USB redirection in Windows server 2012

[bbmark]

I was wondering if USB redirection in Windows Server 2012 could support concurrent users.

I mean, for instance, two users A and B are logged-in a same remote WS server 2012, and user A plugged in a USB key into his ThinClient and enabled the redirection, is there any possibility that user A could find this USB key and do some operations with this USB key?

Please offer me some clue BTW.

thanks.

[chengs]

Yes, we support that since from Horizon 6 version 6.1, which was released earlier this month. Please note that we only support Storage devices so far.

If you happen to use Horizon Client Windows 3.3 client, you can also use this feature with remote app session. Right click a pool in desktop selector dialog, and select "Settings", click "USB Devices", then select a device, click "Connect" to redirect the device to app session.

Let me know if any further questions or problems. Enjoy it.

[peterbrown05]

to add to Sarah's point - the devices userA remotes ARE  "isolated" from userB. i.e. it is not possible that userB can access files or even see that user A is using a device in the app or desktop session.

cheers

peterb

[bbmark]

Thank you for your so detailed introduction. Through it's not exact what I want. But still thanks a million. It's very helpful.

[bbmark]

Thank you Peter.

Could you please offer me some blogs or web pages that introducing how the USBR works? I want to know why.

I've googled some tech articles while nothing's useful to narrow down the reason.

[peterbrown05]

a blog post is on the way.

...but what is it you want to know and whats your problem?

[bbmark]

The reason is that the new feature is going to be implemented in our product.

And there's a question floating in my head. We may face the risk that the redirected USB key could be visible and operable to other concurrent users. It would be very dangerous!

So I came here and wish I could get some in-deepth answer to iron out my concern. Although I would believe that the concurrent user access is impossible on the ground that USBR is hardware device redirected, not like the virtual device.

But I still need some more convective evidence to clean up my concerns.

[peterbrown05]

usb redirection requires low level kernel development and this is something that the vmware engineering team has been working on for a significant amount of time.

It's not open source code, and I can't share with you how the internals work,

you are absolutely right though that you need session isolation for devices in a RDSH environment. This was one of the key challenges the team had to solve,

cheers

peterB

[bbmark]

So I would take your answer as "The session is absolutely isolated for USB storage devices in VMware View RDSH environment", is that correct?

Thanks,

Carl

[peterbrown05 · Accepted solution]

yes, that is correct. storage devices are not visible between sessions.

[chengs]

Just to follow up, the blog is published:

http://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2015/04/vmware-horizon-view-usb-redirection-rdsh-desktop-application.htm...