Easiest way to add hotswapable USB ports to a VM?

[Naldinho]

I know there are some topics on how to pass an entire bus but a quick look at those made them seem more time consuming than I'd like.

 

My first thought was that if I bought an external USB hub that I could just plug that in and then pass it though -- bought two of them and that doesn't seem to work.

 

My current idea is to go buy a PCIe USB add-on card and plug that in and hopefully it would show up  as something I could just pass-though to the VM -- can anyone confirm if this will work / not work?

[bigjme]

I have 2 vms, each with a pcie usb controller passed to it, then with a desk usb hub attached to that so I have full hotswap and plenty of usbs available

[aptalca]

I got a pcie usb3 card with 5 ports and passed the whole bus to a Windows 10 vm with a single addition in the xml. It works great. Whatever I plug in (mouse, keyboard, flash drive, external hdd, etc.) is instantly recognized in Windows

 

See guide here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=36768.0

[Naldinho]

Thank you both. Off to get a add-on card.

[bungee91]

If you know which devices you plan to hotplug (think this is how this plug-in works, haven't used personally) you could give this a try https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=47240.0.