usb devices passthrough and sharing for multiple hosts

[mortenb123]

Hi we are currently running tests in win10/win7 in vmware vorkstation with usb passtrough of devices. this works, but sometime after restart, devices get different paths and thus we need to rediscover within the windows app. And the hosts are small and slow and run out of memory/freeze which is not contributing to the stability.

Is there a way to hardcode this for a pool on a vcenter/vsphere/esx host, so it will always get the same usb connection ids, and look identically the same for the guest.

We need lots of usb smartcards both secure and plain and pinpads and scanners. Would also be nice if we can share them between guests. hopefully both running or we can work with one guest running at the same time. but most important is that they get discovered the same way all the time.

Any pointers would be great. I need to convince someone.

Thanks

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Morten Bjoernsvik, Oslo, Norway

[MotisLtd]

Hi Morten,

For sharing USB devices between VMs on multiple hosts, we are considering these devices:

Network USB Hub - AnywhereUSB Plus | Digi International

Unfortunately, I cannot offer any experience on their use, but third parties I know are using them in production.