BurnInTest over Virtual Desktops?

[nbuchanan]

I'm trying to run BurnInTest on multiple new system builds daily. I'm currently using PXE boot to load a Ubuntu image, but would like to run in a windows environment for better driver support. I used to run multiple USB sticks, but they begin to error after lots of use. Could virtual desktops, possibly from Citrix XenDesktop, be the answer? I'm looking for something I can automate to reduce time sitting in front of the machine.

[David (PassMark)]

We have never done any testing with Citrix or XenDesktop, so can't really comment on if that would work or not.

If you aren't doing any disk write testing on the USB flash drives, they should have a long life as a read only device. We also had a problem with USB sticks failing, but after switching from a no name manufacturer to a brand name supplier the problems have largely disappeared.

[nbuchanan]

We have never done any testing with Citrix or XenDesktop, so can't really comment on if that would work or not.

If you aren't doing any disk write testing on the USB flash drives, they should have a long life as a read only device. We also had a problem with USB sticks failing, but after switching from a no name manufacturer to a brand name supplier the problems have largely disappeared.

I'm currently installing the trial version of XenDesktop on a 2k8 server to see if I can get it working. I'll post up my results.

Besides for the fact that the USB sticks were failing after awhile, I also need the ability to test all installed video cards, so it really needs to be in a fully configurable OS environment.

My only other option is buying multiple hard drives and imaging them with Win7 and all the drivers I would need with BurnIn already installed. But since I need atleast 10 at a time, and using several different motherboard/processor configurations, I would need well over 50 drives. Not to mention I'm not sure if my Windows 30-day period would expire since the drive would read the Bios clock on boot.

[nbuchanan]

Instead of running over virtual machines, could I just use the USB live image (WinPE?) and push it out over PXE?

Clarification:
We currently boot a linux image via PXE with BurnIn already installed. After the image boots up, we simply run the program and then save results to a flash drive.

Instead of pushing the linux image out, couldn't we simply use the same boot image you already provide on the USB drive, instead of creating our own image and install your software? Is the boot image you provide WinPE based?

Thanks,
Noah