The S Word Blog: A mostly 100% sort-of-semi-technical blog by Thin Guy. Mostly.

Yes, cloud.  Not a typo.  What do you get when you combine a low cost netbook and the upcoming Sun Desktop Access Client?  You get a ton of computing power in a very small form factor that can go anywhere accessing powerful servers and Windows, Linux, and OpenSolaris VM's safely in your data center or cloud.  How's that for VDI in the clouds?

(WiiMote shown for scale)

Here's a quick video I made showing the different supported OS choices available only with Sun VDI 3.  I mention "supported" because you can make any OS VirtualBox supports into a VDI solution, but we officially support XP, Vista, Win2KPro, Ubuntu, and OpenSolaris.  "Supported" means you can place a service call if something is not operating as advertised.  Note the "Full PC" experience of the boot and shut down for each OS.   I'll be cleaning this up a bit by making it shorter and adding some tunes (server was right next to me while filming so I removed the original audio track).

If you're tired of doing the VNC route to remotely display an apple desktop, check out AquaConnect!  AquaConnect brings an RDP Server to OS X Server.  This means you can use our Sun Ray Windows Connector to display a Leopard desktop on your Sun Ray and couple it with hot desking and stateless goodness!.  Here's a couple of shots of Sun Ray and AquaConnect from MacWorld

(Photo's courtesy of Chris Kawalek)

We'll be meeting tonight at the Yard House about 7:30 PM.  Nothing too formal, just drinks, appetizers, and some good conversation.   The Yard House is located in the Town Square, cab drivers should know how to get there.   (Don't attempt to walk it like folks from last year as things in Vegas are farther than they appear)

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We are planning another desktop dinner during CEC.  If you are coming to CEC and are a desktop person (or a fan of Sun Ray, SGD, Sun VDI, or this blog), leave me a comment or send me some mail (first.last@sun.com).  I'll post the location and final time and date when we get final word.  We are trying to narrow it down to Monday or Tuesday night.  Looking forward to see my virtual desktop friends once again from across the globe.  #goodtimes

More details and download links over on the Think Thin Blog.

Thanks to my friends at Dataman for capturing this pic at a recent tradeshow.

That's were you'll find me if you happen to be attending VMWorld.  I'm easy to spot as I think only Joost is taller than me, and I've got far more hair.  Sure, it's receding, but it's still there.  Mostly.

In my last entry, "CL" posted a comment wanting more to see more examples of Windows media redirection.  Here's another video showing a variety of clips.  Talking heads, animation,  a couple of VC-1 live streams.  Enjoy.  Still have the dog barking at the tripod problem, so I apologize for some of the shaky parts.  Take a Dramamine if you get queasy.  If you want to watch this in a bit better quality, follow this link and click on the "watch in high quality" link once you get into YouTube (right under the "Views" number).

I've decided to do a series of small videos showing the new features of our forthcoming Sun Ray Server Software 4.1.  The first video will feature our Multimedia enhancements.  I had a nice setup for the first shoot, only to find my dog really hates the tripod.  Second attempt, with the tripod in the garage and the camcorder in my hands is less than optimal quality but you get the idea.  Cut the video a little short as my dog decided to start barking at other dogs in the neighborhood halfway through the windows demo.  It's not often I get a quiet house with 5 daughters so I'll have to accept this cut for now.  :)  Oh yeah, don't watch this YouTube Video from a Sun Ray as Flash support is next up on the drawing board.

Customized Sun Rays always look so cool.  I wonder if we should offer this as an option.  Some cool colors, your logo, etc.  Rumor has it there are even Sun Rays out there in Raven Black.

With a seized or stolen thin client, you've lost a device.  That's it.  You'd never "make the papers", but that's a good thing.  You can't hack/copy a stateless thin client because there's no there "there" to hack or copy. (Thanks Dave!),

I was invited to be on the panel of the first ever "Intel Great Debates".  The debate I participated in surrounded Thin vs. "Managed" Thick clients.  Enjoy.

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As a follow on to my last post regarding RDP resolution, I thought I'd post some pictures of various multihead configurations using Sun Rays and the Sun Ray Connector for Windows.  Note that these resolutions work for normal Windows Terminal Server sessions as well as Virtual Desktop Computing (VDC/VDI).

Here's a Sun Ray 2FS Driving dual 24.1" LCD's.  Resolution is 3840x1200

Here's a 3x1 multihead group using Sun Ray 270's. Resolution is 3840x1024

Finally here's a 4x1 multihead group using Sun Ray 270's. The individual Sun Rays were constrained to 1024x768 in order not to exceed the max resolution width of RDP which is 4096. Resolution is 4096x768

When Microsoft introduced Service Pack 2 for Windows 2003 Server, they introduced a bug that prevented any RDP sessions greater than 1600x1200 from displaying in 24 bit color.  When Matt Hatley built a fresh Windows 2003 server for an event last August, we could not quite figure out why his full screen session on a dual headed Sun Ray 2FS would only display 8bit color even though we were telling the Sun Ray Windows Connector to connect in 24 bit color.  My server worked fine, his did not.  Turns out I was not current on my service packs and SP2 was to blame!  Sure enough, after applying SP2 to my server, I was limited to 8 bit color as well.  Since a customer just ran into this issue, I thought I'd post the fix and some answers.

Bear in mind that this is not just limited to the Sun Ray 2FS, which in a dual head setup runs 3840 x 1200, but this also happens on a multihead setup of any type Sun Rays.

You can apply this hotfix from Microsoft for Windows 2003 Server to get your higher color depth back for your larger RDP sessions.

For the record, you can go up to 4096x 2048 in an RDP session.  From a width perspective, that is about 3.2 Sun Ray 270's.  Four Sun Ray 270's would be 5120x1024 which is larger than the max resolution in width allowed by RDP.  If you wanted a four head setup, you could use four Sun Ray 2's with each screen limited to 1024x768 (4:3 maintained).

I'll be pulling booth duty (Tues and Weds), giving chalk talks (Tues 2PM in MS IVA Booth) and also a featured speaker in a session with Foundry, Mitel, and Microsoft (Weds 3:15-4 PM Mandalay Bay Room L).

 

If you're waiting for an update on my big "Take Your Daughters to Work Day" Sun Ray eco/green project, don't bother.  Haven't seen them all day.  I didn't check with my "Work From Home" boss first and apparently even though I went through all the trouble to get the forms done, she had other plans for the "workers".  It's a scam I tell you, a SCAM!  :)

Tomorrow is Take our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.  But what if you work from home?  I'm allowing my girls to come to work with me (i.e. stay home), but I want them to get a better understanding of what I do for a living and why I believe in my product.  Our project for tomorrow will involve figuring out how much using a PC costs and why Sun Ray is a better option (even with the "server" and storage requirements).  I've got my Kill-A-Watt meter ready and we'll compute the savings a household that makes heavy use of sites like Webkinz, NickJr, and the like can get if they switch over to thin client technology.  Tune in tomorrow for our results.

Please give a warm welcome to our Virtual Desktop Engineering team member, Matthais Müller-Prove! Matthais is filling the role of our first ever usability architect for all things VDI, Sun Ray, SGD and the like.  While he didn't have me at "hello", he sure got me with this line "...sooner or later both 'remote' and 'virtual' will become obsolete concepts for the end user."

Earth Hour is going global this year with a whole bunch of cities turning non-essential lights off.

I've got a better idea. Turn off *AND* unplug non-essential computers.

And while you've got them off, replace them with a Sun Ray that uses less power than your PC in powersave mode.