I'm kind of new to the virtualization side of IT. As a preface, I'm a Electrical/Controls engineer and looking to streamline some of my IT tasks as far as updating and pushing new control "PC" nodes to the shop floor.
I have multiple PCs on the shop floor that run one of the most popular Human Machine Interface (HMI) programs. These PC talk through software to dedicated Program Logic Controllers. I'm pretty much the responsible person for updating the HMI and communication software, IT manages PC updates.
The following is what I would like to accomplish if possible.
Place a thin node client device (or dumb PC) at each current PC location and have a master VM workstation app that would be stored on a server and distributed into images for each client. The thin client would automatically grab the correct image and run it seamlessly for the operator? Is there a thin client available that works in this fashion? I would also like to lock down which image to run by client name (I want the operators to only have access to the application for the machine being operated, not other equipment at another location in the plant, but I'd like to have the ability to override this as the admin). If the client is a PC is there a way to force the image to run without an OS? (I'm trying to get PC/Client agnostic). I would also like to be able to grab the "master" image and run it on my development PC so that change control is handled as I roll out updates from the master to the user images. Of course all this talk is with out licenses at the moment and pure investigation. I'm assuming I would need a license for each client to run not only a OS environment, but also the HMI environment. There would be no data collection from these clients (all data collection is stored in a historian on a separate server).
Basically what I want is an operator interface on a VM to run at location X when the operator walks up to the client device, the ability to update the master operator interface VM and roll it into a client that would run the new image at a defined time or reboot of the client, and be hardware agnostic enough that I can take a new client to the floor at set it up quickly in place of the expired client (or as anew client) and have it run the desired image with little fanfare (Basically take new PC/client to the location, run a utility to name the node, reboot and it runs the desired VM). Also the ability to view the client and/or master while being run (Dameware) from my development PC or the server.
