ESXi Serial licensing dongle

We have a server that hosts an old application that uses a serial dongle to license its product. We converted the physical server to a virtual server running in VMWare server running on Windows and everything is working fine. We now are looking to move on to ESX or ESXi for our virtual environment. We played around with ESXi and found that it does not support the serial dongle. We installed a trial of ESX and it works perfectly, however, it seems a bit pricey for our low level needs.

Anyway to get around this serial dongle? The company that makes the software is no longer in business and the software is very specialized and nothing on the market exists to replace it in it's entirety. That research has been ongoing but not pertinent for this discussion. Am I wrong about serial support in ESXi?

Answer

Yes you are wrong, ESX (regular, NOT 'i' version, both in 3.5 and 4) supports locally attached serial devices - even on the free version. Here's how you do it;

• Connect the dongle to the ESX server's serial port


• Start VIClient and log into the ESX host


• Right mouse-click on the NON-RUNNING VM in question


• Select 'Edit Settings'


• Click 'Add...'


• Select 'Serial Port' and 'Next >'


• Choose 'Use Physical serial port on the host' and 'Next >'


• Choose correct 'Port' (usually /dev/ttyS0', leave 'Connect at power on' and 'Yield CPU on poll' both checked, select 'Next >' then select 'Finish' and 'OK'



• Once the 'Reconfigure Virtual Machine' task is complete simply restart the VM and test.

The only downside to this is that you won't be able to VMotion the VM from host to host while serially connected.