Connecting via serial 2 virtual machines

[ivanszky]

Hi there,

I have two physical servers (w2k3 , sco UNIX) which are about to be converted to virtual machines (P2V). They are going to be hosted on an ESXi v5 host. Those 2 servers are connected via RS232 serial cable for communication (COM1 on windows, TTY on unix).

When the above 2 servers will be converted to virtual machines, what is the way the serial communication should be established?

I have tried setting up \\.\pipe\<pipe_name> on 2 other test vms but i don't seem to get it work

Any suggestions?

[satya1]

ivanszky wrote:

Hi there,

I have two physical servers (w2k3 , sco UNIX) which are about to be converted to virtual machines (P2V). They are going to be hosted on an ESXi v5 host. Those 2 servers are connected via RS232 serial cable for communication (COM1 on windows, TTY on unix).

When the above 2 servers will be converted to virtual machines, what is the way the serial communication should be established?

I have tried setting up \\.\pipe\<pipe_name> on 2 other test vms but i don't seem to get it work

Any suggestions?

Have you tried simplest way  i.e through cross cable

Yours,

Satya

[ivanszky]

That can't be physically achived since both virtual machines are residing on the same ESXi host

Option would probably be

name pipe (\\.\pipe\) notation

serial over IP

or something similar?

[continuum]

never tried this on esxi

I would start with

VM 1:

serial0.present = "TRUE"
serial0.fileType = "pipe"
serial0.fileName = "\\.\pipe\com_1"
serial0.tryNoRxLoss = "TRUE"
serial0.pipe.endPoint = "server"

VM 2:

serial0.present = "TRUE"
serial0.fileType = "pipe"
serial0.fileName = "\\.\pipe\com_1"
serial0.tryNoRxLoss = "TRUE"
serial0.pipe.endPoint = "client"

[ivanszky]

This was done the first place. However i just didn't know how would the apps work together, did i had to modify COM port settings (e.g. change to COM1) or do i need to add a new serial port in windows that hooks to the pipe? I have found just now an article mentioning that once the pipe is ready COM1 should be the pipe's end.

any comments?