Workstation 8.02 - Physical Disk used in VM, loose Keyboad/Mouse in other VM's

[xlatit]

Hi All,

Setup

I am running a lab environment with VMWARe Workstattion 8.02.

I have 2 VM's running as ESXi Hosts, VCenter 5 and a DC.

For Storage I am running ISCSI to my home QNAP and have a Physical Desktop running Openfiler (3 by 1 TB).

Reason

I removed the data disks from my Openfiler desktop and slotted them into the desktop running VMWARE Workstation.  I made a new VM and loaded Openfiler, attached the 3 by 1TB hard disks as physical disks to Openfiler. This allowed me to use the other desktop for other purposes.

Issue

Now here is where it gets weird, on all the other VM's I cannot use Keyboard or Mouse. When i have a VM running with a physical disk (entire disk), have not tried partition. 

I have isolated it to using physical disks on the VM.

Diagnosis

If I attached a physical disk to a Windows or Linux box, I loose keyboard ond mouse functionality on all the VM's, except for the one running with the physical disk.

If I attached physical disks to multiple machines say a Linux and a Windows VM, I can use those VM's with the disks, any VM with no physical disks looses Keyboard/mouse control.

Well I am lost at the moment, I am guessing that it is going to be a setting in the VMX file, though I cannot see it.  Has anyone experienced or can replicate the same issue.

Any comments, ideas, solutions, welcomed.

[continuum]

thats completely unexpected and should not happen. I dont see this when I use physical disks.
Can you post vmware.logs from
1. the VM that hosts the physical disk
2. a VM that runs at the same time and shows the symptom

[xlatit]

ok,

logs attached.

LAB-DC.VMX - No physical disk

LAB-DC-Disk.vmx - with physical disk attached.

dc-vmware.log - Win 2008 R2 Domain Controller with Physical disk attached.

vcenter.vmware.log - Win 2008 R2 VCenter Server.

The version and build of VMware Workstation and host Os are below.

VMware Workstation Version 8.0.2 ProductBuild 591240

HostVersion Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit 6.1.7601, Service Pack 1

I could power on the VCenter Server and use it from the console, as soon as the VM(with physical disk attached) is powered on, I loose all connectivity from the console, I can send Crtl+Alt+Del but cannot do anything from keyboard and mouse.  I can ping and RDP to the server and that works ok.

If I suspend the VM(with physical disk attached), then I can use the console on VCenter.

If I pause the VM(with physical disk attached), there is no change to the symptoms

Cheers

[WayneM201110141]

I'm having the same problem using 8.0.4

[LavaTorrent]

The poor man solution

As I had this problem too, this feed is the only one dealing with this.

So, the facts :

• When using multiple VMs under VMware Workstation 9 hosted on Windows 7 x64, if one VM is using a Physical disk, the over VMs based on files HDs have a strange behaviour regarding the mouse and the keyboad. They are not responding anymore.
• You can get back the Keyboard by pressing the 2 times the Windows Key on the keyboard, so the start menu appears on the host and in the VM ; then you can use arrows an tab keys to navigate...Not pretty cool.:smileycry:

Now the _poor man_ solution :

• Just reduce the size of a partition of the host from about 100 Mb and make small partitions of 8 Mb on it (do not assign any letter).
• Then attach a 8 Mb partition on every FileHD based VM as a physical Disk (you can choose entire disk or just a partition).
• So now the VM will enter the select club of "Physical HD connected Machines" and its Keyboard/mouse will work normally.

If an expert has a real solution, I would appreciate.:smileygrin:

Thanx by advance

[NickSchaf]

Same issue still on VMware Workstation 11.2.1 build-2780323.  Host is Win7 x64.  VMs running Ubuntu and OpenWrt.

@LavaTorrent work-around with Windows key does work, but VM is not usable this way.