3rd party products for USB support in Hyper-V

[YeOldeStonecat]

Does anyone have input (good or bad) or suggestions for 3rd party tools for USB support in Hyper-V?

Have a client I'm going a project for and thinking of tossing another server into their Hyper-V to take over their Canon imageWare duties. It requires a USB license key to be physically installed to let the softwares services run.

I was wondering if anyone has used USB Redirectors with any success. Such as this one here (see below link)
http://www.incentivespro.com/hyper-v-usb.html

Host would be Server 2012 Std.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

And don't get me started on why Microsoft won't allow USB passthrough in Hyper-V....even though they have it working fine in Virtual PC.

 

[dbdawn]

And don't get me started on why Microsoft won't allow USB passthrough in Hyper-V....even though they have it working fine in Virtual PC.

This is so dumb, I don't know why Microsoft doesn't allow USB pass-through.

I have heard that these little Digi units work just fine for situations like you mention. I haven't used them personally though. http://www.digi.com/products/usb/anywhereusb

Another software solution.

http://www.usb-over-ethernet.com/

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

^^Bump^^ just to keep it visible...

 

[SAG]

Nothing to add other than I'm watching this as well.
I've never had to do what you are doing, but am curious as to what replies you get in case something along these lines come in for me in the future.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Will try the demo of that "incentives pro" product. If you read their page, they state specifically for use with USB license dongles.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

http://www.net-usb.com/virtual-usb/

open source one http://usbip.sourceforge.net/

 

[SAG]

http://www.net-usb.com/virtual-usb/

open source one http://usbip.sourceforge.net/

Are you bumping this because you found something that works?
I was hoping you'd revisit this.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

We finally licked it today....last week their old server got REALLY wobbly, so I did the P2V...and struggled for a few days trying to get it to work. The Eltima software linked above didn't work...appeared that it would, but the license manager wouldn't pick it up via the virtual USB port.

We ended up getting a Digi USB Anywhere hub..which shares it across the network and you install a client on the server which picks it up and presents it through a virtual USB port...this time it worked.
http://www.digi.com/products/model?mid=3290

About 220 bucks for that unit. Fiddled around with updating the HASP drivers in device mangler..she finally settled in nicely and the Canon SQL service fired up and their scan to cabinet started working.

 

[LogicalDrm]

This is so dumb, I don't know why Microsoft doesn't allow USB pass-through.

I have heard that these little Digi units work just fine for situations like you mention. I haven't used them personally though. http://www.digi.com/products/usb/anywhereusb

Another software solution.

http://www.usb-over-ethernet.org/

Isn’t just a lame excuse that Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor and therefore cannot support USB passthrough?
There’s no technical reason and explanation.. MS just haven’t put an effort into implement it, that’s all!
I assume VMware ESX is also a type 1 hypervisor….but ESX has not problem to support USB AFAK

 

[Sky-Knight]

If there is a hypervisor in play, I always default to a USB to Ethernet bridge. Even if you have USB pass-through, it doesn't always work.

I've never had a bridge fail me. You can also use them shall we say... creatively in a Point of Sale situation. If the POS software doesn't support mobile, you just slap it on an RDS server, connect each login with the appropriate bridge, and the bridge has all the POS hardware connected. The first time your user prints a reciept from the other side of the room via a standard tablet... they'll look at you like you're a wizard.

But yes this solution is best, because it also means the VM is portable. If the host dies, the new host just needs access to the same network and BOOM software online. If you're dealing with directly connected USB devices when the host dies someone is moving a USB cable to get it going again. That's not something you want to de worrying about at 2am when you fail over to the Datto!

 

[SAFCasper]

Microsofts reasoning is it "breaks the desired abstraction of virtual machines from physical hardware"

I can sort of see their reasoning. Anything involving live migrations, replication, clustering etc would have issues because only 1 host has the required USB attached. You are essentially limiting VM-X to Host-Y which goes against all HA practices. Host-Y goes down you are screwed and need manual intervention. So it simply isn't a good option for enterprise which is Microsoft's main market share.

But on the other hand, the majority of SMB use standalone hosts with no HA. Why not implement the feature and let us decide whether to use it or not.


PS.
I can imagine there's also many security concerns around Guests having direct access to a USB channel of a host. But if ESXI can handle this surely so can Microsoft. I don't know

 

[Sky-Knight]

USB over Ethernet + a VPN tunnel = USB device directly attached to VPS in the cloud.

We're moving off prem right?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Wow...old thread that got revived for some reason. Anyone see the date?

 

[Sky-Knight]

Wow...old thread that got revived for some reason. Anyone see the date?

Nope!