Wyse Technology’s Wyse Streaming Manager (WSM) enables firms to operate a network of diskless workstations that boot Windows from an image stored on a server. This architecture gives users the full desktop Windows experience, but allows administrators greater control over which applications can be run, and can also help firms to comply with the terms of software licences.

WSM, announced in March, is designed to work with Wyse’s new Winterm V00 thin client terminals, which have no built-in operating system. However, it also supports the firm’s older V90 and 941G models, or can alternatively be used to stream an operating system to regular PCs, if a customer wishes.

In tests, we found we could boot a V00 terminal from a WSM server simply by switching it on, as you would a standard PC, even though it was actually fetching Windows XP from a server instead of a local drive. The terminal felt responsive enough to run most applications under Windows XP. Many staff would probably assume they were using a full-blown PC unless told otherwise.

We also found it a relatively straightforward (if lengthy) process to package up applications for delivery from a WSM server, and IT staff will have little difficulty managing user access to applications from WSM’s web-based admin console.

WSM delivers the operating system and applications separately. This means a single image of Windows 2000 or Windows XP could potentially serve an entire organisation, even if the various departments run different applications.

To create an operating system image requires a reference device: a special VR0 terminal with up to 4GB of Flash memory. Windows is installed onto this with all the drivers and optional components an organisation needs, and then distilled down to just the necessary files.

Once deployed to the WSM server, an operating system image is locked. But if an update is necessary – for example, to apply patches – an administrator can log onto a terminal in a special “private mode” and make the changes, which are then written to the server as an updated image.

To make an application available to users it has to be published to the WSM server. This requires the use of a clean Windows workstation with the WSM Publisher application already installed to serve as the build environment. Wyse recommends the use of a virtual machine for this, as it can easily be rolled back to a pristine state for each new application.

An administrator uses WSM Publisher to take a system snapshot both before and after installing an application in the build environment. The Publisher tool then looks at the differences between the two snapshots and calculates which files, Windows Registry settings and other configuration data belong to the application.

It is necessary at this point to modify the file set to remove unwanted files and change some settings, such as default file locations. Wyse ships a set of macros that do most of this work, but some settings will inevitably be application-specific and may require several cycles of the build process to identify. WSM Publisher then builds an AppSet, a single file that can be copied to the WSM server.