Vmware compatibility with pci parallel cards

VMWare can access both physical parallel ports and physical serial ports on the host.    It does not "see" these by default, by you can add them to the virtual machine on the Settings page.     I do not, however, know how many ports VMWare supports at once ... the most I have on any physical machine is two -- and VMWare WILL let me use both of those.    I suspect you can add as many as you need -- but can't confirm that.

I can confirm it will use at least three because at some point in the past I created and connected a bluetooth (COM) connection to a vm.

Good Luck

First of all I want to thank you for the direct support.

I want to correct my mistake, I refer to serial ports, and at VMware ESXi Server.

So its good to know that the ESXi can see or at least pass thru the PCI card to the Host Operating System.

My initial idea was this: I have two same servers. Both server have the same PCI serial cards. But the one server is active and the other is backup. So I thought to install ESXi at the Backup server and grab the live server to the ESXi.
So like this, it did not need to setup anything,Because is two identical servers with to identical PCI cards. The only issue is if the ESXi can provide this resources of cards to the OS.

Best Regards

bgoering the limit is four port per card or at the total?

A maximum of 4 ports can be redirected to the host - i.e. COM1-4 only

oh, and the limit is 4 serial ports per virtual machine

As noted, the limit is 4 ports per virtual machine -- HOWEVER, once a port is directed to a specific VM,. it cannot be used by another VM at the same time.

As it seems the first solution cannot help me, because I need to see eight serial ports total, four per card.
So bgoering the other solution you mention, for VMDirectPath seems to have possibilities, because as I mention before, the application read the signals from PLC machines, and it very possible to have direct control at the serial cards.

Best Regards