Add USB Devices from a Client Computer to a Virtual Machine

You can add one or more USB passthrough devices from a client computer to a virtual machine in the vSphere Client. The devices must be connected to a client computer that connects to the ESXi host on which the virtual machine resides.

Note: If you connect to a USB device on a Mac OS X client computer, you can add only one device to the virtual machine at a time.

The devices maintain their virtual machine connections in S1 standby, if the vSphere Client is running and connected. After you add the USB device to the virtual machine, a message on the client computer states that the device is disconnected. The device remains disconnected from the client computer until you disconnect it from the virtual machine.

Fault Tolerance is not supported with USB passthrough from a client computer to a virtual machine.

Prerequisites

• Verify that a USB device is connected to the client computer.
• Verify that the virtual machine is powered on.
• Verify that a USB controller is present.
• Verify that the vSphere Client has access to the ESXi host on which the virtual machines are running.
• Required Privilege: Virtual machine.Change Configuration.Add or remove device

Procedure

1. In the vSphere Client, navigate to a virtual machine.
2. Launch the VMware Remote Console application.
   Note: You cannot connect a USB device to a virtual machine if you use the HTML5 console in the vSphere Client.
3. In the VMware Remote Console toolbar, click VMRC > Removable Devices and find the USB device.
4. Click Connect (Disconnect from menu).

Results

The USB device is connected to the virtual machine.