ESXi Serial licensing dongle

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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?

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class="normal">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.