How to use appium installed in VM but devices connected to some physical machine?

[saimadhu]

We need to provide automation support to product testing teams. Currently, we are asking them to install appium on physical machine and connect the devices under test to the physical machine.

But we have a concern that we can't install appium on every physical machine we are using for work.
I am thinking of is there any possibility of appium installed on 1 or more VMs. If requried, we can connect the devices to each individuals (testers) personally assigned physical machine.

How to tell appium that devices are connected to some physical machine and the test execution should happen on those devices?

[saimadhu]

Is any one using Appium installation in VM machines to test on real devices?
Is device must be connected to the appium installed machine atleast once before starting testing?

[dduphorn]

@saimadhu

I'm attempting the same thing.

I have a hub and connect are two OS X VMs. On each VM I've connected a real device. When I execute the from the Hub to the VM it cannot find the devices. If I run directly from the VM it finds the devices. I'm assuming this is possible. Am I missing a configuration?

Did you figure it out?

Thanks

DD

[dduphorn]

I figure out my issue. Instead of connecting the devices to the VMs, I connected them to the hub machine. Then I used the Udid to specify the device I what what test to use.