You can connect and chain multiple USB hubs and devices to an ESXi host. Careful planning and knowledge of hub behavior and limitations can help ensure that your devices work optimally.

USB physical bus topology defines how USB devices connect to the host. Support for USB device passthrough to a virtual machine is available if the physical bus topology of the device on the host does not exceed tier seven. The first tier is the USB host controller and root hub. The last tier is the target USB device. You can cascade up to five tiers of external or internal hubs between the root hub and the target USB device. An internal USB hub attached to the root hub or built into a compound device counts as one tier.

The quality of the physical cables, hubs, devices, and power conditions can affect USB device performance. To ensure the best results, keep the host USB bus topology as simple as possible for the target USB device, and use caution when you deploy new hubs and cables into the topology. The following conditions can affect USB behavior:

  • Communication delay between the host and virtual machine increases as the number of cascading hubs increases.
  • Connecting or chaining multiple external USB hubs increases device enumeration and response time, which can make the power support to the connected USB devices uncertain.
  • Chaining hubs together also increases the chance of port and hub error, which can cause the device to lose connection to a virtual machine.
  • Certain hubs can cause USB device connections to be unreliable, so use care when you add a new hub to an existing setup. Connecting certain USB devices directly to the host rather than to a hub or extension cable might resolve their connection or performance issues.
Note: To prevent additional problems, be aware of the physical constraints of long-term deployment in a machine room environment. Small devices are easily damaged by being stepped on or knocked loose.

In some cases, you must hard reset the device and hub to restore the device to a working state.

For a list of supported USB devices for passthrough from an ESXi host to a virtual machine, see the VMware knowledge base article at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1021345.

USB Compound Devices

For compound devices, the virtualization process filters out the USB hub so that it is not visible to the virtual machine. The remaining USB devices in the compound appear to the virtual machine as separate devices. You can add each device to the same virtual machine or to different virtual machines if they run on the same host.

For example, the Aladdin HASP HL Drive USB dongle package contains three devices (0529:0001 HASP dongle, 13fe:1a00 Hub, 13fe:1d00 Kingston Drive). The virtualization process filters out the USB hub. The remaining Aladdin HASP HL Drive USB dongle devices (one Aladdin HASP dongle and one Kingston Drive) appear to the virtual machine as individual devices. You must add each device separately to make it accessible to the virtual machine.