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USB Controller Passthrough with VMWare ESXi 5.1

Posted on by Dennis

Earlier last year I built myself a VMWare ESXi whitebox computer.  VMWare ESXi is a light operating system which allows multiple virtual computers (referred to as virtual machines or VM) to be run inside of one computer (called the host) at the same time.  For example, I usually have three VMs running on my box including a FreeNAS file server, Ubuntu, and Windows 8.

One of the features of ESXi (and other hypervisors) is that you can pass through physical devices such as a video card and USB devices into the VMs.  That way, you could interact with one of the VMs running inside the host, with a monitor and physical devices much like a real computer.  This is great because you can use the host like a real computer, while running other operating systems on it at the same time.

Simplified virtualized computer diagrams
A simplified diagram showing how hardware can be passed through to virtual machines through the hypervisor.

This setup worked well with ESXi 5.0, as long as you had chosen the hardware that supports device passthrough — see my original post for the hardware I am using.  As far as I know, any update and patches in the ESXi 5.0 series have working device passthrough.

However, with ESXi 5.1, USB controller passthrough has been broken.  On the majority of builds, when you select a USB controller for passthrough, the selection will vanish once you reboot.  Or even worse, it will randomly crash the hypervisor.

The only patch of ESXi 5.1 that seems to allow some sort of USB controller passthrough is build 1021289, corresponding to ESXi510-201303001. You can find this patch on the VMWare patch portal, and I have some notes in my previous blog post about updating ESXi.  The catch is that the USB controllers will schedule to disable passthrough for themselves upon the next reboot.

esxi-5.1-passthrough-issue
When you enable passthrough devices in the configuration, they will work after you reboot. However, they will be configured to disable themselves after the subsequent reboot.

This wasn’t really a problem for me because I rarely reboot the host machine.  Just remember before you shutdown or reboot the host, re-enable the passthrough devices in the DirectPath I/O Configuration screen, and they will work the next time ESXi boots up.

So in short, for reliable device passthrough in VMWare ESXi, stick with the 5.0 series.  If you have to upgrade to ESXi 5.1, install the ESXi510-201303001 patch, and remember to re-enable the passthrough devices before rebooting the host.  Keep track of this thread on the VMWare Community, as it has been a long running thread documenting issues with device passthrough on ESXi 5.1.

Updating VMware ESXi

Posted on by Dennis

Back in January I built a VMware ESXi 5 whitebox as my home server.  I updated the hypervisor today and I thought I’d record the process so that I can refer back to it later.  The blog post I found most useful was from VMware Front Experience.  If you’re looking for the detailed procedures, I’d suggest you look at that post.

Upgrading from 5.0 to 5.1

  1. The upgrade file can be found here on the VMware download site. For an upgrade from 5.0 to 5.1, the file to download is: VMware-ESXi-5.1.0-799733-depot.zip.
  2. After downloading the file, scp it to the ESXi host, onto one of the data stores.
  3. SSH into the ESXi host, and run the command:
    esxcli software profile install -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/VMware-ESXi-5.1.0-799733-depot.zip -p ESXi-5.1.0-799733-standard
    You can also run esxcli software profile update .... The difference is described in the blog post I referenced above.
  4. When the update completes, reboot the server. When you bring up the VMs again the first time, vSphere Client might ask you whether you moved or copied the VMs since the UUID changed. Select “I moved the VMs”.

Rolling back to ESXi 5.0

ESXi 5.1 wasn’t working too well for me. I was having problems passing through my USB controllers to the VMs. I decided to roll back to 5.0, and luckily VMware makes rolling back easy.

  1. When you reboot the host, press SHIFT+R when the hypervisor first boots up (you’ll see the cue at the bottom right of the screen
  2. Type ‘y’ to confirm rolling back the hypervisor
  3. The hypervisor will boot up with the old version.

Patching 5.0

So what I ended up doing was just patching the hypervisor to the latest build.

  1. The latest patches can be found on the VMware patch download portal.
  2. After downloading the file, scp it to the ESXi host, onto one of the data stores.
  3. SSH into the ESXi host, and run the command:
  4. esxcli software vib install -d "/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/patches/ESXi500-201209001.zip"
  5. When the update completes, reboot the host if required.

I apologize if this blog post is a little terse, it is mainly a reference for myself. If you want further information, please check out the pages below: