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USB Support In Presentation Server Products

Thursday, 17 May 2007 by Michel Roth

Sometimes I think "Universal" in USB should be "Unsupported" when used in conjunction with Citrix environments. This of course is not Citrix' fault but in this Citrix support article, Citrix tries to answer the question why you would expect which USB devices to be able to be used from within a Presentation Server session. The reason why I am describing this rather vaguely is because the list of supported and not supported USB devices is a list with generic device types. Don't go blind on this list, it's meant as a pointer.

One thing that is very important to remember is that in order for your USB device to be able to redirected to your Citrix session you of course need to correct USB driver to install the device on your client machine. If you know this, you know why redirecting USB devices on Thin Clients is often a problem.

"The following is a general list of the types of USB devices that are supported today:

1. USB Keyboards
2. USB Mice
3. USB Printers
4. USB Bar Code Scanners (which emulate keystroke entries)
5. USB Smart Card Readers
6. USB Storage Solutions (such as external drives and memory sticks)

The following USB device types are not currently supported running over a MetaFrame connection. But note that these devices are usually configured to operate with a local application on the client device, and once the data has been captured, to then transfer the data file to the server via the normal client drive mapping functionality of MetaFrame.

1. USB Image Scanners (such as flatbed scanners)
2. USB Cameras
3. USB Card Readers (such as for credit cards)
4. USB Check Readers
5. USB PDA Cradles

At this time Citrix does not support USB devices that require low-level port redirection. Due to the large number of USB-based devices that are available and the somewhat proprietary nature of each manufacturer�s implementation of USB, it has not been possible to date to make a generic USB port redirection solution available as a standard part of the MetaFrame product. Citrix is, however, investigating the possibilities for creating USB solutions for particular devices at the high-level device redirection as previously described. Please contact Citrix Systems for the possibility of creating customized solutions for such products, or for information on future support for them within the standard product."

Be sure to read the entire article here.