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How to passthrough USB Keyboard/Mouse HID and CCID devices to VM in ESXi?

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About a month back I had received an interesting tidbit from Darius Davis (VMware Engineer) after helping a customer solve an interesting problem and Darius thought this could be a useful blog post to share. Funny enough, a couple of weeks after that conversation, a simliar issue was being faced by another customer and luckily I was able to share with them the solution and also validate the specific configuration that was needed.

The customer that Darius was helping out had two VMs running on ESXi which they wanted to configure several passthrough devices. In addition to a PCI passthrough of a GPU, they also wanted to passthrough independent USB keyboard and mouse to each individual VM. PCI passthrough to a VM is nothing new but passing through a USB keyboard/mouse also known as Human Interface Devices (HID) to a VM is generally not expected. The physical ESXi host just assumes these type of USB devices are meant for it to consume.

In addition to HID USB devices, there are also Chip Card Interface Devices (CCID) USB devices like a smart card reader which customers may also want to passthrough to a VM. The latter use case was what I ended up helping the customer out with. To passthrough HID/CCID USB devices, the following steps are required which will include changes to the ESXi host.

Step 1 - Add the following two VM Advanced Settings for all USB CCID/HID devices that you wish to enable passthrough:

HID USB Devices:

usb.generic.allowHID = "TRUE"
usb.quirks.device0 = "0xXXXX:0xYYYY allow"

CCID USB Devices:

usb.generic.allowCCID = "TRUE"
usb.quirks.device0 = "0xXXXX:0xYYYY allow"

where 0xXXXX = vendorId and 0xYYYY = deviceId (e.g 0x03f0:0x0024) which was retrieved from the previous step

To list all USB devices and get their vendor and device ID, you can use the lsusb command found within the ESXi Shell and below is an example listing out both my USB Mouse and Keyboard.

Step 2 - We need to make the USB arbitrator service aware of these USB device quirks by adding the usb.quirks.deviceN string to /etc/vmware/config file. In my example above, I want to enable passthrough for both my Mouse and Keyboard device, so the following entries would be appended:

usb.quirks.device0 = "0x05fe:0x0011 allow"
usb.quirks.device1 = "0x046d:0xc31d allow"

Step 3 - Lastly, we need to add the following string to the ESXi boot option to disable the VMkernel from claiming HID USB devices.

CONFIG./USB/quirks=0xXXXX:0xYYYY::0xffff:UQ_KBD_IGNORE

where 0xXXXX = vendorId and 0xYYYY = deviceId (e.g 0x03f0:0x0024)

The easiest way to append this to the boot option is by editing /bootbank/boot.cfg rather than manually typing this during the initial boot up (SHIFT+O)

Note: This is not required for CCID devices or mouse devices as they are not claimed by ESXi

Step 4 - A system reboot of your ESXi host will be required for the changes to go into effect. Once your ESXi host is available, you can use the vSphere H5 Client or Embedded ESXi Host Client to attach the USB devices. For vCenter Server, click on "Add New Device" and select "Host USB Device" and for ESXi, click on "Add other device" and select "USB Device".

Automated ESXi Installation to USB using Kickstart

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I frequently re-install ESXi on my physical host for various types of testing as I normally work with a number of future releases. Although the process just takes a couple of minutes, having to enter the exact same information each time and also requiring a keyboard and monitor is not really ideal. For the majority, this is really not a problem and manually going through the install workflow is fine for most folks, especially as this is an infrequent operation.

However, with some recent customer conversations, I thought it was worth while to re-visit this topic and demonstrating just how easy it is to automate the installation of ESXi with just a single bootable USB device and embedding an ESXi Kickstart Script. Even for infrequent installation and/or upgrades of ESXi for home labs, this can be a time saver, especially if you do not have monitor and keyboard just lying around. Below are instructions including a reference Kickstart example that folks can use as a starting point. For more advanced automation, please take a look at my ESXI Kickstart Resources as well as the official VMware documentation for ESXi Scripted Installations.

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Useful M.2 NVMe accessories for vSphere (VSAN/VMFS) Home Labs

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I recently acquired a new toy for the home lab thanks to Timo Sugliani who shared an article on Twitter a few weeks back for a new USB-based enclosure that supports an NVMe SSD device using the M.2 form factor.

