vnc/rdp over kvm ip/ethernet?

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equate975

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 13, 2005
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I'm not sure where to quite look, but let me explain what I am trying to do.

I manage maybe 15 POS computers that are just a royal pain in my ass. I have constant HW failures due to heat, general "crap", employees spilling crap on computers, etc...

There is no "server" per-say to run these, so each POS machine is a full blown stand alone computer.

I've been playing with a lot of ideas on how to consolidate down some of his HW, and this is what I want to do:

Create a server that will run each POS terminal. I will probably use virtualbox or something since I can run each image in the BG and not have to use up a lot of the server resources. Then at each terminal station, have like a KVM box of some sort that I can rdp/vnc into one of the images running on the server. The computers really don't do a whole lot, I would imagine a pretty good i7 and 8gb of ram or so could easily run all of these things, 90% of the time each terminal is idle anyways.

does anyone know of a way to do this? I see KVM over ethernet, but I would still need to have a physical computer for that to work.
 
What type of I/O is needed for each POS station(receipt printer, scanner, etc)?

This could be run from a single terminal server, would need 15 dev cals, etc.

Look up wyse for ideas on thin client devices.
 
Well up until now I was screwed by having to run serial printers, but I can get away from them.

Basically all I would need is the monitor (elo usb touchscreens) and a usb card swiper. The card swipers just use keyboard drivers and for all intensive purposes are just "keyboards" there are no scanners at the terminals.

I thought about thin clients in the past, which would work, but I was hoping some sort of KVM would be easier since I only have like 15 terminals.
 
off of the top of my head, a single box running KVM to each of the clients will be messy. The main reason that you will need USB passthrough to the VMs. First off, all USB devices will have to run back to the hosting machine, and secondly, you will have to mount the USB device to the VM through the management interface. Supposing people don't rip/replace/swap USB devices on the POS machines, this might not be too terrible, but you'll need enough USB ports for all USB devices at all stations, which sound like 2 per machine, times 15 = 30 USB ports. Hubs won't work, either, so you'll need real ports.

Once you figure out how to do that (good luck), then you have to map them appropriate to each VM. If someone goes off swapping hardware at a POS, you're gonna have a real fun time figuring that out.

In my personal opinion, the best bet here may be some WYSE terminals with USB connectivity and touch screens at each station, going back to a connection broker, which is interfacing with ESX + whatever the fuck they're calling VDI, these days. Not a cheap solution, but it's the cleanest.
 
equate975 said:
Well up until now I was screwed by having to run serial printers, but I can get away from them.

Basically all I would need is the monitor (elo usb touchscreens) and a usb card swiper. The card swipers just use keyboard drivers and for all intensive purposes are just "keyboards" there are no scanners at the terminals.

I thought about thin clients in the past, which would work, but I was hoping some sort of KVM would be easier since I only have like 15 terminals.
Click to expand...

Serial passthrough can be done with RDP. There are WYSE drivers for the ELO touch screens(we use them at work). The USB card swipers should be fine since it's just a HID device.

KVM might be more of a task than you think. 1 ethernet drop per terminal will be much easier than running expensive KVM cables.
 
sabregen said:
off of the top of my head, a single box running KVM to each of the clients will be messy. The main reason that you will need USB passthrough to the VMs. First off, all USB devices will have to run back to the hosting machine, and secondly, you will have to mount the USB device to the VM through the management interface. Supposing people don't rip/replace/swap USB devices on the POS machines, this might not be too terrible, but you'll need enough USB ports for all USB devices at all stations, which sound like 2 per machine, times 15 = 30 USB ports. Hubs won't work, either, so you'll need real ports.

Once you figure out how to do that (good luck), then you have to map them appropriate to each VM. If someone goes off swapping hardware at a POS, you're gonna have a real fun time figuring that out.
Click to expand...

This^^^^

Also sounds like the reason for doing this is that currently managing it is a PITA...well KVMs wont make it any easier.
Do yourself a favor and just do it right the first time.
 
Ok well I guess I am back to thinking about thin clients again. I can/will eliminate the serial printers. They are honestly a huge PITA even without virtualization. Some terminals run upwards of 4 printers which really sucks, and they don't just user serial cables either, its an adapter to cat5 then back to a serial port so I can run long distances. Add that to the fact that most computers these days you are lucky to get 2 serial ports I constantly have to get add on cards or usb adapters (which really blow but are the most convenient)

What is the software that the WYSE clients run? Does it just connect to an ESX sever or is is all proprietary?

I try to run as much open source as I can, just to keep costs down. I was kinda looking at thinstation (www.thinstation.org) as an option. Then use the existing terminals I have w/o HD's until they kick the can. I've slowly been migrating to a fleet of eeebox's since they are really cheap and do exactly what I want, only issue with those is xp home doesn't work so I have to re-image them all with pro. But the point being they would make pretty slick thin clients because of cost and size, I can easily just strap them to to back of my monitors for a really clean install.
 
equate975 said:
Ok well I guess I am back to thinking about thin clients again. I can/will eliminate the serial printers. They are honestly a huge PITA even without virtualization. Some terminals run upwards of 4 printers which really sucks, and they don't just user serial cables either, its an adapter to cat5 then back to a serial port so I can run long distances. Add that to the fact that most computers these days you are lucky to get 2 serial ports I constantly have to get add on cards or usb adapters (which really blow but are the most convenient)

What is the software that the WYSE clients run? Does it just connect to an ESX sever or is is all proprietary?

I try to run as much open source as I can, just to keep costs down. I was kinda looking at thinstation (www.thinstation.org) as an option. Then use the existing terminals I have w/o HD's until they kick the can. I've slowly been migrating to a fleet of eeebox's since they are really cheap and do exactly what I want, only issue with those is xp home doesn't work so I have to re-image them all with pro. But the point being they would make pretty slick thin clients because of cost and size, I can easily just strap them to to back of my monitors for a really clean install.
Click to expand...

Depending on the model, the WYSEs run Wyse OS, Windows CE, or XPe. Your best bet would be to run RDP or ICA.

Thinstation is more for turning old hardware into a thin client, not the actual OS the thin clients connect to.
 
All the above though would require a 2k3+ server with DHCP though correct? I was reading up on wyse and it looks like I need a server just to basically give each terminal info on the ftp server for its config.

The problem I generally have with anything I do, is we are small enough that enterprise software is just too much and never works out right, but we are big enough that simple small programs never do enough. What I'm getting at, is I have no windows sever of any kind.
 
equate975 said:
All the above though would require a 2k3+ server with DHCP though correct? I was reading up on wyse and it looks like I need a server just to basically give each terminal info on the ftp server for its config.

The problem I generally have with anything I do, is we are small enough that enterprise software is just too much and never works out right, but we are big enough that simple small programs never do enough. What I'm getting at, is I have no windows sever of any kind.
Click to expand...

You can static config the terminals.

How does the POS software work now, sneakernet?
 
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