When ever I attend a VMware presentation, one of the most common question “How would we handle our USB or parralel licenses dongles in VMware ESX.” Are they supported? Can I get them to work some how? What make the question more critical that most presenters are from a sale or pre-sale background and does not have the clear answer. The real answer to the question, yes its workable but you might need some third party utility to get the required setup to run. Some good resources to get you started are below:

VMware ESX Server Using AnywhereUSB to Connect USB Devices

VMware esx21admin_modvm_parallel_running

USB Device Support within VMware ESX 3.x and ESXi

VMware ESXi – Serial & Parallel Port (use physical serial port on the host)

I hope this information will be a helpful leads for many people to come and face problems with this matter :).