Let’s have a look at the case study of “Ceron Digital Engineering”, a systems integration company in Hong Kong, that describes how how USB over Ethernet by Electronic Team, Inc. overcomes USB problems in their VM Projects.
Ceron Digial Engineering is a systems integrator in Hong Kong, providing Virtualization Solutions to their customers.
Jon Cheng, the CTO of Ceron Digital Engineering, has various projects helping his clients with physical computers virtualization into different Virtual Machine platforms (P2V) – Vmware, Hyper-V, Xen…
Company industry: System Integration.
Website: http://www.ceronde.com/
Alex Taylor: What challenges made you search for this kind of software?
Jon Cheng: Our Clients have different systems protected by the USB dongles. However, USB Dongles are not fully supported by VM systems (only 10 models are officially supported by Vmware and Zero for Hyper-V). Without a solid solution for USB dongles, our project cannot progress.
Alex Taylor: How did you get to know about our software?
Jon Cheng: Google, IT man’s best friend. After reading related posts on the tech forums, I found the solution.
Alex Taylor: Did you try other products for the same task before choosing Electronic Team, Inc. solution? Why did you prefer our product?
Jon Cheng: Sure, we had to check our customer’s system would run smoothly without any problems! At the beginning, we were looking for a hardware based solution so it woud be easier for our client to share ports. There are only 2-3 products available at the market. Unfortunately, Hong Kong’s distributor didn’t have any in stock and the shipping is too long. We found out that the firmware as well as the software driver hadn’t been updated for a long time and supported only 64-bit operating systems. Therefore, we started looking for a software solution. There are about 5 products available at the market. We tested all of them one-by-one. Some of them have powerful features like sharing one device to multiple hosts, while others may have an attractive pricing scheme for resellers. After thorough comparing of them, we choose Electronic Team’s Inc. solution because:
- They keeping updating their software. It means more and more hardware and OS will be supported.
- The price is not the cheapest but it worths every penny.
- Excellent Technical support. We emailed all the vendors and Electronic Team, Inc. was the fastest one to reply.
- Security. There is a setting allowing only a specified client connect to the Server.
- Last but not least, stablility, which is the most important factor for our project. We needed to ensure everything would work after P2V. Electronic Team, Inc. software has never disconnected during our tests.
Alex Taylor: Please, describe how you are using our product now.
Jon Cheng: We have 3 software systems P2Ved into the Vmware ESXi 5.5 Server. The USB over Ethernet by Electronic Team, Inc. is installed on a PC, all my 3 dongles are also plugged into the USB ports of that PC. I “power-on” the software system on the VM-A, of course, it doesn’t run without a valid USB Dongle. I then install USB over Ethernet on the VM-A. Once I select the right dongle and click share on the PC, my software system on the VM-A automatically connects to that shared dongle and it works immediately. I do the same thing on VM-B and VM-C, everything works perfectly. Since all these three system use USB dongles from the same manufacturer, to make sure the client in-house technician will not mix the key in the future, I add a description in the USB over Ethernet server setting and force the Dongle to connect only to the relevant IP address.
Alex Taylor: How did you benefit from using USB over Ethernet
Jon Cheng: With the USB over Ethernet by Electronic Team, Inc., I can fix all the dongle-related issues in the P2V Projects. To my curiosity, I also help my client P2V another system that has USB peripheral device connected, all these systems are not included in their original P2V project scope. It is unbelievable that all of them work without any error. My client is fully satisfied with the Virtualization project and we got a bonus for the extra system migrated.