Consolidating Multiple Servers into a VMWare Environment

Multiple servers communicating with directly attached serial devices

When consolidating multiple servers with serial devices into a VMWare virtual machine (VM) environment it is not practical, or sometimes not possible, to install a sufficient number of COM ports into the VMWare Server. All VM environments have limitations on installing additional or unsupported hardware. Many have limitations on the number of COM ports available to each VM.

Perle’s TruePort utility allows you to create virtual COM ports when installed into the VM Guest OS. Because TruePort is a virtual COM port driver it is not restricted by VMWare’s hardware or software COM port limitations. This enables each VM to communicate with at least 4096 serial devices attached to Perle Device Servers, TruePort also allows VMs to share access to these serial devices.

VMWare Server communicating with virtually attached serial devices