USB License key passthrough from Failover Cluster Node to VM

Question

Hi Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.

We have a 3 node Hyper-V Failover cluster all with MS sever 2019 datacentre installed. there's a virtual Machine installed also window 2019 on this that needs to get access to an external USB license key. I have seen possible solutions where a third party software is installed on the host machine but since this is a failover cluster we want to keep all host nodes set up the same. what is the best approach to get this achieved?

Thanks
James

Answer 1

Hi there,

Can you not just add USB support to the VM and attach the license key to the physical Hyper-V host?

You can add one or more USB passthrough devices from an ESXi host to a virtual machine if the physical device is connected to the host on which the virtual machine runs.

If a USB device is connected to another virtual machine, you cannot add it until that machine releases it.

This article provides the steps to add a pass-through disk to a highly available virtual machine (VM) in a Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1)-based failover cluster, and helps solve the issue where the added pass-through disk status is displayed as read-only.

Read-only pass-through disk after you add the disk to a highly available VM in a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 failover cluster https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/backup-and-storage/add-pass-through-disk-to-high-available-vm

I hope this information helps. If you have any questions please let me know and I will be glad to help you out.

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Answer 2

Hello,

Want to pass through the USB device on the Host, my summary is as follows:

1. Use USB Over Network software to use USB devices through the network;
2. Without the use of third-party software, we can add the USB device to the IDE control, and let the USB device and the DVD drive share an IDE device, so as to realize the use of the USB device on the Host.
3. In addition, since only one virtual machine can pass through the USB device on the Host at the same time, it is impossible to access the USB device at the same time.

Best Regards,
Xu Gu