Connecting a CD-ROM in vSphere on Server 2008

[sleeper1320]

Hello,

Setup:

I have a test environment consisting of 5 physical Windows 2008 Servers. Two are domain controllers, one is the vCenter server, and the last two are file servers. The vCenter server supports a few ESXi 4.1 servers. All those components are working as expected.

Problem:

Since this is a test environment, I don't really have the hardware available to stand up Windows 7 workstations to install vSphere client on, so I installed the vSphere client on both domain controllers and both file servers. As a domain administrator, I can perform any action within vSphere that I want. However, any domain users (which may need to interact with the ESXi servers for testing) cannot connect the CD-rom device. Upon inserting the CD/DVD into the phsyical server and selecting CD-> Connect to drive D:, the vSphere client immediately notifies the user that "The device 😧 has been disconnected".

After some investigation, it's obvious this is a limitation with 2008 server. It appears the users are not allowed to interact with the CD-ROM at all.

Attempted Solutions:

I have already attempted to modify Group Policy on the domain to allow users to use the CD-ROM. This has granted access to the floppy drive, but not to the CD/DVD drive.

I know this is not exactly a vSphere problem, but I am hoping someone in VMware community has run across this and knows how to solve it. From what I am seeing, it may be a hard-coded limiation Windows set in 2008, but my research into this has't come up with any conclusive solutions.

Thanks in advance,

Chad

[AndySimmons]

VMware has a KB article on this, but I'm assuming that's not an option in this situation.

I generally just work around the issue with ISOs on an NFS datastore or a file share the users can access. That may not be an option in your case, but if the users' workflow can be tweaked to make that approach work rather than using an actual CD, the performance is going to be much better, and will take care of the disconnect issue.

[Sreejesh_D]

did you try granting the permission to the Domain Users?

1. try this, select the VM from inventory of vSphere Client and go to Permissions tab.

2. right click and select Add permission.

3. Add the user or group and grant the role Virtual Machine Power User. this role has the privilege "Device Connection".

4. Ask the user to login again and connect CD drive.

[sleeper1320]

Andy,

That makes sense. I think I had tried this, but that was before I started modifying GPOs. I'm not sure if it's the fix, but it's worth a shot. I checked it off and forgot about it, honestly.

Yezdi,

I'm pretty sure I did grant those permissions. I'm not getting any sort of access denied error that I would expect if I didn't allow users to connect devices, but rather, vSphere is throwing an internal error and just disconnecting the drive. I'll be sure to double check this setting though.

Thanks for the replies! I actually got pulled away from this system today, but I will be sure to test it tomorrow.

Chad

[sleeper1320]

Hey,

Thanks again for the help. Unfortunately, neither solution worked. UAC is currently turned off, so there is no need to elevate the application to run as administrator, and I confirmed the "Device Connected" option is available to users logging into the vSphere client.

I'll keep digging and hopefully come up with something soon.

Thanks,

Chad

[AndySimmons]

Do the VM events show any useful details when this happens? I realize this problem doesn't surface for Windows administrators, but if you've tied AD into your vSphere security, the VM event log may shed some light on the situation.

Also, did you have a chance to try an ISO image rather than an actual CD?

[sleeper1320]

Andy,

Unfortunately, I am not seeing anything useful in the event logs I went through.

Yes, the vCenter Server is integrated with the AD domain. Yes, a user can mount and use ISOs. This is great, but I am still hoping to find the actual resolution to this problem. We can use ISOs most of the time, but there will be some times we won't have ISOs for the software/installation/test procedures immediately availabe.

Thankfully, I've found a (hopefully) temporary workaround. If I change the CD-R type from "Passthrough IDE" to "Emulate IDE", then a user can use a CD-R.

Still searching for the why.

Thanks for everyone who looked through this.

Chad

[AndySimmons · Accepted solution]

Ah, okay. Passthrough IDE requires local admin rights by the user running the vSphere client.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=102201...

I believe you're stuck with IDE emulation unless you are willing to give everyone local admin rights.

[sleeper1320]

Andy,

That is very unfortunate, but I can live with this. Thanks for all of your help!

Chad