Virtualization Essentials

Configuring Other Devices

There are other device connection types that can be configured for a virtual machine that are not part of the initial default virtual machine creation. Often they are not included because the devices, which once were connected by these legacy methods, are now connected by other means such as USB. Serial and parallel port devices are two of these.

Serial ports pass information through them serially, or one bit at a time; and in early computers, serial ports were frequently reserved for pre-Internet communications via an external modem. Today, PC modems are typically part of a PC’s motherboard connected to the external world by an RJ11 phone jack, if they are there at all.

Parallel ports can pass many bits of data simultaneously, ...