IBM REDP-4372-00 manual Operating systems on Point-of-sale devices

4372ch01.fm Draft Document for Review November 15, 2007 3:27 pm

centrally located application server if the local application server fails. There are many wariations possible, however, they are not the topic for this Redpaper.

It is important to note that most larger warehouses have a surplus of POS systems which reduces the effects of one or a few systems being out of order. Smaller stores or restaurants are more likely to be affected, even if one system is out of order, since they may only have a total of two or three POS systems.

1.4 Operating systems on Point-of-sale devices

Not all operating systems are suitable for point-of-sales devices. A typical POS system has a lot of special devices that require drivers which are not widely available on all platforms. Also, the IT department may want to prevent the user from getting access to anything but the POS application which require an operating system with lockdown features.

The most common operating systems for point-of-sale systems include, but are not limited to:

￿Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional

￿Microsoft Windows 2000 Workstation

￿WEPOS; Microsoft Windows Embedded for Point-of-services

￿IRES; IBM Retail Environment for Suse Linux for POS

Different distributions of Linux also exist.

Older environments may also include systems running PC-DOS 2000.

For the scenarios used throughout this Redpaper we will only use Windows XP. For information about deploying Windows 2000 and Linux, please consult the IBM RedBook Deployment Guide Series: Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment V5.1, SG24-7397.

1.5Introducing Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment

The IBM Tivoli software products that have previously provided capabilities for installation of operating systems on bare metal systems include NetView® Distribution Manager and Tivoli Configuration Manager. These products have been suceeded by the IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager product which natively does not include similar features.

6Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment in a Retail Environment