Capture Cards

[matt_dawg]

I am wondering if the new ESXi server can see capture cards and then allow the virtual machines access to them? Not sure if this is the right place to ask or not.

Thanks in advance for the help,

Matt

[Dave_Mishchenko]

ESXi supports a limited hardware set and items like capture cards, modems, special graphics cards are not supported. The VM's hardware is limited to processor, NIC, disk, floppy / CD -rom / serial /paralell port. You can pass through a generic SCSI device (like tape devices) and at this point USB is not supported for passthrough.

[matt_dawg]

Thank you you answered my next question as well about usb capture cards. You mentioned for now they are not supported are they slated to be supported in the future?

[Dave_Mishchenko · Accepted solution]

Only a guess, but I would expect that they would be - no idea when. When you really need to have a USB device in your VM, most people tend to go with a USB over IP device like this - http://www.digi.com/products/usb/anywhereusb.jsp. The nice thing about this, is that the VM is then movable between ESX hosts.

[matt_dawg]

Oh thanks I never would have thought about that. I am looking at consolidating an old security sytem to VM wasn't sure if it was possible but sounds like it might be. Thanks for the info.