USB Redirection with RDP
Back in the days of View 3.0 the USB redirection was done over a virtual channel in the RDP protocol. This changed with View 3.1 as of this release there were a second way of USB data transportation added. You can still use the RDP virtual channels and it is used as a fallback if the preferred option, a TCP connection is not available. The TCP connection is listening on port 32111 in the guest. The configuration can be seen in the virtual desktops Windows Registry at HKLM\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM\Agent\Configuration\Listener. The parameter FRAMEWORKCHANNEL defines the port number which is 32111 as default. Both connections, the virtual channels and also the TCP connection can be tunnelled via the VMware View Security Server. With the USB Redirection you can use USB device filters on a class, hardware ID a specific device basis. The Registry keys for those are:
HKLM\Software\Vmware, Inc.\VMware VDM\USB\ClassFilters
HKLM\Software\Vmware, Inc.\VMware VDM\USB\ HardwareIDFilters
HKLM\Software\Vmware, Inc.\VMware VDM \USB\AllowHardwareIDs
The format of each entry in HEX is: Vid_xxxx&Pid_xxxx -> xxxx. If a device is excluded by the class, you can specifically include it again by the hardware ID. The ClassGUID’s and hardware ID’s ca be found in the machine log file on each client.
To learn more about HID devices with VMware View please check one of my older articles. This article also gives you a quick overview of the USB log file entries.
