vmware serial ports (on guests)

utility for configuring or connecting to ports

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1741943

quote:

As far as I could gather, there is/was no easy way to do what I wanted to do.  That said, I was able to cobble together a solution.

First of all, VMware sells an additional license called the "Remote Virtual Serial Port Concentrator" license (for way too much money, IMO) per ESXi server, which is what allows one to pipe a virtual machine's serial port out to a telnet port, using a telnet daemon running on the ESXi server.  Paying the money and getting this license was the first step.  Thankfully, VMware's turnaround was quick enough after we paid the money, that we were able to install these permanent licenses before the temporary, evaluation licenses expired.

The next step was to dynamically configure this serial port for my virtual machines.  I could find no VMware-supplied API's, so I hacked my own perl script.  I've attached it in case others find it useful, warts and all.  I put in lots of comments since I was learning how to do this and I'm sure there's extra junk in there that's not needed, but it's working for me.  Use at your own risk.

Attachments:

• VMSerialPort.perl (36.7 K)  

server firewall:

configure->security profile has remote port to add in gui

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-4-esx-vcenter/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vsphere.vmadmin.doc_41/vsp_vm_guide/configuring_virtual_machines/t_change_the_serial_port_configuration.html

configuring virtual serial port

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc_50%2FGUID-A779C84D-4324-4D32-AF43-BBD962ABC9E3.html

vSPC page:

http://isnotajoke.com/vmware_virtual_serial_ports.html

vSPC home:

http://sourceforge.net/p/vspcpy/home/Home/

vmware vSPC info:
http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vc-sdk/visdk41pubs/vsp41_usingproxy_virtual_serial_ports.pdf