Problem:
You need to connect a USB 3.0 external HDD to an ESXi 6.7 host and passthrough to a guest VM.
Solution:
This can be achieved quite simply in a few steps as below, I did this using a Dell Optiplex 7010 in my home lab.
1. Login to your ESXi 6.7 host and under Host click Manage
2. Select Hardware and then check the boxes next to all of your USB controllers
3. On the right hand side in the Passthrough column change the Passthrough mode to Active for your USB controller, you will now need to reboot the host
4. Shut down your guest VM and then add the following devices:
- A USB 2.0 Controller
- A USB 3. Controller
- All USB PCI devices that you selected for Passthrough on the host
- The USB Hard Drive that you have plugged in to the host
5. Enable a memory reservation for your VM, without this you will not be able to boot it with the Passthrough PCI cards
6. Your VM settings should appear as below:
7. You can now boot into your VM (I’m using Windows 2016 Standard) and should see your USB 3.0 HDD
8. You should then see perfectly reasonable USB 3.0 transfer speeds to the device
What If you’re running esx off of a usb stick? Will setting all the usb controllers to passthrough hose me up if the esx host is passing the controller in which it’s running the OS?
I find is a great way to how to add USB storage to vmware 6.7 (https://www.net-usb.com/virtual-usb/vmware-usb-passthrough/). USB storage works without interference and it is easy to get access even remotely.
What is the USB controller not appear in the PCI Device list? I’m using ESXi 6.7.0.
After a lot of unsuccessful attempts, this procedure proved to be useless and I’ve abandoned it. I cannot disable the USB passthrough’d items even after a system reboot. They return was Active each time. Is there a way to correct for this, or am I going to waste a weekend re-installing esxi to “fix” it.