ESXi 5.5 on Dell Optiplex 7010 add USB hard drive to guest

[mveras1972]

I've been trying to unsuccessfully add a USB hard drive attached directly to my Optiplex 7010 running ESXi 5.5 update 2 and I have added the latest patches including ESXi550-201501001.zip. The VM guest is running Windows Server 2008 R2 and I cannot get it to recognize the USB drive. I have tried to add the USB xHCI driver to no avail. I have tried the passtrough options in the ESXi client. I've read the vmware documentation and I just don't know what I am missing. When I try to add the xHCI driver in the VM settings, the vSphere client it tells me that my guest OS does not support it. I add the device in the ESXi client regardless of the warning and then I try to install the driver in Windows 2008, but it does not accept any of the drivers I have downloaded that are supposed to work for the device. I tried adding the EHCI+UHCI USB device in the VM settings and that detected USB controllers within Win 2008 but no USB drive. However, I need to get the xHCI driver working because I need USB 3.0 speeds. My VMware hardware version is 8. Do I need to use passthrough mode or not for the VM guest to see the USB drive? How do I test if the host is seeing the USB drive or detecting the controller? Thanks for any help.

[mveras1972]

Here's an update: After searching and searching I ran into this article (VMware Front Experience: VMware silently adds native USB 3.0 support to ESXi 5.5) which states a well hidden secret: Win 2008 as a guest OS does NOT support xHCI, therefore, no USB 3. I have to upgrade to Server 2012 for that. Now, I am trying to upgrade my guest to 2012. We'll see how that goes.

I tried adding the EHCI+UHCI controller to the 2008 VM and while it accepted the drivers, there seemed to be no way to attach the USB drive I have connected directly to the ESXi host. The only option I had was to attach a USB device from the ESXi client which is not what I want. I want to connect a USB drive which is physically connected directly to the ESXi host. According to the article linked above, there are additional steps to do this and it seems strange that nobody mentions this everywhere I look. Any help is appreciated.

[mveras1972]

I just upgraded the guest to Windows Server Std. 2012. xHCI is now detected in the guest OS. In ESX, the USB controllers are set to passthought. I believe there are a few more steps I need to complete before I can see the USB hard drives in the guest OS.

[mveras1972]

Made some progress... found this article (TinkerTry IT @ home | How to configure ESXi 5.0 for USB 3.0 passthrough to a Windows VM) which gave me some information that was missing in others. This other article was instrumental in putting the pieces together (VMware Front Experience: VMware silently adds native USB 3.0 support to ESXi 5.5). I don't understand why no one has a tutorial with all the info in it. All the information required to get a ESXi host-connected USB drive passed to a guest VM seems to be spread between different tutorials in different websites. Even VMWare's own KB has partial info on it and misses some of the fundamental commands required to get it working. Everyone tells you to do the USB passthrough procedure, but they don't tell you how to test if your ESXi host is detecting the xHCI hardware, which brings me to my next problem: now, while I got the passthrough working and the USB drives detected, they aren't using a USB 3 driver. Using the command lsusb I found that my host is not detecting xHCI hardware, even though I added it in the VM which is now running Windows 2012 and seems to be happy with it. However, no USB drives are being detected through the xHCI interface, they are passing through as USB 2.0 devices.

If anyone wants to take a shot at this one, my question is, is the USB 3 hardware in the Dell Optiplex 7010 detected by ESXi? Or is it recommended to just buy a PCI express card with the Renesas chip in it?

Thanks.

[mveras1972]

I finally got 4 USB drives in passthrough directly connected to the ESXi host and they are working with my VM at USB 3.0 speeds. If anyone is interested in finding out how I got it to work, send me a message.

[ChipsF]

Can you post your solution for this.  We would like to use USB 3.0 with ESXi 5.5 on a VM running Server 2008R2.  I did read the article on VMware adding USB 3.0 support but then saw the note that is only works on Windows 8/8.1 and Server 2012R2.  So I am not sure if we are out of luck or not.

Thanks,

CF

[mveras1972]

ChipsF, my solution was to upgrade the VM to 2012. The problem is that Vmware designed their xHCI virtual hardware to be used with the Windows 8 and Server 2012 guests built-in support. Since Windows 7 and 2008 do not carry built-in support for xHCI, they can't find the virtual xHCl controller. Literally, there is no driver for it. If you decide to upgrade your VM to 2012, let me know if you need help with that because I spent hours breaking my head until I got it to work. LOL.

[ptcselect]

Hey there,

I'm currently having an issue. I originally had configured my usb 3.0 usb drives to pass through to my windows server 2012 vm with little to no issues. Well, some time last week I noticed the drives were no longer connected. They are no longer being recognized in the host either. When I SSH in and run lsusb... no devices are listed exted for "Linux Root Hub."

Any tips?

[RBock]

Hello,

Can you post your fix?

Roy

[mveras1972]

My solution was to install a USB 3.0 card based on the renesas chip. Apparently, the Intel USB 3.0 is not supported in ESXi. Only the USB 2.0 appear. I am currently searching for the ESXi driver for the Intel USB 3 device. The device ID is 8086:1E31. Intel® 7 Series/C216.