PCI passthrough allows you to use a physical PCI device (graphics card, network card) inside a VM (KVM virtualization only). If you 'PCI passthrough' a device, the device is not available to the host anymore. Note: PCI passthrough is an experimental feature in Proxmox VE Intel CPU.
While researching the requirements to make our production servers into Virtual Machines, I have ran into a wall. Please help.The biggest hurdle for us would be the Software Licensing for some of our software.The software in question requires a USB Dongle/ key for licensing.These 'dongles' require the Sentinel HASP drivers in order for the system to fully recognize the license held on each dongle.So, the big question would be. How on Earth can we link these hardware keys to our virtual machine?And im not asking about configurations, I can easily figure out how to assign a USB port/ device to a VM.The bigger question is, How can we utilize multiple keys at the same time for different machines if the Server is limited to only 4 USB ports?More detail: we currently have 13 servers that runs licensed software that requires the dongle. Out of those 13, 4 of them require more than one licensing dongle (for more than one application).So, Do beefy servers for Virtualization have 30 USB ports? If no, then what are my options. (hubs, splitters, etc.)The software we use requires the hardware key at all times, unfortunately, there are no other licensing options for these applications (I asked specifically if we could just get a site license, but no.)We have a dongle for each instance of the software.
I am NOT asking how to use one licensing dongle multiple times, that would not be legal.How can we make this work for us? I've used USB ports with virtualised servers since ESX 3.0 (i.e.
Before VMware supported USB).If you value your sanity then I strongly suggest that you don't use USB directly from the host server as then you have the problem of VM being tied to physical machine.I used USB anywhere as linked by TAC above. This works, works well and works reliably. I can vMotion the running VM to a different host and it is all fine. I was using it to provide a single USB port to a server so that I could then install a USB to serial COM adapter and then attach a modem.
It was all fine and I could vMotion whilst dialed up from the server.With this sort of solution you can maintain the separation of the VM from the physical host and you can scale it out as big as you need. You can even test that this works before you virtualise by testing this on a server that you are currently using.I think that you'll need a 1 x USB anywhere for each virtual server and I think that the minimum size USB anywhere has 4 ports.
Obviousy you can have as many USB anwhere boxes as you need. Just that each will need an IP address. For the flexibility that you getting they are reasonably priced.
I've used USB ports with virtualised servers since ESX 3.0 (i.e. Before VMware supported USB).If you value your sanity then I strongly suggest that you don't use USB directly from the host server as then you have the problem of VM being tied to physical machine.I used USB anywhere as linked by TAC above. This works, works well and works reliably. I can vMotion the running VM to a different host and it is all fine. I was using it to provide a single USB port to a server so that I could then install a USB to serial COM adapter and then attach a modem. It was all fine and I could vMotion whilst dialed up from the server.With this sort of solution you can maintain the separation of the VM from the physical host and you can scale it out as big as you need. You can even test that this works before you virtualise by testing this on a server that you are currently using.I think that you'll need a 1 x USB anywhere for each virtual server and I think that the minimum size USB anywhere has 4 ports.
Obviousy you can have as many USB anwhere boxes as you need. Just that each will need an IP address.
For the flexibility that you getting they are reasonably priced. Bruce9404 wrote:If you value your sanity then I strongly suggest that you don't use USB directly from the host server as then you have the problem of VM being tied to physical machine.I'd like to really emphasize the point on independence from specific physical hardware. This way a migration to a new host doesn't require moving the dongle.Just be aware that this entire dongle thing will limit your DR functions. What do you do when recovering from a collapsed ceiling that buries your USB over IP equipment? You can recover the workload but if it doesn't see the dongle any more.Talk to the software vendor about that problem.
Alex3031 wrote:I don't see the big deal with tying the USB dongle to the physical machine, because of exactly what John just said, all you've done is moved the point of failure to another device. Further now you also have added the network as an additional layer of possible failure.
Obviously it can be done either way I think they both have their merits though.Just to clarify, I think that moving it to the network device is a good idea when you have at least two hosts at the location that you'll potentially move the workload to.Just a complication for off-site DR.