Topic: Fireface UC and VMware ESXi virtualization
Dear RME soundcard users,
We have a test set-up where we use RME Fireface UC to perform platform and system tests for Hearing Instruments, which for the most parts work fine. We currently have 6 test systems running, but will need more in the near future.
We would therefore like to “virtualize” this existing running test set-up so we can replicate it over a large number of identical machines. We have managed to make an Windows 7 image similar to our “old” test set-up and it runs the tests fine using VMware Workstation 12.
But… when we try to deploy the very same image under VMware EXSi 6.0 (and vSphere) on one of the existing test machines, it does not work as expected. (Please note that we use exactly the same hardware for our “normal” test set-up and can thus rule out any hardware specific issues).
It turns out that we cannot even play sounds in a VM under EXSi via Fireface UC!!
Reading the small details on EXSi and the support for USB devices – see https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micro … Id=1021345 – we can see that it does not support
These USB devices are not available for passthrough:
* USB devices such as real time video cameras and audio devices that use isochronous data transfers.
My guess is that the USB driver for Fireface UC uses exactly this to play sounds. Or?
Do you have any knowledge or experience about using the Fireface UC in a virtualized environment?
Do you have any solutions to this? E.g. other soundcards that work in this environment - e.g. if they do not use the isochronous data transfer.
This is a bit of a show stopper for us right now, so I hope some of you have some ideas
Best Regards,
Tonny