In Hyper-V it's fairly easy. You make a virtual serial port ("COMPort"), set the bootloader to enable kernel debugging over serial, then connect to the virtual serial port from the host via a named pipe.
Kernel debugging over serial should be possible in vSphere, but Ethernet is easier to set up:
1. Make sure at least one virtual NIC on the target VM (with IP connectivity to the debug host machine/VM) is on Microsoft's NIC whitelist[1]. I use e1000e; note that vmxnet3 is not on the list.
2. Follow Microsoft's directions[2] to connect.
I can confirm this works on vSphere[3] and there's no reason it shouldn't also work on VMware Workstation, Player, and Fusion.
[3] Tested last week with a Windows Server 2022 target (e1000e virtual NIC) and Windows 10 debug host (vmxnet3 virtual NIC), both running on ESXi 8.0 Update 1 VM hosts.
Hyper-V wasn't until Windows Server 2008. I know you could do virtual serial ports w/ VMware GSX and ESX (and later ESXi) forwarded to real hardware serial ports on the host.
1. Make sure at least one virtual NIC on the target VM (with IP connectivity to the debug host machine/VM) is on Microsoft's NIC whitelist[1]. I use e1000e; note that vmxnet3 is not on the list.
2. Follow Microsoft's directions[2] to connect.
I can confirm this works on vSphere[3] and there's no reason it shouldn't also work on VMware Workstation, Player, and Fusion.
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/d...
[2] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/d...
[3] Tested last week with a Windows Server 2022 target (e1000e virtual NIC) and Windows 10 debug host (vmxnet3 virtual NIC), both running on ESXi 8.0 Update 1 VM hosts.