How would you transfer clients that log in with smart cards to a virtual remote desktop

Question

Hello superuser community,

before I get into the question, here is some background first:

We currently have several PCs (Windows 10) in different locations (towns, sometimes even states) with different and often highly specialized configurations and different roles. This can make testing impractical at best, so we decided to switch to remote virtual desktops instead. The plan is to make an image for every possible configuration and role, then set up a server to host a virtual desktop for every single one of them. Testers should then be able to just connect to the server and select their configuration/role to log into the corresponding virtual machine to test.

Before we start the project, we need some specifications, and we especially need to know if this is possible with our current situation. Our internal devices currently use smartcards for login purposes, and as all the virtualized PCs are internal devices, they should do the same. What that means is that when someone uses their smartcard to log into their internal device and then connects to a virtal client, it should use their smartcard to log into that device with their current ID. Since external devices should also be able to access the desktops, we are planning to use readers that connect via USB where users can put in their cards to log into the virtual internal devices.

All in all I have some questions where I don't need extremely specific answers, but some help and guidance would be very very much appreciated. In its core my questions are:

• Are there possible complications when logging into the virtual machine with a smartcard? If not, what would be the best way to do so?
• Is there any reason not to use VirtualBox for this project? (I mean it's obviously preferred because it is free, but other software is possible too if it gives considerably more functions or user comfort and doesn't cause the costs to explode) If so, what virtualization method would you suggest?
• What would be a good way to access the remote clients?

Thank you so far already (and sorry if I made some mistakes, I'm not a native English speaker).