Add a virtual soundcard to ESXi even if there is no soundcard present in the host’s hardware

Problem:

I needed to be able to playback sound over an RDP connection using RemoteFx from a VM but the machine hosting the VM had no soundcard installed.

Solution:

The solution was incredibly simple and grabbed straight from a VMware Workstation .vmx file.

First enable SSH on your host and login with WinSCP so that you can see your .vmx file. Then shutdown the VM you want a soundcard for.

Take a local copy of the file and then copy it again as a backup.  Add the following lines to the .vmx file at the end of the file.  Then upload the file back to the VM folder.

sound.present = "true"
sound.allowGuestConnectionControl = "false"
sound.virtualDev = "hdaudio"
sound.fileName = "-1"
sound.autodetect = "true"

Then start the VM and the soundcard should be available and working.