Our small IT team supports a critical access hospital, and for years nearly all of our workstations have been Dell Wyse zero clients using PCoIP/Tera2. They were extremely stable and required almost no day-to-day management. With Tera2 and PCoIP support coming to an end, we have been trying to find a replacement that offers the same simplicity.
We have tested Dell ThinOS and Windows IoT devices, 10ZiG, Stratodesk, HP ThinPro, and IGEL. So far, every option has introduced recurring bugs or additional administration. Firmware updates often fix one problem while creating another.
We are currently testing Windows in a strict kiosk configuration that launches Imprivata OneSign directly into VMware Horizon. The user experience is good, but managing a traditional operating system on non-domain or kiosk endpoints creates new challenges. In particular, we would like to know how others handle Windows updates with minimal administrative effort, and how they prevent network delays during startup from breaking autologon for the kiosk account.
For teams supporting healthcare or other VDI environments, what hardware and operating system combination has been the most reliable replacement for Tera2 zero clients? How are you deploying and maintaining the endpoints so that daily support stays close to zero?
5 Answers
We have not found a perfect successor either. For us, moving from PCoIP to VMware Blast was the practical answer, although it requires converting the Horizon pools because the two protocols cannot run side by side in the same pool. Blast has been much better than our old PCoIP experience, and the endpoint configuration was fairly small once the pools were ready.
Another route is ChromeOS. We moved several workflows there and used the Google administration console, including API-based configuration, to lock the devices down. It is not a direct replacement for every healthcare application, but for browser-based workflows it provides a much more controlled endpoint than maintaining full Windows installations.
Our environment has around 600 healthcare thin clients using Horizon, Dell management tools, and OptiPlex 3000 systems. ThinOS 9 eventually became manageable, but ThinOS 10 has caused a lot of frustration. Some new models cannot be downgraded, certain BIOS updates require an intermediate internal build, and fixes for one issue can introduce another. Imprivata through ProveID Web has been fine, but Teams audio and video over Horizon are still unreliable on ThinOS 10. I would test the exact hardware and firmware combination very carefully before standardizing on it.
We manage roughly 300 Wyse clients on ThinOS 9.x through Wyse Device Manager, and they have been dependable. Horizon with Blast works well, and we have scanners, USB peripherals, Zoom with video acceleration, Imprivata, and even specialized medical meters working successfully. Teams has been less reliable, so we use Zoom where video and audio are important. If your existing ThinOS 9 devices are stable, extending their life may be less disruptive than moving immediately to ThinOS 10.
We are still using Dell Wyse and OptiPlex 3000 devices with ThinOS 10, and after working through the migration from ThinOS 9, the experience has been reasonably smooth. There are still model-specific caveats, so I would avoid assuming that every device behaves the same. Stratodesk has also been reliable in another environment, and we plan to keep using it while the version we have remains supported.
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