This blog post explains how to use this feature on ESXi hosts in VMware vSphere. VMware allows you to connect USB devices to virtual machines by using the USB passthrough feature (passing the device through). If your external physical device has the USB interface, you can attach this device to a virtual machine running on VMware Workstation and ESXi server.
This device can be a printer, scanner, USB flash drive, USB hard disk drive, USB smart card reader, security dongles, USB license keys, etc. Sometimes you may need to connect a physical device to a virtual machine directly. Virtual controllers, disks, DVD-ROM, video card, network cards, input devices, and other devices are usually created in a virtual machine.
When using virtual machines, the principle of hardware virtualization is used and hypervisor software emulates devices used by VMs on the software level.
By Michael Bose How to Use USB Devices with a VMware vSphere Virtual Machine
