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stonent
Contributor
Contributor

USB Passthrough from remote terminal to VM?

I'm looking for a solution to an issue I've solved before (but without VMWare).

We're trying to move as many PCs on our network to Windows 10 as we can.  One issue is proprietary software with a hardware component.  When we migrated from XP to Windows 7, I got around the issue by building an XP Mode virtual machine in Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 and did a USB passthrough to the VM and it worked flawlessly.  Windows 10 with Hyper-V does not seem to support doing this.  Is there a way with VMWare products (we run ESXi 6) to build a VM that resides on the server but still do a USB passthrough from the client to the virtual machine?

With VirtualPC, we could plug the device in and go to the drop down menu in the VM and "attach" it.  The XP vm would make the dah-dunk sound and would recognize it.

Initially the idea is to work around an issue with software that does not work with Windows 10 (the vendor is working on support but has no ETA). But I would like eventually to be able to virtualize the entire computer and basically have the user interface reside on basically a dumb client. (Not literally like a Wyse terminal, but basically a PC that has very little installed on it)

We will from time to time get people who have a special project and need access to many of these applications but only for a short period of time. They can easily borrow the hardware component and return it when done, however borrowing and returning software is the difficult part as well as maintaining these programs (about 20 of them).

The hardware part is something industry specific that allows a computer to connect to a CANbus network and do communications and diagnostics with the devices on that CANbus network. Some of the devices in that network are manufactured by our company, but there can be up to a dozen or so devices produced by different vendors as well that integrate with our product (hence the need for numerous applications).

Anyway, thanks for any suggestions.  I'm not the ESXi admin, so I would like to be able to make the case for virtualizing some systems in this manner if we can still work on the hardware side.

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RiaanBadenhorst
Contributor
Contributor

This should work for you unless I'm not understanding the requirement correctly.

vSphere 6.0 Documentation Center

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jspiel
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Contributor

I think it may work, but with a VMware workstation (Pro) or Fusion (Pro) installed on the client and you connect to the server using it. I don't think you have the option with any other option.

-- Jayce Piel - IT Manager - F.F.Tir
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stonent
Contributor
Contributor

thank you both for the responses, it gets me pointed in the right direction, I think.

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