USB over Network - Update
A few days ago, I wrote about FabulaTech's USB over Network solution. I'd just installed it and started using it, and I was moderately impressed. It solves a very real problem for those of us looking to do more virtualization of our environmets now that Hyper-V is a released product. (And especially since we'll shortly have an RTM version of System Center Virtual Machine Manager, SCVMM, that works with Hyper-V.)
Since that initial install, I've had a chance to use USB-over-Ethernet a bit more, and I'm completely impressed. The driver signing issue isn't as bad as I first feared - it's signed, but unfortunately not by a signing authority that is recognized by Microsoft. This means you'll need to acknowledge two rather scary red windows during the client install, but it will go through without issue if you tell it to. I've also had a conversation with Andrew Scott, the PM for their USB over Ethernet and USB over RDP products, and he assures me that they are accutely aware of the driver signing issue, and are working with their signing authority to get it resolved. Hopefully, they will.
All in all, after a several days with the product, we remain convinced that it is a very viable solution to a problem we think a lot of us are going to have - how to have full-on, fast, USB devices in virtualized machines. Someday, Microsoft will provide this functionality in their virtualization solutions. And VMWare already does to some extent, though I've heard that it's not always as robust as it might be. But for those of us implementing Hyper-V today, who need a very real solution today, USB over Ethernet is it.
Charlie.