License for HP ThinPro 7.1/7.2 on a VM

[acgs]

I'm working with an organization using 200-something HP Thin Clients running HP ThinPro 7.1.0. While we appreciate that the OS is marketed as "Naturally secure", an independent penetration test in our environment showed that the clients are far too vulnerable because of the tools and drivers that are available by default in the OS despite not being needed for our purposes.

In order to be compliant with the security requirements while keeping the Thin Clients, we'd need to script the removal of the unnecessary tools and drivers. Removing package by package or even file by file on a physical machine, and re-imaging it every time something breaks, isn't really feasible. Instead, we'd need to run ThinPro in a virtual machine so that we can create snapshots and quickly revert to a working version when we mess up. According to hptc-license-viewer, however, we're only allowed to install the software on the computers it was originally intended for. Furthermore, judging from search results it may not even be possible to do this as people attempting something similar have reported that they get error messages about missing licenses.

Is there any way to obtain a license for ThinPro (free or paid) for installation in a virtual machine with the sole purpose of hardening the OS so that we may keep the current desktop setup? We've considered upgrading the clients to ThinPro 7.2, so we're also interested in learning whether this changes the answer.

[Prométhée]

Hello
sorry but here you are on the community of help between users
mainly for consumer products, and not professional
So you might not get an answer here, let alone from HP
you should contact hp pro support instead

https://community.hpe.com/