USB Smartcard Reader inside VM View Guest not redirected

[ThorstenSchmdit]

Hi

need to have a usb smartcard reader redirected inside a vmware view guest. Guest needs to run a VPN connection and the vpn software uses smart card authentication.

I cannot see the USB Smartcard reader in the USB connection of the view client. all other usb devices are available, so usb redirection is working fine in general.

i guess that vmwareview intercepts this smart card device for smartcard authentication beforce connecting to a guest. Question is how to get this running....

[gentleps]

Smartcard redirection needs to be enabled. I have accomplished this by using the VMware View Client group policy adm files. Additionally I think just setting the users RDP default profile to redirect Smartcards works as well. I have a machine I just tested this on and it worked.

The VMware View Client group policy adm files will place items for the User configuration under admin templates. The one you want is vdm_client.adm it think. I just added all four. Once added to the GPO goto

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > VMware View Client Configuration > RDP Settings > Redirect Smart Cards (Enabled)

If this is not working for you, have you made sure the VM has the smartcard drivers you might need? We use Athena cards and without their driver installed the cards are not read.

Hope that helps you out.

Paul

[grossag]

I am assuming you are running the Windows View Client, right? Smart card redirection is enabled by default with RDP. So when you use RDP, you will get the same type of behavior with smart card redirection as when you run the Microsoft RDP client. This is shared smart card redirection, which means that it's available to the client and the remote desktop. As a result, it won't show up in the USB devices menu because we don't use our USB technology to redirect it. It also won't show up as a USB device in the guest, because that's not how Microsoft implements it. So given what you're saying, unless you explicitly disabled smart card redirect with a VMware-specific GPO, I am thinking that it is already being redirected to the remote desktop and you are just not looking in the right place. Hope this helps.

[esx-server]

Hi,

Could someone confirm if smartcard redirection work on Linux thin client? I have VMware view 4.5 client loaded and using windows 7 VMs.

ThanksSiva

[grossag]

We don't do USB redirection for smart card readers, due to a variety of problems. If you are using RDP as your protocol, redirection is built in to the protocol. If you are using PCoIP, you need View 4.5 and you need to install the PCoIP Smart Card subfeature on the Agent installer. If you have done all of that, make sure you have all of the necessary middleware installed on the client AND agent machines.

As far as GPO's go, smart card redirection is enabled by default so you shouldn't need to enable anything other than what I mentioned above.