HowTo - VMWare VI3 Windows Guest and USB over IP
In the last year we had a physical server’s O/S have a severe blue screen error which required the server to be rebuilt. This server was a critical server for our operation and the downtime was not easy. In order to prevent that from happening in the future we decided that server would be a better fit in the virtual infrastructure because of the High Availability offered by Vmotion. The only problem is this server requires a USB license dongle. Everyone knows that you don’t have a USB port to plug into when running VI3, so what do you do?
Keyspan USB server (USB over IP)
This specific USB server allows you to choose which USB port(s) you want to dedicate to each server. Some USB servers do not allow you to dedicate each port to a different server.
What a breeze to setup as well. After you mount the device, give it power and ethernet…Just install the Keyspan software. The software client will find the USB server automatically. Than you need to edit the config to dedicate the USB device to that VM and you’re ready for action.
Now you can reboot and vmotion to your heart’s desire and not lose connectivity to your USB license dongle. Great little trick if you’re as dedicated to virtualization as we are!
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Is it possible to dedicate each of the four USB ports to a different client (VM)?
Yes, each port can be dedicated to a different VM. I ordered another Keyspan today to keep one on hand as a failover, hopefully it’ll be installed and wired up next week!
Tom you don’t use any type of bare metal restore software for Contingency/DR Planning? I’ve used Acronis Enterprise Server with the Universal Restore option several times. Hasn’t failed yet. The only downside is you are required to install a chatty service agent on the server.
Speaking of which, what VM backup tool do you use esxRanger? I like the PHD esXpress software myself. They all leverage VMware’s snapshot technology anyways, *shurg*.
We were using Acronis for our physical servers but it hasn’t worked very well as a centralized platform with the agents. I haven’t used Universal Restore because we never added those licenses on after the fact.
I have used the convert to vmdk option and used the acronis image to build a vmware guest from. That worked well for a quick and dirty test.
I’m using vRanger Pro with VCB and that has worked very well so far. VCB will failover to network backup when a snapshot happens to be left online. NetBackup picks it up off disk during the day when the tape drives are idle.