Question

Citrix Xenserver USB Soloution

Asked by: Sobz

Hi, I'm looking for some advice,

I have five Physical Machines which I plan to Virtualize using Citrix Xenserver 5.x, each running XP and each running a Piece of software which requires a single USB hardware dongle in order to run (the dongle must be present at all times, not just to start the software)

As I understand it, the way to go about this is by using a USB to IP solution. I have tried and tested ' USBAnywhere/5 ' from Digi and although this seems to work very well you need one box per VM so I will need another 4 maybe 5 of these boxes and at £224 ($369) each it is not a cost effective solution, I am trying to work with a budget of £2200 ($3618) to buy the required hardware.

Does anybody have any other ideas or have used software which have worked for them?

Many thanks in Advance.

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Asked On
2009-08-21 at 01:20:39ID24670685
Tags

Citrix

,

Xenserver

,

USB

,

IP

,

Dongle

Topics

Operating Systems Miscellaneous

,

Citrix

,

XenServer

Participating Experts
2
Points
0
Comments
13

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Answers

 

by: Jacob78Posted on 2009-08-21 at 06:33:07ID: 25151591

So you're trying to run 5 virtual machines from a single USB dongle or 5 USB dongles?

 

by: SobzPosted on 2009-08-21 at 06:34:23ID: 25151609

5 USB dongles, one for each VM.

 

by: Jacob78Posted on 2009-08-21 at 06:41:10ID: 25151682

Have you contacted the software vendor? We were facing a similar issue and they were able to provide us with a dongle-less solution. Other than that, I don't see an option other than something like USBAnywhere. There are a few softwares out there that claim to mount USB drives from your hard drive (like the way Magic ISO mounts and ISO image as a drive), but I don't know how well they work. Your software license may also prohibit this (they may also prohibit a product like USBAnywhere).


 

by: JunglegunPosted on 2009-08-21 at 08:40:55ID: 25152945

I'm fairly new to XenServer myself but I've had luck using usb devices with VMs. Is it that the Xenserver host doesn't have 5 usb ports that's the problem?

 

by: Jacob78Posted on 2009-08-21 at 09:00:11ID: 25153180

I haven't had problems with HID or drive based USB devices. But there will probably be trouble with 5 dongles plugged into the same server...not on the host side, but the guest. I would have to image that each guest would see all 5 dongles..which would be a problem.

 

by: JunglegunPosted on 2009-08-21 at 09:13:06ID: 25153311

It looks to me like that in XenServer 5 each dongle would show up in Xencenter under Removable Storage. It will not show up on the vm until you attach it as a drive. Go to each vm in XenCenter (vm >storage tab >add) and attach only the particular dongle you want associated with that vm.

 

by: Jacob78Posted on 2009-08-21 at 09:14:26ID: 25153319

The problem is that every dongle I have used doesn't show up as storage.

Sobz...can you go into your hardware manger on one of the existing computers and tell us what they show up as?

 

by: JunglegunPosted on 2009-08-21 at 09:15:09ID: 25153326

Actually Its "attach" not "add"

 

by: JunglegunPosted on 2009-08-21 at 09:16:19ID: 25153340

If it doesn't show up that is a problem.

 

by: SobzPosted on 2009-08-28 at 02:21:27ID: 25205937

Hi,

Many thanks for all your comments and help, but I've found a way around the problem. Its not free, but doesn't eat too much into the budget ($99). This USB to IP network HUB from Belkin is the answer to my prayers!

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=377025

It allows you to Connect a virtual machine to a single USB device (in my case a dongle) over the network, unlike USBanywhere/5 it allows multiple connections, so in my case I can plug 5 USB dongles into it and get my 5 Virtual Machines to connect automatically at startup to their respective Dongle. Belkin states with the use of a USB hub, a total of 16 devices can be attached. It also works on Macs, which for me is a bonus.

I've had this running for the last 4 days as a test and appears quite solid. I've had multiple machines connected to multiple USB devices and so far, no dropped connections.

 

by: Jacob78Posted on 2009-08-28 at 05:18:31ID: 25206723

Sobz,

Would you leave this open until you know if it works and then post your results? I for one would be interested to see if this actually works for a dongle as they are not standard USB devices. If it does, it would be helpful to have posted here on EE.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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