It’s pretty common knowledge that USB is not supported on the enterprise virtualization platform (VMware’s ESX and Microsoft’s Hyper-V to name the big players). My question is: why not? I posed to this to our VMware rep recently during a “roadmap” discussion and the best answer that I got was that it’s not in their plans because supporting USB would chain down VM’s that would otherwise be free to move around and be fluid (ie V-motion). I completely get that… however, it’s really no different than a CD/DVD rom drive attachment, right? Why not provide with option with the appropriate caveats? I’m not thinking it is a technical hurdle that needs overcome since USB has been supported on desktop virtualization platforms for some time.
Admittedly, I might care about this a little too much. This is mainly because our software product requires a hardware USB dongle for licensing so it is always a foremost consideration. If anyone out there has ever gotten a better response from any of the vendors on this, I would love to hear from you. I would also urge anyone who cares about this (or any other features that you would love to see) to send your feedback:
VMware Feature Request: http://vmware.com/contact/contactus.html?department=feature-request
Microsoft Connect: http://connect.microsoft.com/
Does something like USB Anywhere meet your needs?
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx_anywhereusb2.pdf
We are using USB Abywhere in our production environment and it works really good.
Try it!
Ditch the dongle.
I avoid anything with a hardware dongle like the plague.
They don’t stop pirates and they annoy the hell out of legitimate customers.
Unless you’ve got no competition you’re probably losing more revenue than you gain.
Ditch the dongle.
I avoid anything with a hardware dongle like the plague.
They don’t stop pirates and they annoy the hell out of legitimate customers.
Unless you’ve got no competition you are probably losing more revenue than you are gaining.
Yes, one thing that I didn’t mention is that we currently use and have success with AnywhereUSB and also UBox as a work-around. We have had great luck with these and I would recommend them for anyone needing USB access. I would still love to see this available directly on the enterprise platforms.