VMware Cloud Community
itmv2
Contributor
Contributor
‎10-10-2022 09:19 AM

Bluetooth USB adapter not recognised by ESXi 6.7.0 host

I'm running ESXi 6.7.0 on an HP-Microserver Gen8. CPU is a Xeon E3-1265L V2.

I'd like to add a USB Bluetooth adapter to the server, and pass it through to an Ubuntu VM which is running Home Assistant. I've tried using a generic Bluetooth CSR v4.0 adapter, but the ESXi host doesn't recognise it (I've tried using both front and rear USB ports on the Microserver). Do I need to power cycle the ESXi host in order for it to recognise new USB devices?

If it's a compatibility issue, can anyone recommend a Bluetooth adapter which is compatible with the Gen8 Microserver and ESXi 6.7?

0 Kudos
2 Replies
reub
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎10-12-2022 03:47 AM

I very much doubt that ESXi would support Bluetooth devices and I certainly have never seen any interface by which you would configure one if it was supported.  They are very much an end-user type device not typically used on virtual infrastructure server hosts.
Just the same as you won't generally get sound card support or wireless cards working on an ESXi host.  So the server itself probably won't recognise the device.

But if you are trying to pass the adaptor through to a guest VM?  The term you want to be searching for is 'passthrough'.

This might help:  https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc/GUID-68A08879-1744-4FF...

0 Kudos
itmv2
Contributor
Contributor
‎10-12-2022 03:52 AM

Yes I want to pass through the device to a guest VM, but first it needs to be physically detected by the host, and it isn't. Hence my original question re. whether the host would normally need to be rebooted (or whether it's a hardware compatibility issue).

BTW I have since rebooted the ESXi host and the USB Bluetooth device is still not being recognised, so I guess my question is: can anyone recommend a similar device which is compatible with the HP-Microserver Gen8 and ESXi 6.7.0?

 

The instructions at that link seem to refer to a different ESXi version (mine is 6.7.0), as the menu options are named differently to the ones that I see, but when I select Virtual Hardware...Add Other Device....USB Device I get this error: "There are no more usb devices available to add".

0 Kudos