Virtualizing USB Devices

One of the biggest things that I have seen people worry about when planning a virtualization project are USB license keys. We work with manufacturing facilities a lot and many software vendors for their line of business still seem to use these, so when it comes time to plan a virtualization project we always ask if they still need them and if their software vendors has a version of the software that does not require the USB keys. More often than not we are told that they are still very much required.

I will keep this post short as I just want to introduce a product that SMSproTech has used at many sites and it seems to work without any issues. I cant say that it will work for everyone’s situation but for 170$ MSRP you might as well give it a try if you’re in this situation. The device I’m referring to is the SIIG USB over IP box.

This little box has 4 USB ports on it and plugs directly into a gigabit port on the switch. Then you simply install the drivers on your server and connect through your USB device into windows. On the install that I was on last week we had to remove the old COM ports that were left over from the P2V process but after that we were able to pass two USB license key’s through to our VM and still were able to migrate the VM from one host to another. Link to manufacturer’s site here

This device seems to have a little brother although I have not personally worked with it. Link here and this version goes for 69.99 MSRP.

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