Avoiding Data Loss with USB Devices

When a virtual machine connects to a physical UBS device on an ESXi host, virtual machine functions can affect USB device behavior and connections.

• Before you hot add memory, CPU, or PCI devices, you must remove any USB devices. Hot adding these resources disconnects USB devices, which might result in data loss.
• Before you suspend a virtual machine, make sure that a data transfer is not in progress. During the suspend or resume process, USB devices behave as if they have been disconnected, then reconnected. For information about suspend and resume behavior after migration with vMotion, see Conditions and Limitations When Configuring USB Devices for vMotion.
• Before you change the state of the arbitrator, make sure that USB devices residing on the host are not attached to a virtual machine. If USB devices become unavailable to a virtual machine, a host administrator might have deactivated the arbitrator. When an administrator stops or disconnects the arbitrator for troubleshooting or other purposes, USB devices attached to that host become unavailable to the virtual machine. If a data transfer is taking place at this time, you might lose the data. To reestablish the arbitrator, you must restart the host or restart the usbarbitrator and hostd services. Restarting the services requires that you power off and then power on the virtual machine.