I built my server not knowing that they dropped support for my intel board from ESXi 5.1 to 5.5 for the USB controller onboard. I've seen people use USB expansion cards for passthrough when the onboard controllers don't work. I've looked around on forums and it seems like a lot of people with my motherboard (Intel S1200BTLR) are having the same issue. I checked with intel and there aren't any vmware specified drivers on their site. What I've gathered is that between the time 5.1 and 5.5 came out, there was also a new revision to the same motherboard. They support that (Intel S1200V3RPL) on 5.5, but not the older revision. Which I assume has a different USB controller.
VMware's HCL does not cover USB cards. There's plenty for IDE, SATA, RAID, NIC, etc.
Called VMware support and they refused to help me since I paid for "subscription support" not "technical support" (BS if you ask me). They wanted $300 for a one time service fee to answer my question.
I wish I could just extract the driver out of a 5.1 copy of ESXi and inject that into my 5.5 build, but that's a little beyond my knowledge. Unless someone can help me with that.
So my question is this:
Who here has experience in passing through a PCIE USB card into ESXI 5.5, and can you provide me the model number so I can buy it?
Thanks !
-Jon
