VDI can be used for several use cases including call centres, standard workplaces, high security desktops and much more. With VMware View 4.5 you can also use your virtual desktops for kiosk mode purposes. The most popular kiosk mode use case is a Internet surf station but you could also think about other self service terminals like the ticket machines at the airport. The kiosk mode can be fully automated that it directly connects to the View broker and the desktop when the end users device is turned on. The authentication is done via MAC address verification.

To reduce the management overhead to a minimum you should create dedicated Active Directory groups and organization units for the kiosk mode client. The group, which will be entitled to the desktop pool later must have a Pre-Windows 2000 group name in the Active Directory. It is recommended to use floating desktop pools for kiosk mode because they can be recreated after each usage. After creating the desktop pool, entitle the group to the pool via View Administrator. For each desktop pool you should create a separate user group. As mentioned before, the kiosk mode clients will use the MAC address of the client device for authentication.

To figure out the MAC of your client you can use the View Client software. For Windows clients use:

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Client\bin\wswc –printEnvironmentInfo

and for Linux clients use:

vmware-view –printEnvironmentInfo -s <connection_server>

to retrieve the clients MAC address. There are two steps left until you can connect to the virtual desktops for the first time. First you need to add the new “MAC address” account to your broker and Active Directory. The vdmadmin.exe tool can help you with that.

vdmadmin -Q -clientauth -add -domain DOMAENE -clientid 00:20:ee:aa:55:12 -group kiosk-group

Using this command forces the View Manager to create a new account based on the given MAC address. It also adds the new account to the group which is named kiosk-group in this example. The password for the new account is generated and set automatically. You could manually set a passwort using the parameter –password. Per default the View Connection servers doesn’t accept kiosk mode connection. You’ve to enable the kiosk mode connection on each VMware View Connection server manually. Please use the following command for that.

vdmadmin -Q -enable -s <connection_server> [-requirepassword]

That’s it! Now you can connect to the broker in kiosk mode. To do that please open a command prompt and change to the View Client installation directory. In the subfolder bin use this command:

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware View\Client\bin\wswc -unattended [-serverURL <servername>]

The client connects automatically to the virtual desktop using the local MAC address for authentications. You can create a batch file which calls the command. Put this batch file in the autostart folder on a Windows Thin Client or start it during the boot on a Linux Client.

There are two new parameters for the VMware View Client which help you to automatically redirect USB devices which are locally connected to the connecting device. You can decide between automatically redirecting all devices on startup and/or redirecting usb devices on insert. Just add the parameters

–connectUSBOnStartup and –connectUSBOnInsert to your command line when calling the View Client.

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