How to configure Pass-Thru in vmware

Introduction This is a guide to enable pass-thru with a USB device plugged into your ESX hosts. This will enable you to plug in a e...

Introduction

This is a guide to enable pass-thru with a USB device plugged into your ESX hosts.

This will enable you to plug in a external harddrive and see it visible in Vsphere.

Steps (5 total)

1

Log into Vcenter through vsphere

Expand

Log into the VMWare environment where the ESX host is presented to.

2

Find the host

Select the view as hosts and cluster in the vsphere client.

Then select the host the USB drive is plugged into.

3

Configuration of pass-through

Expand

Select the configuration tab within vsphere
select advanced settings
on the right hand side in the middle of the vpshere windows you should see a blue hyper link that says "configure Passthrough..."

Look thru the list to find your device then select it.

Press OK

4

Configure it for use on the VM

Expand

Right click the VM and select "edit settings"

select "add..." then select the "USB controller" function.

Select the controller type of "xHCI" for USB 3.0, iF the device is 2.0 then you can keep it on "EHCI+UHCI".

Select Next then finish.

5

Log onto your VM

You should see your USB drive present on the machine!!

Conclusion

This is my first How-To let me know how it is and if it needs some editing or fixing. i am more than willing to change this.

Note works on ESX 5.1, 5.5 and 6.0