Tag Archives: hyper-v

IT

Hyper-V, COM ports, and the StarTech NETRS2321E

As you may already know, Hyper-V does not allow you to connect physical COM ports to child virtual machines. This poses a problem for many people who want to virtualize servers with legacy devices connected via RS-232. There are different hardware and/or software solutions available, but ultimately they all require that you make your COM ports available over a network connection. Your main options are to share/redirect a COM port from a physical machine to a virtual machine, or to use a hardware adapter to connect the RS-232 device directly to the network.

For our legacy application, I chose to go with a hardware adapter. We purchased the StarTech 1 Port RS-232/422/485 Serial over IP adapter. I was very eager to get this adapter because it would allow us to virtualize an old server that was still relying on a directly connected serial device. I chose to go with an adapter so we could have flexibility and not need to rely on a single server to do some sort of sharing or redirecting of a COM port.

After we received the adapter I was a little disappointed. Continue reading Hyper-V, COM ports, and the StarTech NETRS2321E →

IT

Adding a Virtual Machine Host to SCVMM 2008

For the sake of saving space in the title, SCVMM stand for System Center Virtual Machine Manager. SCVMM is a Microsoft application used to centrally manage multiple Hyper-V enabled hosts and VMs.

Today was my first chance to have some hands on time with our SCVMM instance. I had a fairly simple task to accomplish, add a Windows 2008 virtual machine host to SCVMM.

To start, click add host from the action panel on the right hand side of SCVMM. I was able to easily find my virtual machine host using the integrated AD lookup tool, but the job created to add the host timed out shortly with an error 415:

Continue reading Adding a Virtual Machine Host to SCVMM 2008 →