Permissions required for attaching USB via Remote Console on esxi 6.5

[zaspam]

Hi all,

Back in my 5.5 setup i created a User Role for a group of users which were meant to connect via Remote Console (with the ability to attach CD and USB devices).

But then I upgraded to 6.5 (wanting to remain current).

Now this specific group can connect via Remote Console, can mount a CD, but cannot mount a removable device i.e. USB.

These are the permissions that I have given so far:

Virtual Machine

     Configuration

          Add/remove device

          Modify device settings

     Interaction

          Answer question

          Configure CD media

          Configure floppy media

          Console interaction

          Device connection

These settings seemed to work just fine under 5.5, after upgrading to 6.5 (both vcenter and host).

If I assign the users a vCenter administrator role... they can mount the USB device,

Therefore I concluded that it must be a permissions problem.

Has anybody been able to pinpoint what permissions need to be given for the stated functionality?

I'm using the VMware Remote Console version 9.

[zaspam]

Well for this one I may have to award myself the points! 🙂

Just kidding,

It appears that in addition to the above-mentioned permissions, one also requires permissions on the hosts.

The required permission seems to be

Host

     Local operations

          Reconfigure virtual machine

I applied the permissions on the Cluster level, since applying the permissions on a per host basis would not make sense if a machine were to be migrated onto a different host.

There is a drawback to this solution, since my restricted user group can now open the console of any server that is hosted on the cluster (which in certain environments is highly dangerous).
My users previously were permitted to a subset of the VMs within the cluster aggregated within a folder.

I'm still looking for a more suitable solution... so if anybody has any ideas... please come forth and I will award him with some points.

[Zzarmkie]

Just ran into exactly the same issue.

It seems to be fixed by downloading the latest (version 10) vmrc from vmware.

The version that ships with Virtual Center 6.5 (version 9) does indeed need the extra host permissions.