AnywhereUSB/5 disabling 'autoconnect'

Hi,
I operate two (VM) servers onVMWare.

One is ‘master’ and since it has some USB dongle protected applications I am using the AnywhereUSB to connect to them.
Second server is ‘slave’, i.e. it is not active, but it is exact copy of first one and all the data is constantly replicated to it from the first server.

Since the driver automatically connects to AnywhereUSB box when the server boots up, I often end up with second server ‘stealing’ the dongles from the first one.

It seems to me that this behaviour is not controlled by a service, so my question is: is there an setting (or even registry setting) with which I could disable driver from connecting to AnywhereUSB box until I explicitly enabe that?

I’d appreciate any suggestion.

Hello,

Can you help me better understand the environment? Are both VM’s “powered on” at the same time? Are the IP addresses of both of the VM’s the same, or different?

Generally speaking, as long as a PC (physical or virtual) is connected to an AnywhereUSB, it should remain connected and no other PC should be able to “steal” the connection UNLESS that PC is shut down or rebooted. So that makes me wonder - when that problem happens, is the “master” still “powered on” or not?

To answer your question, right, there isn’t a service per se, but functionally we behave like a service in the sense that the AnywhereUSB will connect to the host PC automatically during bootup, even without logging into Windows. We use registry entries to control much of the AnywhereUSB behavior. The only way a PC will connect to an AnywhereUSB is if the IP address of the AnywhereUSB is in the Connection List (“Edit / Connection List” in the AnywhereUSB Configuration Utility). If you go to the Connection List on both of these VMs, do they both have the AnywhereUSB’s IP address in them or not? If you don’t want the “slave” to connect to the AnywhereUSB unless specifically told to do so, you could remove the AnywhereUSB’s IP address from the Connection List and only add it there manually when you want that “slave” to connect to the AnywhereUSB. Of course, you would need to first disconnect the “master” by removing the AnywhereUSB’s IP address from the Connection List.

The VM’s have different IP’s. Occasionaly we do maintenance reboots, usually both machines at the same time. The ‘unwanted’ behaviour (of course) happens when the second VM is brought up before the first one.

After your reply I checked if I can remove the AnywhereUSB IP from the connection list until such time that it is needed, but I find no way of doing it. Config utility is version 2.60.5.0.

I found that there is newer version (2.70.14.0) published on your site. I’ll try it as soon as I can, to see if it works differently.

Meanwhile I found a way which ‘kind off’ solve my needs. In registry HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services I found that by changing Start from 4 to 3 for the AWUSBSY, AWUSBD, IONHUB, I prevent them from loading at boot time. To enable them I have to change the Start of these back to original state and reboot the machine. Of couse this can easily be done by simple script.

Since ‘Failover’ is not an automated process (and it can’t be, because of some applications limitations), reboot may be little inelegant, but not unacceptable.

In the AnywhereUSB Configuration Utility, do you see “Edit” at the top? That menu should give you the option “Connection List” (as well as “Discovery List”). Are you not seeing that?

LOL!

Yes, I see that (now, after you rubbed my nose into it) :slight_smile:
I really do feel stupid right now. I spen quite some time figuring this out, and it never occured to me to click on te edit menu.

What can I say - I am really sorry about that. Thanks for your (saintly!) patience…

Regards, Vladimir

I have an application that uses a similar USB Sentinel key. I want to build an Active/Passive cluster pair and failover the AnywhereUSB connection to the active node via scripting. From what I have seen so far, there is no documented way of doing this - it seems I need to use the Windows GUI! Is this actually the case? I am really hoping someone knows how it can be done via scripting!

We have an API:

ftp://austin:!15st3n!@ftp1.digi.com/support/AnywhereUSB/AnywhereUSB_API.zip

Thanks - that perfect!