TAM JWheeler CompositeUSB v1 Final

VMware Horizon View
Composite USB Devices Step by Step
T E C H N I C A L W H I T E PA P E R
W R I T T E N B Y:
JEREMY WHEELER
C O N S U LT I N G A R C H I T E C T
WHEELERJ@VMWARE.COM
Composite USB Devices
Step by Step
Table of Contents
1. DOCUMENT OVERVIEW.....................................................................................................2
2. PREPARATION STEPS..........................................................................................................3
3. PHYSICAL CLIENT STEPS REQUIRED....................................................................................6
4. GUEST OS STEPS REQUIRED.............................................................................................10
5. Validation.............................................................................................................................11
T E C H N I C A L W H I T E PA P E R / 1
1. Document Overview
The goal:
ACME Inc. has requirements for specific peripheral devices to work within a
virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). One of the devices is a Microsoft LifeCam
Cinema webcam. ACME’s vision is for end users to be able to plug it into a USB
device and the device auto-connects to the user’s VDI session.
The challenge:
Microsoft LifeCam Cinema, a frequently-used webcam, has difficulty working in
the VDI environment. The device appears in the drop-down list from the Horizon
View Client and when enabled, the camera uses the Microsoft webcam drivers
that are installed in the image. This would be fine, and is in fact a preferred
method, according to Microsoft. However, the webcam doesn’t work in VDI using
normal pass-through. If you enable redirect for the webcam, it switches to using
the VMware webcam drivers, and then it works fine in VDI. So how do we
exclude a single device, accept all the others, and still have a functioning
webcam?
Solution summary:
By enabling USB device splitting, we provide a dedicated channel for each
device, which in-turn gives us better visibility of unique peripheral devices in the
VDI environment. We are able to:
 Import Horizon View templates into Active Directory

 Identify your VIDs/PIDs
 Enable Horizon View Client Group Policy Object (GPO) policies
 Enable Horizon View Agent GPO policies
 Validate
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2. Preparation Steps
Follow these steps at the domain level for the GPO you will be placing in the
View organizational unit (OU):
Open Microsoft Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc)

a) Modify or create a new GPO by executing a right-click on ‘Group Policy
Objects’ (Image 1) and then select ‘New.'
b) Give your GPO a name.
c) Select ‘OK’ to save your new GPO.
Image 1:
1. Edit your GPO (Image 2)
a. Expand Group Policy Objects.
b. Select your GPO.
c. Select ‘Edit.’
Image 2:
Templates can be obtained by visiting vmware.com and downloading the latest

Horizon GPO bundle (Image 3).
Image 3:
2. Importing templates
a. Expand Computer Configuration and Policies.
b. Expand Administrative Templates.
c. Right-click on ‘Administrative Templates’ and select ‘Add/Remove
Templates…’ (Image 4).
Image 4:
3. Select templates to import and ‘Open’ (Image 5)
a. ‘vdm_agent.adm’
b. ‘vdm_client.adm’
Image 5:
Those are the preparation steps, now let’s move onto the physical end-point (we
will come back to configure the GPOs during a later step).
3. Physical Client Steps Required
4. Verify the USB webcam is visible on the end-point device by checking the
Windows Device Manager on the physical end-point (Image 6).
Image 6:
Quick summary of VIDS and PIDS
USB devices are identified primarily by their vendor identification (VID) and
product identification (PID). VIDs and PIDs are unique identifier numbers. A
company that wishes to produce USB devices needs to register and pay for a
VID, which is unique to that supplier. For example, Microsoft has a VID of
0x045E, and Apple has a VID of 0x05ac. Depending on how many products the
company produces, they may have multiple VIDs within a single company. The
product ID is a four-byte identifier that names the specific device.
Coupled with the VID, the PID uniquely identifies a driver that the operating
system (OS) must load for a given device. Note that there may be multiple
“products” that all use the same VID and PID if they all use the same device
driver. You can see the VID and PID for a device if you look in the device
manager. To do this, right-click a device and select Properties. Then click the
Details tab and select Hardware IDs from the Property drop-down menu. You can
see the VID and PID values reported in the example in image 7); this Microsoft
Webcam has a VID of 045E and PID of 075D.
Note: Other locations to check for VID/PID numbers are:
 Check the PCoIP client logs (debug-XXX-XX-XX-XXXXXX.txt) to see the

