Where 0xXXXX = vendorId and 0xYYYY = deviceId (e.g 0x03f0:0x0024) Step 3 - Lastly, we need to add the following string to the ESXi boot option to disable the VMkernel from claiming HID USB devices.ĬONFIG./USB/quirks=0xXXXX:0xYYYY::0xffff:UQ_KBD_IGNORE In my example above, I want to enable passthrough for both my Mouse and Keyboard device, so the following entries would be appended: Step 2 - We need to make the USB arbitrator service aware of these USB device quirks by adding the string to /etc/vmware/config file. Browser Mouseīus 001 Device 005: ID 046d:c31d Logitech, Inc.

Ultra Flairīus 001 Device 002: ID 05fe:0011 Chic Technology Corp. To list all USB devices and get their vendor and device ID, you can use the lsusb command found within the ESXi Shell and below is an example listing out both my USB Mouse and Keyboard. Where 0xXXXX = vendorId and 0xYYYY = deviceId (e.g 0x03f0:0x0024) which was retrieved from the previous step Step 1 - Add the following two VM Advanced Settings for all USB CCID/HID devices that you wish to enable passthrough:

To passthrough HID/CCID USB devices, the following steps are required which will include changes to the ESXi host.

The latter use case was what I ended up helping the customer out with. In addition to HID USB devices, there are also Chip Card Interface Devices (CCID) USB devices like a smart card reader which customers may also want to passthrough to a VM. The physical ESXi host just assumes these type of USB devices are meant for it to consume. PCI passthrough to a VM is nothing new but passing through a USB keyboard/mouse also known as Human Interface Devices (HID) to a VM is generally not expected. In addition to a PCI passthrough of a GPU, they also wanted to passthrough independent USB keyboard and mouse to each individual VM. The customer that Darius was helping out had two VMs running on ESXi which they wanted to configure several passthrough devices. Funny enough, a couple of weeks after that conversation, a simliar issue was being faced by another customer and luckily I was able to share with them the solution and also validate the specific configuration that was needed. About a month back I had received an interesting tidbit from Darius Davis (VMware Engineer) after helping a customer solve an interesting problem and Darius thought this could be a useful blog post to share.

Vmware console reset keyboard mapping