Add USB Devices to an ESXi Host

You can connect multiple USB devices to an ESXi host so that the virtual machines that run on the same host can access the devices. The number of devices that you can connect depends on the device type and how the devices and hubs chain together.

Each ESXi host has several USB ports. The number of ports on each host depends on the physical setup of the host. When you calculate the depth of hub chaining, remember that on a typical server the front ports connect to an internal hub.

The USB arbitrator can monitor a maximum of 15 USB controllers. If your system includes more than 15 controllers and you connect USB devices to them, the devices are not available to the virtual machine.

The host treats USB CD/DVD-ROM devices as SCSI devices.

Prerequisites

• If a host has attached USB devices and resides in a DRS cluster with activated DPM, deactivate DPM for that host. For instructions about overriding the default DPM setting for a single host, see vSphere Resource Management.
• To verify that the virtual machine meets the requirements for the USB device connection, see Connecting USB Devices to an ESXi Host.
• To add eight xHCI controllers to the ESXi host, verify that the current version of your ESXi host is 6.0 or later.

Procedure

• ♦ To add a USB device to an ESXi host, connect the device to an available port or hub.

What to do next

You can add the device to the virtual machine. See Add USB Devices from an ESXi Host to a Virtual Machine.