VMWare: Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi

Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi

This article describes how to connect a USB device to a vm in ESXi – for example a storage device, camera, USB handset etc. etc. Whilst previously not possible, since ESXi 5.0 this is now reality, much to the relief of many, many people!

1. Add a VM USB Controller

Firstly, your VM needs to have a USB controller; this is added as standard to most new virtual machines but if one is not present then we need to add it – open your VM settings and click the “Add” button:

Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi

Choose “USB Controller” and click “Next”; when prompted for the controller type, choose “EHCI+UHCI” for best compatibility or “xHCI” for USB 3.0 support. Note: xHCI USB 3.0 is only supported with Linux VMs currently – see this documentation for further details.

Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi

Once complete, you should see something akin to the following in your VM properties:

Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi

Excellent! Now let’s add a USB device to our VM:

2. Add a USB Device to the VM

Insert a USB device into one of the ports on your ESXi host. For this example I have used a Sandisk storage device. Open your VM machine properties and once again, click on “Add Hardware.” This time, choose “USB Device”: if your device has been correctly recognised by your ESXi host then it will show up on the next screen:

Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi     —–>       Connect a USB Device to a VM in ESXi

Click “Next,” “Finish” and lastly “OK” to complete the reconfiguration of the VM. Congratulations! Your USB device is now added.

3. Mount the Storage Device (*nix Only)

If you have just added a storage device to a Windows VM then you should see it pop up in explorer shortly. If you are on Linux / Unix / FreeBSD etc then you will need to mount your drive. Firstly we will need to find out what ID it has been assigned by the operating system – the easiest way to do this is to check the last entries in “dmesg” after adding the device:


[1546647.937025] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 10 using ehci_hcd
[1546648.363146] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0781, idProduct=5408
[1546648.363152] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[1546648.363157] usb 1-1: Product: U3 Titanium
[1546648.363160] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: SanDisk Corporation
[1546648.363164] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: 000015E96A63058A
[1546648.364943] scsi11 : usb-storage 1-1:1.0
[1546649.369282] scsi 11:0:0:0: Direct-Access SanDisk U3 Titanium 3.21 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[1546649.373306] scsi 11:0:0:1: CD-ROM SanDisk U3 Titanium 3.21 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[1546649.374503] sd 11:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0
[1546649.399562] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] 8015505 512-byte logical blocks: (4.10 GB/3.82 GiB)
[1546649.403475] sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 8x/40x writer xa/form2 cdda tray
[1546649.403817] sr 11:0:0:1: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr1
[1546649.404505] sr 11:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg6 type 5
[1546649.417867] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] Write Protect is off
[1546649.417873] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
[1546649.422634] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] No Caching mode page present
[1546649.422800] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
[1546649.451967] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] No Caching mode page present
[1546649.452074] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
[1546649.480289] sde: sde1
[1546649.506074] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] No Caching mode page present
[1546649.506184] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
[1546649.506332] sd 11:0:0:0: [sde] Attached SCSI removable disk

The most relevant part is the line reading “[1546649.480289] sde: sde1” – this tells us that the disk has been assigned the descriptor “sde” and the single partition on it “sde1“.

From here we can do a standard *nix mount command and access it normally – in this example I am mounting the newly added sde1 device to a pre-existing directory “/mnt/usb”:

root@merlin:~# mount /dev/sde1 /mnt/usb

We can check the operation has been successful by issuing the “mount” command on its own

root@merlin:~# mount
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
...
...
...
/dev/sde1 on /mnt/usb type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=utf8,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)

Job done! If this has been of interest to you, check out some of the other articles in the VMWare category!

Windows: Win7 DVD Doesn’t Boot from USB DVD ROM Drive

This became an issue due to an old Dell Poweredge 750 Server which we were trying to build into a simple SAN. The long and the short of it was that we needed to upgrade the BIOS to A06 (which can be found here). The BIOS is installable via floppy (no floppy drives), Red Hat Linux (tried, installer didn’t work) and Windows (Oh no, really?Can’t we just have a bootable iso image?).

OK then, let’s install XP. Hang on, it doesn’t include SATA drivers and the BIOS doesn’t do AHCI – we need to customise an XP iso. Sod that.

OK, let’s install Windows 7 then. Hang on, there’s only a CD drive in the 750. Hmm. Wait! We have a USB DVD drive! Load it in, no joy. Apparently some BIOSes don’t play with the UDF file system in the DVD. This was annoying so we gave it some further thought.

Google came up with the following – Customising a Windows Install ISO – which is a very good technical explanation of the whys and whatnots of the boot sectors and how to convert the UDF system to an ISO conforming to Joliet / ISO 9660 using Linux. I didn’t have a Linux machine handy and needed a quick fix so after reading the article I reckoned I could do it quicker with PowerISO. And it works a treat with minimum fuss:

1) Open the Windows 7 DVD image in PowerISO and go to File -> Image Properties, you will see the following:

poweriso1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2) De-select UDF and select Joliet, making sure you have long filenames selected in the settings below:

poweriso2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3) Save the image, burn to DVD, insert in the USB DVD-Rom and install! Simples!