Can you use a USB dongle inside a VMWare ESX Virual Machine?

Solution 1:

We use a device from AnywhereUSB to attache USB devices (including dongles) inside an ESXi virtual machine.

http://www.digi.com/products/usb/anywhereusb.jsp

The limitations are that when you install Windows in an ESX guest it doesn't install the USB drivers so you have to do it manually. It is a Windows only device.

Also, you can't share one AnywhereUSB device between multiple guests. All ports are attached to one guest.

An additional clarification on the functionality is that you cannot cross LANs with it. It has to be on the same vLAN as your guest.

But, with the those restrictions it has been running fine with no hiccups. We took a physical machine on old hardware with a dongle, ran it through VMware converter, installed the software for the AnywhereUSB (and configured it), then plugged the dongle in and everything works great.

Solution 2:

Unless it has changed from ESX 3.5 to 4 the answer is no it isn't supported. Most people in this situation use a usb server, basically a box with a multiple USB ports and a network connection. You install software in the guest OS which installs a driver and sees the networked USB as though it were directly connected. I've had good luck with a model from Digikey.

Solution 3:

Note that both ESX and ESXi 4.1 have support for USB:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1022290

I've used this first hand in an ESXi install for a serial-to-USB adapter going to a Linux guest. No problems at all.