ESXi 4 USB support

[mrksiddiqui]

1. I would like confirm is USB devices are supported in ESXi 4. There conlicting information on some of the threads show that you can add usb controller but if you look on page 164 of the basic administration guide for esx 4 and esxi 4 it says you can add it but is not supported.

2. If it is do able than my devices are not being seen. When i add the USB controller OS will install appropriate drives for it. But when I attach devices to USB they do not show up. What am i doing wrong here?

[Dave_Mishchenko]

At this point USB devices are not supported in ESX(i) 4.0 VMs. You can get around this with a USB over IP device, or by using VMDirectPath to make the controller available to the VM.

Dave

VMware Communities User Moderator

New book in town - vSphere Quick Start Guide -http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/08/12/new-book-in-town-vsphere-quick-start-guide/.

Do you have a system or PCI card working with VMDirectPath? Submit your specs to the Unofficial VMDirectPath HCL - http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21.

[bulletprooffool]

usb is sadly not supported . . . a few of sat debating this for quite a while . . trying to figure out why you are able to add a one if you can't use it. We decided it was simply to allow use of the USB over IP devices.

Run a google search for "vmware usb remote" or something similar and you should find alternatives, to allow use of dongles etc.

[mrksiddiqui]

That is my question. Esxi 4and Esx 4 both allow you to add on USB controller and which is detected by the Guest operating system. So if I can not use it why provide option to add the device.

I needed have USB connectivity to use it with backup software in our QA environment. I do have anywhereUSB but performance on that thing is miserable for files transfer.

Thanks

K

[DSTAVERT]

Add a simple NAS device that supports NFS and CIFS. Many of them allow you to hot plug USB devices. You can then add the NFS share to the ESXi host and create additional drives for your VMs or use the shares directly from within your VM.

[AntonVZhbankov]

A lot of people wait when VMware finally implements USB redirection in ESX. There are even some rumors about 4u1, but as for now you can not redirect USB on ESX.

---

VMware vExpert '2009

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[schoolapps]

I really need USB 2.0 support as well. We have a large app that we distribute on an external USB drive, 65GB of files.

Right now we attach it to a XP station and share it. Takes three times as long to install this way.

How fast are the IP to USB devices?

[DSTAVERT]

I don't know whether you can convert to an OFV format which makes a small install. Use an NFS device rather than a USB / network device.

[cincinnerdi]

We've used an inexpensive device from Belkin called a network USB hub (http://www.belkin.com/networkusbhub/) that works pretty well.

Speeds for an attached hard disk are not as good as directly attached external USB.

Keep in mind that it is not for sharing a device, requires you to be logged in and requires the VM to use 32 bit Windows XP or Vista. I think we got Server 2003 to work in one case. It runs a bit of software that finds the hub over the LAN, finds what USB devices are connected to it and allows you to connect to the device with Windows "thinking" it's really a USB device.

[resteves]

Anyway to present an USB printer connected on the host to a virtual machine? My host (Intel S3000AH - Intel Xeon 3040) doesn't support VMDirectPath

[asatoran]

Anyway to present an USB printer connected on the host to a virtual machine? My host (Intel S3000AH - Intel Xeon 3040) doesn't support VMDirectPath

How about a print server instead? They are commonly available, often for less than $50. (Some examples)