I am trying to have our local Windows machines connect their usb devices to a remote centos hosted Windows virtual machine. The windows virtual machine runs office and I need to be able to update my iphone remotely with the vm. Itunes runs on the vm. It would also be nice to be able to remotely connect local optical drives to burn cd's with data from the vm.
Centos kernel is 2.6.32 running a centos 6.5 server. Virtualbox is version 4.3. The sever functions as a file sever for the vm's utilizing 3 raid five drives rsynced together for absolute redundency. Total data loss is not an option for me.
Connections to vm's established using windows remote desktop connection.
Tightvnc used for server connection and control only. Putty is also used to connect to server occassionaly. Everthing works great except for remotely connecting usb and optical drives.
After several weeks of searching I am beginning to wonder if this is even possible and if not is there a different system I should be looking at. I prefer open source and a Linux distro for the server.
PS all machines are on the same subnet.

Just a wild guess, have you enable the "Join Groups" Option on the windows machines? Then have virtualbox machine join each of the groups. Also you may need to install virtualbox-guest-utils to get access to different usb devices.

Don't know much about windows but will look for join groups option. I have virtualbox extentions loaded in the vm's, but was not aware of virtualbox-quest-utils. I assume this needs to be loaded into host? I have DKMS installed, do I still need virtualbox-quest-utils?
Thanks for your reply; at least now I know it is possible. Unfortunately this type of setup does not appear to be documented and yet to me it would seem to be common for people who have serveral computer users in their family.

I'll agree that one can use a network share for a usb. But to connect a device such as a phone or media player to a remote vm may be a different issue.

To use a host based usb port is different that a networked computer's usb port.

I may not get the question either.

Did you read this:

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch07.html#usb-over-rdp

Many times and other Doc,s to. Nothing seems to work except plugging into the remote host directly then attaching to the VM from the host. But I want to attach the USB device from a remote client then Remote connection manager to the VM (hosted guest) and use the USB 1device remotely on the VM. Same thing as is done with "USB network gate" a program by Eltima software. I think that Win 7 may not be exporting the USB device so Centos does not pick it up making it available for the VM.

Oh well. KVM/qemu has remote USB redirection which works very well. You might try using KVM/qemu and optionally libvirt, it makes managing VM's a heck lot easier, you even have a GUI for that which works similarly as the VBox one, can be used even remotely via ssh tunneling. Redirecting a USB port is done by adding a SPICE channel and using virt-viewer, just select the device you want to redirect.
Now KVM's video drivers arent that good compared to VBox, but if you use qxl virtual video card and install its drivers, it works ok (no 3d).

If accessing a USB device via RDP does not work, I would recommend to forward a device to virtual machine over the network. To connect a USB device to virtual machine, I would recommend you this guide: https://www.eltima.com/article/virtu...b-passthrough/