Hi all,

I assembled a new mini ITX machine to run a home based router/firewall in a vm environment. Downloaded the latest x64 iso and installed it onto my new build.

VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.0.0-469512.x86_64.iso

I managed to install it successfully and I have 2 questions:

1. My atheros mPCIe wireless card was not detected by vSphere. Anyway that I can make that work?

2. My 1 TB WD MyBook was not detected too, anyway that I can make that work?

Appreciate your help and thanks.

Would need more information to know exactly what you are doing. Like when you say these 2 devices were not detected, where do you mean not detected.

If you mean by the hypervisor itself, then no it won't detect them. It does not support wireless network devices. However, I don't know why it wouldn't detect an external hard drive as I have connected mine several times to thumb drives. Perhaps it doesn't like actual disk drives that aren't part of VMFS or the drive is formatted in something it can not mount.

As I don't know your experience level with ESXi, perhaps you mean Direct Path I/O, which in that case on a production machine had a fresh install not see devices that were installed during install. Shut the machine down, remove device, restart, shut down, install device, start up, and device was detected. Else are you sure your system is vmDirectPath compatible? Seems like it is somewhat sketchy whether a motherboard is going to be compatible unless it is specifically marked as compliant.

Anyways hopefully this is of help to you.

What sort of connection are you using for the MyBook device? You could use USB passthrough to assign it to a specific VM.

First of all, thank you both for replying to my question.

@Neuntoter:

- the devices were not detected in the host machine where I installed vSphere. I connected to the host using the client and I couldn't see it in one of the property tab page where it shows the hardwares of the host machine.
- the WD drive was formatted as FAT32
- the last time I used VMWare was during VMWare Server 2.x, please consider me a total newbie when it comes to ESXi
- I have not ventured into Direct Path I/O yet at this point because the first step is to get all my devices detected by the host but certainly a good feature I should spend more time in once I've got that done

@Dave:
- I used USB 2.x
- I'm not at the stage where I'm assigning the storage to a specific VM, getting it detected in the host now is the issue

ESXi won't recognize either device. USB passthrough will allow you to use the devices in a VM.

Hi Dave,

Not sure if I understood you correctly:

WD MyBook connected via USB can be seen by the VM using USB passthrough, right?

And the mini PCIe Atheros wireless card? Is there a PCI passthrough?

The PCIe card could be passed through to a VM if your system support VM Directpath? You can check on the Configuration > Hardware > Advanced Settings page. Your system needs to support Intel VT-d (directed I/O) or AMD IOMMU. You may need to enable this option in the BIOS.