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  • 1.  COM Port Requirement

    Posted Oct 14, 2012 07:31 PM

    Hi, looking to hear from anybody who has successfully virtualised workloads which have COM port requirements.

    Ideally I dont want the VM to be bound to one ESXi host so was looking for options that can enable HA, vMotion and FT?

    Any knowledge or experiences is much appreciated.

    Thanks

    JB



  • 2.  RE: COM Port Requirement
    Best Answer

    Posted Oct 14, 2012 08:53 PM

    Hi,

    When I have issues with USB licenses (some programs that a customer of mine used, used to have licenses requirements using USB keys), the only option that I had was using a converter from USB to IP, and gave the servers access to that USB thru an IP address.

    The name of the product was "anywhere ip" os something like that. I checked with the software developer before making any spending that if I used such a device, licensing was possible and was going to be supported. For that particular program, it was after tweaking some configurations (which were hidden from me but the devoloper solved it) Make sure your program will accept something like this before making any spending.

    Could it be other solution to have "2" devices connected one to each host with passthru? (assuming you have 2 host or that with 2 hosts would be enough). In that case, no matter which host your VM is, it will find the desired device.

    Regards,

    elgreco81



  • 3.  RE: COM Port Requirement

    Posted Oct 14, 2012 10:54 PM

    Exactly as per the previous poster...

    We utilise a network device which provides the service perfectly. There are several brands out there.

    In our case, the vendor wouldn't support it, but we did it anyway because new server hardware generally doesn't support six serial ports either :smileysilly:



  • 4.  RE: COM Port Requirement

    Posted Oct 15, 2012 07:10 AM

    Thanks guys - I'll do some testing and see which one suits. Theres over 10 hosts in this environment so need something network based to allow freeddom to migrate / failover.

    Any recommendations to which you guys are using?



  • 5.  RE: COM Port Requirement

    Posted Oct 15, 2012 09:05 AM

    We are using a PortServer for virtualizing COM-Ports.

    Look at here:

    http://www.digi.com/pdf/prd_ts_portserverts816.pdf

    Paul



  • 6.  RE: COM Port Requirement

    Posted Nov 18, 2012 08:17 AM

    Any freeware products available to do this?

    Trying to keep costs to a minimum.