Quick Bites:
- This article serves as an introduction to utilizing USB pass-through within the Microsoft Hyper-V environment
- It explains, how this feature grants virtual machines direct access to physical USB devices, resulting in enhanced performance and a seamless transition between physical and virtual systems
- The guide digs deeper into the mechanics of USB pass-through, its advantages, limitations, and step-by-step setup procedures, including the implementation of Enhanced Session Mode
- Additionally, it highlights the significance of security protocols and restricted physical access to Hyper-V hosts
Read on:
Beginners’ Guide for Microsoft Hyper-V: Hyper-V Enhanced Session Mode – Part-53
One of the tremendous benefits of working with a modern hypervisor like Hyper-V is the ability to use hardware devices connected to the physical Hyper-V host. With Hyper-V, you can pass through physical devices connected to the Hyper-V host into your virtual machines. One of these capabilities is passing through USB-connected devices to allow VMs to access USB storage and other devices connected to the virtual host. Let’s look at Hyper-V USB pass-through for beginners and learn more about this capability and how to enable it.
Table of Contents
- What is Hyper-V USB Passthrough?
- How does Hyper-V USB Passthrough work?
- Benefits of Hyper-V USB Passthrough
- Limitations of Hyper-V USB Passthrough
- How do you set up USB passthrough in Hyper-V?
- Setting up Hyper-V USB passthrough using Enhanced Session Mode
- Wrapping up
What is Hyper-V USB Passthrough?
Hyper-V USB passthrough is a feature of Microsoft Hyper-V, allowing you to make USB devices connected to Hyper-V hosts accessible to Hyper-V virtual machines. It helps to provide seamless integration between the physical Hyper-V host and the virtual environment and which devices the VMs can use.
How does Hyper-V USB pass-through work?
Hyper-V USB pass-through creates a virtual bus between the host and virtual machines, allowing USB devices to be redirected from the host to the virtual machine. USB devices connected to the host machine are recognized by the Hyper-V host and listed in the Device Manager. To make the USB device available to a virtual machine, you need to configure the virtual machine settings to enable USB pass-through.
Benefits of Hyper-V USB pass-through
Hyper-V USB pass-through provides several benefits for virtual machine users, including:
- USB pass-through allows virtual machines to access physical USB devices attached to a Hyper-V host. This feature can be convenient for many use cases, including presenting hardware to VMs and providing USB resources to software applications requiring USB devices, testing hardware and software that rely on USB devices
- By accessing USB devices directly, virtual machines have much better performance accessing USB devices compared to emulation
- Hyper-V USB pass-through provides very good integration between virtual and physical environments, which helps to eliminate barriers to using physical devices inside Hyper-V virtual machines
- Most modern operating systems and USB devices support USB pass-through. It helps to make adding USB devices to VMs much easier
Limitations of Hyper-V USB pass-through
Hyper-V USB pass-through also has some limitations, including:
- USB pass-through can pose security risks, allowing virtual machines to access physical USB devices. Attackers using malicious code in a virtual machine could potentially access or damage data on USB devices connected to the host machine or even possibly compromise the host
- Some USB devices may not be compatible with USB pass-through. Drivers may be needed to allow the hardware to work properly
- USB pass-through can impact the performance of the host machine. You need to keep this as a consideration, especially if you have multiple VMs accessing a USB device configured to pass through
How do you set up USB passthrough in Hyper-V?
To enable Hyper-V USB pass-through, you need to follow these steps:
Once you have enabled Hyper-V USB pass-through, the virtual machine can access USB devices connected to the Hyper-V host machine. Most modern operating systems will pick up the USB storage automatically. However, there is a chance you may need to install drivers to get it to recognize it.
Below, we have a Windows 10 workstation with the USB storage passed through from the Hyper-V host.
Setting up Hyper-V USB pass-through using Enhanced Session Mode
You can also use USB storage devices with Hyper-V Enhanced Session Mode. Make sure you have Enhanced Session mode enabled on your Hyper-V host:
Once you have Enhanced Session Mode enabled, with VMConnect.exe, you can redirect local devices, including USB storage devices, to your Hyper-V virtual machine.
Select the USB drive attached to your Hyper-V host to redirect the USB storage to your virtual machine.
Wrapping up
Hyper-V USB pass-through is a great way to extend the capabilities of Hyper-V in your environment, allowing you to add common USB interface devices to virtual machines running in your Hyper-V infrastructure. It provides many benefits regarding convenience, integration, compatibility, and performance when accessing these USB devices passed through to your VMs.
There are other limitations and considerations to make with the security implications of plugging USB devices into your Hyper-V host. USB devices and other removable media are generally risky from a security perspective. They are easy to compromise and quickly allow hackers to offload malicious payloads. Therefore, USB devices for this purpose should be kept secure and physical access to your Hyper-V hosts should be restricted.
By understanding its benefits and limitations, admins can use Hyper-V USB pass-through to provide additional capabilities to virtual machines running in your Hyper-V-powered data center.
Related Posts:
Beginners’ Guide for Microsoft Hyper-V: Hyper-V Enhanced Session Mode – Part-53
Beginners’ Guide for Microsoft Hyper-V: Hyper-V GPU Passthrough – Part 61
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