One challenge that many organizations face when working on leveraging server virtualization in their environment is the inclusion of server builds that utilize specific physical peripherals such as serial based devices. The challenge presents itself in the form of being able to leverage the High Availability features of Virtualization Technology. In a highly available Virtual Infrastructure the Virtual Machine builds have access to its required resources regardless of which Virtualization Host it is currently running on. One way to overcome this challenge is to install identical physical peripherals on each of the Virtualization Hosts in your environment. In this scenario your virtual machine builds will have access to the peripheral regardless of which Host that they are running on. The problem is that in addition to this not being a recommended approach from the Virtualization Solution vendors, it becomes cost prohibitive in larger Virtual Infrastructures and decreases the total available COM ports (or whatever port you are utilizing). The more effective solution is to virtualize these devices within your Virtual Machines and send the requests to a network based peripheral instead. Because these devices reside on the Ethernet network, there is no need to install direct attached peripheral devices on the individual Virtual Host Systems.

There are many vendors who provide solutions in this space but they all work in the same manner. There is a physical device that bridges your Ethernet network directly with the external peripheral such as a serial based or USB based device. This device enables the communication controls to be transmitted over your existing network infrastructure. Because these devices are connected directly to the network, where the communication controls originate is irrelevant to the end device. The other piece of the solution is specialized software typically provided by the vendor who manufactured the peripheral bridge that allows the Operating System within your Virtual Machine to create a virtual port that transmits its commands over the network. To the Operating System these virtual ports look exactly like their physical counterparts. Once these virtual ports are available from within your virtual machine you can use any application to send communication controls to the end device, completing the function.

Because this solution separates the physical device from the Virtual Host or Virtual Machine, with many vendors a by-product is the ability to share these network based devices amongst several unique Virtual Machines.

Also of note, this solution can be utilized on physical server systems that have not been virtualized yet using the same virtual port application and physical network device.

X86 Server Virtualization Technology is still relatively young but the limitations for creating a comprehensive Virtual Infrastructure are dissipating quickly.