Serial and parallel ports are not visible after upgrading VMware virtual hardware version to 11

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Virtual machines running on Hardware version 10 and earlier can see the ports inside the Guest OS.
• After the Hardware version is upgraded to version 11, Serial and Parallel ports are missing inside the Guest OS.
• Newly created virtual machine does not have these Serial and Parallel ports.
• Ports seen on virtual machine with Hardware version 10:

• Communications Port (COM1)
• Communications Port (COM2)
• Printer Port (LPT1)

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0

Resolution

Starting with Virtual Hardware version 11, this is an expected behavior. This feature is changed to minimize the surface attack on the virtual machines

As a workaround, add the Ports manually.