This article has had some time to bake in the sun while the world advanced. Reader Tim has suggested one such application and recounted his own experiences with it. I’ve never personally used any, which is why they’re not in the text. Note : a fourth option not explored in this article is software-based solutions. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but the licensing terms are favorable for most and it gets the job done.Īll of that said, it is entirely possible to configure Hyper-V USB passthrough inside a Hyper-V guest, even Client Hyper-V. For most everyone else, I’d say to turn your eye to a type 2 hypervisor. If you’re using the emulators in Visual Studio, you’re sort of forced into it. If true Hyper-V USB passthrough is a requirement for whatever you’ve got in mind, then Hyper-V is a poor solution. If you want more information, Microsoft has published a thorough article regarding passing through hardware on the 2016 platform that describes some of the challenges and possibilities, including configuring Hyper-V USB passthrough. But, technological feasibility is besides the point. In theory, it sounds like something that could be done. Could there be a way for a type 1 hypervisor to assign a USB port to a specific guest by doing the same thing that a type 2 does? I don’t know. Hyper-V can’t do this for Hyper-V USB passthrough because one operating system instance locking a USB port from all other operating system instances is just not how type 1 virtualization works. A type 2 hypervisor is essentially an application shim that is pretending to provide a root hardware device, which is fine because it doesn’t require the same degree of isolation as a type 1 hypervisor. They are kernels firmly entrenched within partitions. So, the same concepts apply to Hyper-V USB passthrough configuration. If you’ve ever used a type 2 hypervisor in this way, you’ll notice that they explicitly tell you that the USB device can be attached to the parent or a guest - there’s no sharing or divvying up resource access or anything of the sort. Applications have the ability to exclusively capture a USB port to prevent other applications from using it if they like this is why it’s so easily done in a type 2 hypervisor. In a type 2 hypervisor, the management operating system is installed directly to the hardware and the hypervisor is just another application that runs within it. The very sharp distinction to be made here is that Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor whereas the products that provide simple USB passthrough are type 2 hypervisors. The complaint typically accompanies a negative comparison to applications such as VMware Workstation and Oracle VirtualBox, which can perform USB passthrough. I often read complaints about the lack of Hyper-V USB passthrough for USB devices. This will be the USB mass storage device used for Hyper-V USB passthrough. Change the selection dot to Physical Hard Disk and then select the drive to attach from the drop-down.Remember that you cannot add any drive to a virtual IDE controller while the virtual machine is turned on, but you can add a drive to a virtual SCSI controller if the VM is off or on. Make sure that Hard Drive is selected on the right and click Add. In the target virtual machine’s properties dialog, click the virtual controller where you want to add your passthrough disk.If the Offline option is not available, the disk cannot be used as a passthrough. Ensure that the disk is visible in Disk Management.I do not have any USB drives to test this with, so my screenshots will not line up well, unfortunately. If you have problems, expect all responses from me to be, “I told you so”. However, this is a how-to article, so I will show you how to configure Hyper-V USB passthrough. I would like to reiterate that I am fundamentally opposed to permanently mounting any disk in passthrough mode. For this reason, Windows must identify your USB drive as a “Mass Storage Device” in order for it to connect in Hyper-V USB passthrough mode. As I said in the opening paragraph, only one component can communicate with a USB device, so the Windows disk subsystem brokers I/O for all USB storage devices. Hyper-V can set up most USB disk drives in Hyper-V USB passthrough mode, but it does so via Windows’ storage subsystem. How to Add Hyper-V Passthrough Support for USB Drives As a result, with Hyper-V USB passthrough, we face special difficulties with USB in virtualized environments. USB devices expect to communicate with only one subsystem or application at a time. Other hardware components present a greater challenge for virtualization because they are not shared, even among separate applications. Even on non-virtualized systems, these resources are shared. It focuses on CPU, disk, and memory because all operating systems and applications require them. One of the chief features of Hyper-V virtualization is the abstraction of the hardware, including Hyper-V USB passthrough.
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