"cot deploy esxi" needs to create serial ports after deployment

[glennmatthews]

Currently ovftool ignores serial ports defined in an OVF, so cot deploy esxi (which uses ovftool) will create VMs with no serial ports even if the OVF defines them.

Until/unless VMware fixes this ovftool limitation, it would be really helpful for COT to implement some workaround (possibly using PowerCLI?) to force creation of the requested serial ports.

[glennmatthews]

Probably relevant:

http://access-console-port-virtual-machine.blogspot.com/2013/07/add-serial-port-to-vm-through-gui-or.html

PowerCLI script to do create serial port. Although Firewall settings on esxi server has to be done manually.

# Adds the base cmdlets
Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core
# This script adds some helper functions and sets the appearance. You can pick and choose parts of this file for a fully custom appearance.
. "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphere PowerCLI\Scripts\Initialize-PowerCLIEnvironment.ps1"

Function New-SerialPort
{
 Param(
   [string]$vmName,
   [string]$prt
) #end
$dev = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualDeviceConfigSpec
$dev.operation = "add"
$dev.device = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualSerialPort
$dev.device.key = -1
$dev.device.backing = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualSerialPortURIBackingInfo
$dev.device.backing.direction = "server"
$dev.device.backing.serviceURI = "telnet://:$prt"
$dev.device.connectable = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualDeviceConnectInfo
$dev.device.connectable.connected = $true
$dev.device.connectable.StartConnected = $true
$dev.device.yieldOnPoll = $true

$spec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
$spec.DeviceChange += $dev

$vm = Get-VM -Name $vmName
$vm.ExtensionData.ReconfigVM($spec)

}

1. Power OFF your VM
2. open PowerCLI
3. New-SerialPort
4. Power ON your vm
5. telnet

[glennmatthews]

14da863 is related

[glennmatthews]

I found an example of adding serial ports via pysphere: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/pysphere/u1PI4tnpiXA

I installed pysphere on my server and was able to run the serial port script from the web page above.
deploy vm with cot
add serial port: python add_serial_port.py -s 10.122.197.27 -u root -p rtpfe123 -v skorka_test3 -P 33334
telnet to the serial port
telnet 10.122.197.27 33334

[glennmatthews]

55e78d3