USB Passthrough help

liamcrane

liamcrane

liamcrane

Soldato
Joined
23 Mar 2007
Posts
2,553
Location
Essex
Hi all

Just a quick one with regards to usb Passthrough on my server. I am using Server 2012 (not r2) and have set this up as a hyper V server. I have a windows 7 VM running inside and have installed a few applications including iTunes. I wanted to try and sync my iPhone with iTunes in the VM but I can't find a way to pass this through and get it to work.

I tried the same thing in VMware workstation, connected my iPhone to the host system and Workstation installed the driver and my device was available in iTunes.

What is VMware workstation doing differently to Hyper V that allows this Passthrough to happen?

Any ideas?

Cheers guys
 
As far as I am aware, Hyper-V doesn't allow passthrough of anything but hard drives. It can access USB devices when using a terminal front end I believe... Won't help you though, sorry!
 
many thanks for the above guys. Seems that Hyper V has its limitations. Will this work on ESXi instead do you think? If not i might just keep running my VM's in VMware Workstation
 
ESXi will allow pretty much anything in pass through, I've got my home systems setup across 2 ESXi Hosts including my gaming pc having passed GPU and USB through to the VM. VMWare Workstation should achieve the same if you don't want to natively go baremetal.
 
An alternative, but huge overkill for a single VM Host, would be something like a USB Anywhere box.
It's basically a network connected USB hub, handy for if you're running apps in a VM cluster that require a USB 'dongle'.
 
I forgot about that option, USB over IP. There is some software, would need to find the name, that can be installed on a raspberry pi which will turn the pi in to a USB dongle and plugging in a keyboard/mouse etc. can pass those inputs via IP to the virtual machine interface, acting as like it was right there.
 
Blizzard how do you find the performance on gaming? Is pass through actually pass through with no lag?
 
faxfan said:
Blizzard how do you find the performance on gaming? Is pass through actually pass through with no lag?
Click to expand...

Perfectly fine, effectively the VM thinks the devices are directly attached to their virtual motherboard... All that happens is the system creates a hole in to the VM and 'bolts' the device to it so all communication passes to it directly rather than being enumerated by dom0.
 
beavis said:
Was it this one?
http://www.virtualhere.com/home
Click to expand...

Yep that's it. A raspberry pi can easily do USB 2.0 devices, except that its not powerful enough to deal with USB HD cameras.

There are a number of small clients (a powerful cube one rings a bell, I think its on the list in that website) that has multiple USB ports... Would be perfect for USB over IP.
 
BlizzardX said:
Perfectly fine, effectively the VM thinks the devices are directly attached to their virtual motherboard... All that happens is the system creates a hole in to the VM and 'bolts' the device to it so all communication passes to it directly rather than being enumerated by dom0.
Click to expand...

I've had a play before and it works, just wondering how it works in "real life" - your feedback seems very positive, thanks!
 
That virtualhere software works like a charm! Using this on my Pi and it seems to do the trick its perfect. Getting some real good use out of my Pi, didnt realise just how good the little things are. Using it as an openvpn server, bittorrent sync for backing up my ios camera role and now a usb redirect
 
glad you have it sorted. Yes, these little linux devices are pretty cool and can do a lot. If I could get a decent length from an HDMI cable (or display port) without using the really expensive HDMI to cat 6 work (HDbaseT I think?) I'd have my whole house in a central 48u rack with HDMI and USB over IP all over the house, a single virtual machine host with multiple x16 pci-e slots is far cheaper to power (filled with cards) than multiple PCs with wasted space.
 
BlizzardX said:
Yep that's it. A raspberry pi can easily do USB 2.0 devices, except that its not powerful enough to deal with USB HD cameras.
Click to expand...

There are better ways to do it if you have a native mjpg camera like the high end logitech or microsoft ones. It's a bit out of scope for this thread, but let me know if you want a guide, I use this solution (with some minor mods) in several places without issues.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mjpg-streamer/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom