I have an environment with a need for a number of kiosk machines (100+ desktops). Here's a quick overview of what I'm trying to accomplish, any suggestions on how to do this are greatly appreciated!
There will be a few different configurations of the kiosk needed, the only difference between configurations will be the application(s) installed.
The OS will be the same XP SP2 (or SP3 if we take the plunge) with the same configuration settings.
Many of the kiosks will have hardware controller cards installed (not plug-and-play) that connect to scientific instruments.
The applications instaled are all scientific in nature (no graphics needs) and many are poorly written (read: made by scientists, not software engineers. Many don't even let you pick where to install them or save the data, they hard code it in the compiled exe).
The applications use the controller cards to control scientific equipment like Mass Specs, HPLCs, Plate Readers, etc. so the OS/Software/Hardware all need to work together and the hardware for the kiosk will be physically connected to these instruments via the controller cards.
Many of the apps have some sort of hardware license key (USB mostly, some serial) that needs to be detected by the app to even get it to open.
I think the perfect solution would be to get the machines to PXE boot directly to the broker, or some way of avoiding a local OS install on the kiosks which would need to be patched/maintained (maybe streaming a VM or OS image?). Unfortunately we can't go to a thin client like Wyse since we have
specific instrument controller cards that need to be in used by these systems. Anyone have any thoughts on how to handle this? I'd really like to be able and centralize the OS so only one image/VM needs to be maintained, and if the same can be done for the apps that'd be even better. I can handle one VM/image for each kiosk configuration if that's the only choice, but the best solution would be one OS image/VM and then streaming the apps per a GPO or per user account (or some other method of telling which kiosk configuration the user needs). These machines will not be rebooted often and network connectivity isn't a real concern. We have a current ESX 3.5 environment and an EMC SAN with plenty of space, so if we can leverage those that'd be even better.
Thanks in advance for any help offered!
