USB 4g/LTE passthrough

mangos

New Member
Jan 26, 2022
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Hi there,

I love proxmox but I have quite a specific usecase which is causing me some trouble. I am not an IT professional by any means so please bear with me.

My hardware:

1) 40 Intel NUCS (4 in cluster so far)
2) 48 port unmanaged switch
3) A lot of Huawei USB 4g/LTE dongles. (E3372h-607)
4) Switch is connected to my Router via wan cable

I have a requirement to run 60-100 Windows vms on these NUCS and each Windows Guest must use one dongle and one dongle only to access the internet.

I am having trouble passing through the internet from these usb dongles to Windows Guests directly from Proxmox - I cannot for the life of me figure out why windows won't recognise the dongles. (They work perfect in a non VM Windows)

Anyway so it turns out Ubuntu recognises them just fine using usb passthrough. So my plan is to somehow create some sort of gateway in the ubuntu vm to each and every windows guest - is this possible? How would I go about this? Basically I want every Windows Guest on each of my NUCS to have access to one dongles internet connection, that's it. I have spent weeks and weeks on this problem myself.

Do I need to use a Linux Bridge? a VLAN? What exactly will help me achieve my goal?

Cheers
 
Last edited:
already seen:
USB Devices in Virtual Machines?

working fine with usb sticks ;)

Short:

Get USB ID - for me it's 2-2:
Bash:
root@Proxmox ~ lsusb -t
/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/10p, 5000M
    |__ Port2: Dev 2, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-sotrage, 1000M
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci_hcd/16p, 480M

Edit VM.conf - use ContainerID instead of VM-ID and add "usb0: host=2-2" in last lane
Bash:
root@Proxmox ~ nano /etc/pve/qemu-server/<VM-ID>.conf

bios: ovmf
boot: order=virtio0;ide2;net0
cores: 4
efidisk0: vg1:vm-105-disk-1,efitype=4m,pre-enrolled-keys=1,size=4M
machine: pc-q35-6.1
memory: 32768
meta: creation-qemu=6.1.0,ctime=1642537547
name: Server2022
net0: virtio=FA:4B:84:15:5D:F8,bridge=vmbr2,firewall=1
numa: 0
onboot: 1
ostype: win11
scsihw: virtio-scsi-pci
smbios1: uuid=ba2f7aa2-a9e3-4eba-a00b-670c21cecb2b
sockets: 1
tpmstate0: vg1:vm-105-disk-2,size=4M,version=v2.0
virtio0: vg1:vm-105-disk-0,cache=writeback,discard=on,size=150G
vmgenid: 37777ec9-f8d4-4e8d-a56b-f712fad9f4a3
usb0: host=2-2
 
Last edited:
Hey mate thanks for your reply.

I was able to sort this out and have passed through around 90 4g dongles directly to my Windows 10 vms in my cluster

Working on pfsense protectli and layer three switch for multiple vlans now.

Cheers!
 

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