use Output File" and want to set local datastore or a storage from a datastore cluster where the vms have access to?
How can we modify this script?

 

[LucD]

In that case, the Backing should become a VirtualSerialPortFileBackingInfo instead of a VirtualSerialPortDeviceBackingInfo.
That object will allow you to specify the Datastore and FileName properties

[VMwareGeek_]

So in this case will it be like below?

 

$vmName = testvm1

 

$dev = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualDeviceConfigSpec

$dev.operation = "add"

$dev.device = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualSerialPort

$dev.device.key = -1

$dev.device.backing = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualSerialPortFileBackingInfo

$dev.device.backing.deviceName = '[datastore1 (136)] /testvm1/TEST'

$dev.device.connectable = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualDeviceConnectInfo

$dev.device.connectable.startConnected = $true

$dev.device.connectable.allowGuestControl = $true

$dev.device.connectable.connected = $true

$dev.device.yieldOnPoll = $true

 

$spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec

$spec.DeviceChange += $dev

 

$vm = Get-VM -Name $vmName

$vm.ExtensionData.ReconfigVM($spec)

[LucD]

No, in this case, there is no DeviceName property, only a Datastore and FileName property.

[VMwareGeek_]

And how should I modify the script?

$vmName = testvm1
$filePath = "[datastore1 (136)] /testvm1/TEST.txt"

$dev = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualDeviceConfigSpec
$dev.operation = "add"

$dev.device = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualSerialPort

$dev.device.key = -1

$dev.device.backing = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualSerialPortFileBackingInfo

$dev.device.backing.fileName = $filePath

$dev.device.connectable = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualDeviceConnectInfo

$dev.device.connectable.startConnected = $true

$dev.device.connectable.allowGuestControl = $true

$dev.device.connectable.connected = $true

$dev.device.yieldOnPoll = $true

 

$spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec

$spec.DeviceChange += $dev

$vm = Get-VM -Name $vmName

$vm.ExtensionData.ReconfigVM($spec)

[LucD]

Yes, like that