Use WinPE for PXE Boot

[ragazzi]

Hi,

I'm not very advanced in WinPE. To be honest, I created my first WinPE 2.0 yesterday.... Now I'm stuck in what I'd like to do and want to know if I'm on the correct path or completely wrong and of course I'm looking for help and ideas.

What I'd like to do:

I want to boot a Operating System image (WinPE) over PXE and automatically start a graphical MWare client, which then connects to a VMWare connection manager. Then a Virtual Desktop is provided to the user.

Why I need to do this:

The user's PC will be shared, so they only can work with a virtual Image. Nothing should be installed on the PC (And in the future Thinclient) to reduce the risk that the user start to play around in the physical PC.

Is this possible using WinPE? Or am I on the completly wrong path?

What I did:

I created a WinPE and it started without problems. I also tried to find out how I can include the VMWare client to WinPE, but I could not figure out how to do this (Is there somewhere a good tutorial which explains how to do that?).

Thanks four your help

[bj-kaiser]

Hi,

I'm not very advanced in WinPE. To be honest, I created my first WinPE 2.0 yesterday.... Now I'm stuck in what I'd like to do and want to know if I'm on the correct path or completely wrong and of course I'm looking for help and ideas.

What I'd like to do:

I want to boot a Operating System image (WinPE) over PXE and automatically start a graphical MWare client, which then connects to a VMWare connection manager. Then a Virtual Desktop is provided to the user.

Why I need to do this:

The user's PC will be shared, so they only can work with a virtual Image. Nothing should be installed on the PC (And in the future Thinclient) to reduce the risk that the user start to play around in the physical PC.

Is this possible using WinPE? Or am I on the completly wrong path?

What I did:

I created a WinPE and it started without problems. I also tried to find out how I can include the VMWare client to WinPE, but I could not figure out how to do this (Is there somewhere a good tutorial which explains how to do that?).

Thanks four your help

You may run into legal problems there. The EULA states that WinPE is only licensed to install Windows, and specificly not to use as a ThinClient.

Then again, we are in the EU here, and as long as you dont have signed a contract beforehand, the EULA is pretty much void. But you better hand some cash over to your lawyer of choice. (Err, well the swiss aren't in the EU, so better ask a lawyer on that)

Edited July 17, 2008 by bj-kaiser

[ragazzi]

Thanks for your answer. I didn't check the legal situation yet. I think I'll do that. However, maybe it's easier to do that with Linux. No legal issues there...

How does it look from the technical site?

[bj-kaiser]

Thanks for your answer. I didn't check the legal situation yet. I think I'll do that. However, maybe it's easier to do that with Linux. No legal issues there...

How does it look from the technical site?

there is http://thinstation.sf.net or http://www.2x.com/pxes/, however, both are mainly a thin-client OS, that is, you get RDP, Citrix/ICA and NoMachine/NX clients by default. No VDI client. But nobody says you couldn't add it as long as there is a VDI client for linux-x86. And knowing VMware, there should be.

And whatever way you look at it, WinPE you will have to customize to include the VDI client, same for any sort of linux. And the technical hurdles for linux are easier to take, since you dont need to jump through hoops to get it to boot by PXE. (Given you are a fan of simple config files like PXELINUX uses, as opposed to bcdedit.exe and the boot configuration storage with its GUIDs and whatnot)

Not to forget the legal situation.

Technically all you need to PXE-boot linux is a TFTP and DHCP server, maybe NFS too (depending on the distribution). For first experiments, you can use any linux distribution that provides the "dnsmasq" package, it is a combined DHCP, DNS-cache and TFTP server.

Thinstation has a HowTo for adding your own package here:

http://thinstation.wiki.sourceforge.net/Cr...our+own+package

Edit:

From a quick flight through some of VMware's websites it seems they use plain old RDP as protocol. Should be easy to try that out with ThinStation.

HTH

Edited July 17, 2008 by bj-kaiser