ESXi 4.1 add soundcard hardware support

[AaronRossano]

Hi,

I'm running ESXi 4.1 on HP Pro Liant 330 G6 and wanted to add a PCIe sound card so that I can play audio on my guest windows machine (specifically for playing answering machine audio).

I was wondering if I can get any Sound Card made by Creative or do I need to choose anything specific that is supported? Does the specific card need to have Linux driver as well? or am I able to connect the PCIe directly to the guest operating system and install a windows driver?

Any suggestions on a cheap card that I can get that would work for my scenerio?

Thank you kindly in advance,

Aaron.

[AndreTheGiant]

If your server support you can try to pass the card to a VM.

Andre

[DSTAVERT]

Moving to the ESXi 4 forum

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[DSTAVERT]

It might be easiest to try a USB based sound card.

Forum Upgrade Notice - the VMware Communities forums will be upgraded the weekend of December 12th. The forum will be in read-only mode from Friday, December 10th 6 PM PST until Sunday, December 12th 2 AM PST.

[J1mbo]

Agree with the above, USB seems like a preferably route.

There has been success with the SoundBlaster X-Fi Go! it seems:

http://blog.peacon.co.uk/wiki/ESXi_4.1_USB_Passthrough_Working_Devices#Sound_Cards

http://blog.peacon.co.uk

Please award points to any useful answer.

Unofficial List of USB Passthrough Working Devices

[AaronRossano]

Thanks for all the answers!

I decided to take your advice, bought a cheap USB card that ended up not working on Server 2008 because it didn't support the driver, should've bought a more expensive one, so I've decided to play my audio on a XP machine. So now it all works.

Thanks a lot.

[TheGrave]

Truth is almost no cheap or branded sound card I know has Win 2008 drivers. Even if you had spent $500 for a sound card most probably it wouldn't work at all as no vendor cares about server OSes.