I'm running ESXi 3.5 U3 on a Dell T410 Server. I have about 10 VMs running there, managed from a separate small server/Domain controller. One of the VMs is my main desktop Windows XP SP3. Way back when that was a physical machine I had lots of USB devices connected to it. Now I'm trying to figure out a way to do that with a VM.

I know the 4.0 is supposed to have some ability to do that (if you have the right hardware and you only need 2 devices) but I was not planning on upgrading to 4.0 for quite some time.

I was passed a link
http://vm-help.com/esx40i/VMDirectPath/USB_Setup.php
which says "The typical solution is to use a USB over IP device to connect the USB device to a VM." That's exactly what I have been trying to do. My USB server is a Silex SX-5000U2. My USB devices include scanners, cameras, cell phone, disk drives, card readers and more.

If someone knows of a writeup on how to make that work, please let me know.

I use a Belkin USB network device at home and basically I
1) installed the device on the network
2) it picked up a DHCP address
3) i installed the config app in my VM and setup the hub
4) installed the USB software on my workstations (physical and VM) and they work just fine (limited to XP / Vista for drivers though).

Seems like it would be the same with your device - http://www.abxzone.com/forums/f66/ozzie ... 88184.html.