USB to IP hubs - any recommendations

[glennda]

I'm looking at some USB to IP Hubs at the moment for a Virtual environment. The background is I have a client which needs HA on some services which is fine we use VMware's HA for this. The snag is one of the servers requires a USB licensing dongle which if plugged into a single host will not provide HA.

 

Therefore the Idea of a USB to IP hub was mentioned and looks ideal but I'm after some recommendations/feedback on them.

 

1. Have you used one in a similar way - how did it work?

2. If it worked what hardware was it?

 

Toby

[SYNACK]

You're moving your single point of failure for the system from a large expencive server with redundancy etc. to a much cheaper less redundant IP USB switch. It does allow for HA on the software side but may not give you as much HA as expected. The best bet is to have a stern chat to the vendors which probably won't accomplish much but may add to a larger case to get it fixed. The other thing is to make sure that the USB hub is a low level one as some just allow the sharing of certain device types like printers and mass storage devices. The dongles usually work under a much different device class so you'd want to amke sure it would support the dongles in the first place.

[glennda]

I'm not the one pushing this - its something the client i after.

 

I'm more thinking about things along the lines of the Digi Anywhere USB hub (£500 or so) - not something like a Startech device!

 

From speaking with the manafacture of the dongle they reckon it will work with one of those.

[MatthewL]

I know Belkin do something but its cheap and relies on software to be installed. Not sure what to recommend.

[Heebeejeebee]

I know Belkin do something but its cheap and relies on software to be installed. Not sure what to recommend.

 

I've tried the Belkin route and it doesn't work (at least with the SpeedStep dongles).

 

HBJB

[User3204]

I've tried the Belkin one, and it was fine for what we wanted it for, sharing out a USB scanner.

 

The only issue we had with it was that the students would use the software and take control of the scanner from eachother, as it only allowed one computer to be able to use the device at a time. Eventually we just made up a computer especially for this scanner. Meh.

 

I tried to use this for a license server, but then discovered that the new version of the license server no longer needed the dongle. Can't remember what it was, possibly Solidworks... It didn't work by the way.