ESX 4.0 and USB devices

I’m having trouble getting USB to work on one of my ESX 4.0 hosts.  I did a bunch of research and found that in the initial release of ESX 4 USB was ‘supposed’ to work but didn’t.  All the posts I read indicated that this was fixed in subsequent releases so I went about the task of upgrading my host to the newest release.

After quite a bit of fiddling I was able to get Update 3 installed.  After this I still have not had any luck getting my USB device to connect.  I’m tryinmg to connect a Serial to USB adapter so that I can connect to a Cisco console cable, or other serial devices.  I do have it working just over the regular com/serial port onboard, but I want it to work via USB so that I can more easily move the connection around to other boxes/laptops/etc.

Much of the info that I read dealt with USB HDs so perhaps they work but not these other types of devices/adapters?  If anyone has any ideas I sure would appreciate it!

One thought on “ESX 4.0 and USB devices”

  1. I might be wrong since I’m a VM newbie but I’ve been down that road before and this is what I’ve learned.
    If ESX(i) VM could access a local USB device, a there’ll be a physical bond between the hardware an the virtual machine, and we don’t want that, don’t we? 🙂
    Just think about a VM writing to a USB Disk, something suddenly stops working on your physical box and you vmotion to another server.

    So you’re best guess is “virtualizing USB” and your choices are:
    * a hardware solution: http://www.digi.com/products/usb/anywhereusb#overview http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/426
    * a software one: http://www.usb-over-network.com/

    I’ve choose usb-over-network for a USB Dongle and it’s been working for a year now.

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