I have a use case for sharing a USB device. We have a USB based two factor authentication (USB card reader and CAC/PIV card). VMWare allows users to share the USB device between multiple VMs and the host. I would like to see this feature added to VirtualBox.
A typical use is that the CAC card is used to log in to the computer, and when it is removed the screen automatically locks. So, passing the USB Device to the VM causes the host to be locked because it detaches the USB Device from the host. But the CAC reader is needed by the VM to login.
Obviously, this would be a bad idea for USB Thumb drives, but to these authentication methods it's really required.
VMWare is able to do this with the guest additions installed, but unfortunately we cannot use VMWare any more, and the other option is switching to Hyper-V.... *shudder*. Which I would like to avoid.
Is this already a feature that can be enabled on a per device level? Did I miss something in the documentation?
According to the wikipedia article on xHCI under the Virtualization support section...
Thank you,The xHCI virtualization features also provide for:
direct-Assignment of individual USB devices (irrespective of their location in the bus topology) to any VM
minimizing run-time inter-VM communications
support for native USB device-sharing
support of PCIe SR-IOV (single root I/O virtualization)
Justin