Virtual Serial Port Proxy Capabilities

A virtual serial port proxy operates as an RFC2217-compatible telnet server. A proxy provides the following capabilities in the vSphere environment.

■	Accepts telnet connections from virtual machines

■	Supports VMware telnet extension commands and responds to VMware telnet extension messages from virtual machines

■	Forwards network traffic between virtual machines and remote systems

■	Handles extension commands for notification of vMotion events and redirects traffic accordingly

Proxy as a Virtual Serial Port Concentrator

Virtual Serial Port Concentrator shows a proxy that operates as a virtual serial port concentrator. The concentrator has internal connections to several virtual machines in a datacenter and an external connection to a remote system.

The concentrator provides a remote system with access to multiple virtual machines that act as serial port servers. The virtual machines connect to the concentrator, indicating that they will accept connections from remote systems. See Backing Options and Backing Information for Network Serial Ports for more information about serial port servers. The concentrator presents the choice of virtual machines to the remote system and maintains any subsequent connection. In Virtual Serial Port Concentrator, a solid line represents an active connection between the remote system and a virtual machine, and dashed lines represent potential connections.

Virtual Serial Port Concentrator

Virtual Serial Port Concentrator shows the concentrator as part of the vSphere datacenter. For this kind of application, you can deploy the concentrator as a virtual appliance. A virtual appliance is software on a platform of one or more virtual machines (in this case, a single virtual machine). A virtual appliance implementation allows you to take advantage of resource management that vCenter Server provides. The vCenter Server uses vMotion technology to migrate the virtual appliance proxy through the datacenter without interrupting remote serial port service. The virtual appliance uses virtual machine IP addresses that persist across vMotion events.

Although the primary purpose of the proxy is to preserve connections during vMotion events, it also can provide a gateway or firewall to enforce security. The proxy serves as the point of authentication for remote systems that use virtual serial ports to access virtual machines.