VIDS/PIDS assigned to a device.
Image 7:
Steps for identifying the Hardware ID for the USB device in question (Image 8).
a. Select ‘Device Manager'.
b. Select the device, i.e. ‘Microsoft LifeCam Cinema,’ then select
properties.
c. Select the ‘Details’ tab.
d. In the properties pull-down, select ‘Hardware IDs'.
e. Write-down the Hardware IDs.
Image 8:
5. Identify the 'Device class GUID’ for the USB device in question (Image 9).
a. Select ‘Device Manager.'
b. Select the device, i.e., ‘Microsoft LifeCam Cinema’ and properties.
c. Select the ‘Details’ tab.
d. In the properties pull-down, select ‘Device class GUID.’
e. Write down the GUID.
Image 9:
Wildcards in USB Device VIDs and PIDs
In USB configurations, you can use the ‘*’ wildcard to indicate unknown
characters in VID and PID specifications.
The standard VID-PID combination in a configuration looks like this:

vid-xxxx_pid-yyyy
While the number of characters for the VID and PID is variable, it is not
necessarily four digits long. Use a wildcard to specify USB devices from any
vendor. In this example, the device type is 5593):
vid-*_pid-5593
Or, you can use a wildcard to specify all USB devices from one vendor (here, the
vendor is FA11):
vid-FA11_pid-*
You can also use multiple ‘*’s to indicate the exact number of unknown
characters:
vid-0781_pid-55**
In this example, PIDs have four characters, all starting with ’55.’
For more information on VIDS/PIDS reference the white paper, USB Device
Redirection, Configuration, and Usage in View Virtual Desktops.
The following steps should be configured on the View Client GPO
(vdm_client.adm).
6. Physical desktop GPO configuration steps needed (Image 10)

a. Expand ‘User Configuration’.
b. Expand ‘Administrative Templates’.
c. Expand ‘Classic Administrative Templates (ADM),’ ‘VMware View
Client Configuration,’ and select ‘View USB Configuration.’
d. Select and enable:
i. ‘Allow Auto Device Splitting.’
Image 10:
7. USB Auto-connect GPO configuration steps needed (Image 11)

e. Expand ‘User Configuration.’
f. Expand ‘Administrative Templates’
g. Expand ‘Classic Administrative Templates (ADM)’ and ‘VMware
View Client Configuration’
h. Select ‘Scripting definitions’
i. Select and enable:
i. ‘Connect all USB devices to the desktop on launch.’
ii. ‘Connect USB devices to the desktop when they are plugged
in.’
Image 11:
4. Guest OS Steps Required
The following steps should be configured on the View Agent GPO

(vdm_agent.adm).
8. Guest desktop GPO configuration steps needed

j. Expand ‘User Configuration.’
k. Expand ‘Administrative Templates.’
l. Expand ‘Classic Administrative Templates (ADM)’ and ‘VMware
View Agent Configuration.’
m. Select ‘View USB Configuration.’
n. Select ‘Exclude Vid/Pid Device.’
o. Enable policy.
p. Enter the VID/PID, i.e. ‘o:vid-045e_pid-075d,’ In our example we
are using an override agent modifier (Horizon Client uses the View
Agent policy setting instead of the Horizon Client policy setting).
Image 12:
5. Validation
This is the final validation step. When connecting to your VDI environment, you
can verify in a few steps that all the changes you made (the above steps),
worked.
1. We should see from the Horizon View Client pull-down for ‘Connect USB
Device’ showing a similar image:
a. Grey ‘Automatically Connect at Startup.’
b. Grey ‘Automatically Connect when Inserted.’
c. Additional USB devices.
Note: You should NOT see the Microsoft Webcam (LifeCam) as we are excluding
it from pass-through, but instead forcing a redirect connection of the camera to
the VDI desktop, which will use VMware’s native webcam drivers (Image 13).
Image 13:
You should be able to launch the LifeCam Webcam and have it operate normally within
your VDI session. Additionally, you should not see the Microsoft Webcam driver listed in
the device chain (Image 14).
Image 14:
You can also verify the policy is in effect by checking the Horizon View Agent logs
on the guest OS. In this example we are looking at ‘log-2016-03-09.txt’ from
DriveLetter:\ProgramData\VMware\VDM\logs location on the VDI desktop.
Image 15:

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VMware Horizon View

Composite USB Devices Step by Step

 Import Horizon View templates into Active Directory

Open Microsoft Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc)

Templates can be obtained by visiting vmware.com and downloading the latest

Quick summary of VIDS and PIDS

 Check the PCoIP client logs (debug-XXX-XX-XX-XXXXXX.txt) to see the

Wildcards in USB Device VIDs and PIDs

The standard VID-PID combination in a configuration looks like this:

6. Physical desktop GPO configuration steps needed (Image 10)

7. USB Auto-connect GPO configuration steps needed (Image 11)

The following steps should be configured on the View Agent GPO

8. Guest desktop GPO configuration steps needed

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