Hello Everyone,
I'll start by saying I've spent the last few days consistently trying to find a solution to my problem. If the answer is obviously out there, I'm sorry, cause I missed it.
My host has ESXi 6.5 installed on it. I want one of the VMs to function as my (physical) desktop computer. I have successfully passed through my GTX 1060 (PCIE GPU), so when I boot the VM up, it beautifully displays on my physical monitor. The drivers successfully installed too.
My challenge now is to get a physical keyboard and mouse dedicated to the Windows VM, rather than the console. My Windows VM has a USB controller. With that said, here is my thought process:
- When I add a "USB Device", HID (mouse and keyboard) devices are not shown. My SanDisk Cruzer USB drive immediately shows up, but neither my Microsoft media keyboard, or my 2 other usb periphrials (1 mouse 1 keyboard) show up to pass through. However, when I SSH into my ESXi server, and I run the command "lsusb", all the devices (including keyboards) show up. So this tells me my host is recognizing it, but intentionally not allowing it to be passed through.
I read online that this is intentional, so you accidentally don't lock yourself out of your console. I am perfectly happy with my console not responding to my keyboard. I found a few flags online, to put in the VMX file of the VM, but these did not work. I tried rebooting my host.
I thought of passing through the entire USB interface. The Web Admin only shows that I have 1 USB Controller (Intel). It is not capable of pass through (greyed out). I think this is because the console has confiscated it, do the usb driver can run. So there is nothing I can simply pass through.
I tried reverting to the legacy USB drivers (disable the new VMKUSB driver) , by using SSH, and entering, "esxcli system module set -m=vmkusb -e=FALSE". When I enter this command, and reboot my host, the only usb device I see is "intel bluetooth", which is obviously confusing for me.
I don't have another PCIE slot to put in a USB hub, so I think my only option at this point is to figure out a way for HID devices to be allowed as USB devices by ESXi. It's comically ridiculous that it's this hard to simply plug a usb device into a VM.
I have only been using the Web Admin. I tried installing the VMware client for windows, but it is not supported by my version of ESXi (6.5)
Thank you for reading my question. I really appreciate your time and help!