I was excited to give the accessory a try, especially as the M.2 devices are used regularly for  vSphere home labs running on either the Intel NUCs or Supermicro E200-8D. Most of these platforms only support a single M.2 slot and this is an easy way to add additional high performance storage capacity with a small footprint. The other benefit with an external enclosure is that you now have a portable and reliable storage solution that can easily be moved from system to system, especially for those that have asked about running VMFS on USB-based device.

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Project USB to SDDC - Part 3

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OK, the wait is finally over! In this final article, we will now walk through the process of getting access to this project as well as how to get this deployed in your own environment. For those that just want to see the code, you can find it at the Github project below:

Github Project: https://github.com/lamw/usb-to-sddc

Below are the details outlining the environment and software requirements as well as the instructions to consume this in your own home lab environment. The content below is a subset of what is published on the Github project, but this should get you going. For more details, please refer to the Github project and if you have any issues/questions, feel free to file a Github issue.

Environment Requirements:

  • USB key that is at least 6GB in capacity
  • Access to either macOS or Linux system as the script that creates the USB key is only supported on these two platforms
  • No additional USB keys must be plugged into the hardware system other than the primary installer USB key
  • Hardware system must have at least 2 disk drives which can either be 1xHDD and 1xSSD for running Hybrid vSAN OR 2xSSD for running All-Flash vSAN
  • Both Intel NUC 6th Gen and Supermicro E200-8D and E300-8D have been tested with this solution. It should work with other hardware systems that meet the minimum requirements but YMMV

Software Requirements:

Note: Other ESXi / VCSA 6.5.x versions can also be substituted, this includes the latest ESXi 6.5d (vSAN 6.6) release which I have also verified myself.

UPDATE (04/17/18) - No changes are required to get vSphere 6.7 to work, the only minor thing to be aware of is that the vSphere Web Client customization has changed in 6.7 and so you need to set VCSA_WEBCLIENT_THEME_NAME="" as empty string or you will find that the UI will not load unless you delete the customization directory in the VCSA that was pulled down automatically.

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Project USB to SDDC - Part 2

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In the previous article, I provided some background on the origin of the project. In this article, we will now focus on the technical details and how the solution actually works.

Hardware

This solution was originally developed against an Intel NUC but I had designed it to be generic so that it could run on any system which meets the minimum requirements which is just having two disks (HDD & SSD or two SSDs) which is used to create a vSAN datastore.

Here is the BOM for the Intel NUC that we had used:

During the Sydney VMUG, we had did a live demo using an Intel NUC. Prior to the Melbourne VMUG, fellow VMware colleague Tai Ratcliff reached out and offered to let us borrow his Supermicro kit for the demo which was great as the hardware was much beefier than the NUC. Thanks Tai!


I had already been hearing great things about E200-8D platform but I had not had the opportunity to get my hands on the system to play with. After only spending a little bit of time with the platform while prepping for the VMUG event, I can see why is a pretty slick system for a vSphere/vSAN based home lab, especially if you need to go beyond 32GB of memory which is where the Intel NUCs currently max out at.

The other appealing features for this platform is that it comes with 2x10GbE, 2x1GBe and an IPMI interface for remote management which is a huge benefit for not needing to connect an external monitor and keyboard. The system is also Xeon based w/6-Cores and can go all the way up to 128GB of memory. Tai had also recently published a blog article comparing the Supermicro E200-8D and the Intel NUC, which I think is worth a read if you are deciding between these two platforms.

Note: If you are considering purchasing the Supermicro E200-8D or any other system for that matter, check out this exclusive vGhetto discount here.

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Project USB to SDDC - Part 1

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A couple of weeks back, Alan Renouf and I co-presented at the Sydney and Melbourne VMUG UserCon, here are some great write-ups about the events here and here. We were very honored to have been invited out and to also deliever the closing keynote. Having traveled halfway around the world, we thought it was only fitting to share something really special.

For the last couple of months, we had been working on a small pet project that I personally had been referring to as the "vGhetto SDDC". This was not something we had not shared with anyone before and thought the VMUG UserCon was the perfect venue to demo our new project. For the session, we decided to rename the project/session to USB to SDDC (better ring than the previous title) which might give you a hint on what the project might be about.

The inception for this project really stemmed from the work we did at last years VMworld Hackathon which was another idea that both Alan and I had came up and worked with the VMware Code team to deliver at both VMworld US and Europe. Like all great Automation stories, the motivation for this project was born out of pure laziness. With the huge success of the Hackathon at VMworld US, there was a huge demand for us to also deliver it again at VMworld Europe.

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