Think Thin: Thin Client and Server Based Computing Group Blog

The Sun Desktop Virtualization Marketing team is pleased to announce the release of Sun Ray Software 5!

This release focuses on improving the end user experience with a broader choice of end client devices, improved Adobe Flash performance and expanded support for USB peripheral devices. Additionally, Sun Ray Software 5 improves application server support, by adding support for Windows Server 2008.

The Sun Desktop Access Client (SDAC) is revolutionizing Sun Ray Software as we know it, making our vision and strategy of providing simple, user-friendly access to a centralized virtual desktop environment from nearly any device a reality. Easily installed on Windows PCs, the Sun Desktop Access Client removes the dependency on Sun Ray hardware clients, providing full access to Sun Ray infrastructure. It provides a simplified solution for end-users who do not fit the desktop thin client model, and require continued use of their current Windows PC. As well, it helps to mitigate the initial costs of migration to Sun's desktop technology by repurposing existing PCs. Providing client device choice to the customer helps our customers embrace our technology and enables them to become more environmentally friendly by extending the lifecyle of existing PCs rather than disposing of them into a landfill.

Unlike some of our competitors, the Sun Desktop Access Client frees users from being restricted to a particular device and enables them to choose whatever device best suits their needs. In addition to client choice, another key challenge CIOs often face, is how to provide a true PC experience to their end users from a virtualized desktop environment. This release beats many of our competitors to market by introducing multimedia enhancements for Adobe Flash audio and video on both the Sun Ray hardware clients, as well as any Sun Desktop Access Client enabled PC.

In addition to expanding client device choice and adding Adobe Flash multimedia acceleration, Sun virtual desktop users can now expect similar peripheral connectivity with their Sun Ray thin client environment that they would normally have with their standard PCs. Sun Ray Software 5 now enables users to connect many of their favorite USB devices to a Sun Ray hardware client, connecting them to their Windows XP virtual desktop environment. Peripheral support includes a broad range of devices such as USB flash storage devices, printers and scanners.

Finally, Sun Ray Software 5 includes support for Windows Server 2008, enabling access to applications running on Windows Server 2008 in 32 bit color. Support for Windows Server 2008 TS Session Broker is also included.

Read more about it at www.sun.com/software/sunray!

Angela Carducci
Product Line Manager Desktop Virtualization Marketing
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
angela.carducci@sun.com
twitter.com/angelacarducci
http://www.sun.com/vdi

Sun Ray Software 5 Released
See: http://www.sun.com/featured-articles/2009-1110/feature/index.jsp

SRS 5 includes:

• SRSS 4.2
• SRWC 2.2
• SDAC 1.0

See new feature details at & download from URL above.

The Sun Desktop Virtualization Marketing team is pleased to announce the Sun VDI Software 3.1 Early Access program and the Sun Ray Software 5 Early Access 2 program. Both programs begin 9/15/09, at 5am PDT and they will end on 10/2/2009.

Which program should you join?

Choose Sun VDI Software 3.1 when you want to deploy server hosted virtual desktops running inside virtual machines to a variety of client devices.
Choose Sun Ray Software 5 when you want to deploy Sun Ray Software to Sun Ray Thin Clients or PCs in a more traditional server-based computing model. You should also choose this program if you want to deploy Sun Ray Software + VMware View Manager.

Sun VDI Software 3.1 Early Access

Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software 3.1 allows organizations to deploy a secure desktop environment hosted in the data center and displayed on a number of client devices, including Windows PCs and Sun Ray Thin Clients. This release adds Microsoft Hyper-V as an additional virtualization host, support for virtual desktops generated by Microsoft Terminal Services, and the Sun Desktop Access Client for simplified access from Windows PCs. Sun VDI Software 3.1 also includes a number of additional features for Sun Ray client devices, including USB redirection and Adobe Flash enhancements. More details on new features are covered in the support documentation.

You can download the software here:
https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/CDS-CDS_SMI-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?ProductRef=SunVDI-3.1-EA-SP-G-F@CDS-CDS_SMI

After you have downloaded and tested the software, please fill out the survey here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2bOaIS5LgthO0B125F5_2bVLg_3d_3d

Documentation is available here:
https://wikis.sun.com/display/VDI3dot1/Home

Support is available through the Sun VDI Forum here:
http://forums.sun.com/forum.jspa?forumID=992&start=0

Sun Ray Software 5 Early Access 2 (EA2)

Sun Ray Software is a secure, cost effective solution that delivers a rich virtual desktop to PCs or Sun Ray Thin Clients. The Sun Ray Software Early Access 2 program delivers four core new features: USB device redirection to Windows, Adobe Flash Enhancements, Windows Server 2008 support and the Sun Desktop Access Client (code name was "Sun Ray Soft Client"). Details of the features are listed below.

1) USB device redirection to Windows
Remote Windows XP Desktop users can now deploy a multitude of Windows USB devices with Sun Ray Technology.  A full list of supported devices is available here.  Installation of Sun Ray Software for Solaris x86 or SPARC is required.  This feature is supported with Sun VDI as a part of the Sun VDI 3.1 Early Access Program or with VMware View Manager in the Sun Ray Software 5 EA2 program.

2) Adobe Flash Enhancements
Sun Ray Software 5 provides Adobe Flash enhancements which enable customers to experience improved frame rates along with synchronized audio, video, and Adobe Flash animation playback for the Sun Ray 2 family of clients and its follow-on product family.

Supported environment:
o Internet Explorer 7 and 8
o Adobe Flash 9 content with all Adobe Flash plugins from versions 9 & 10
o Windows Server 2003 R2 (32-bit) and Windows XP SP3 (32-bit)

Users will need both components of Sun Ray Software - Sun Ray Server Software & the Sun Ray Connector for Windows OS. In additional to the Windows environment mentioned above, users need to install Sun Ray Server Software which runs on the following platforms:
o Solaris 10 5/09 or higher on SPARC and X86
o SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 Service Pack 2 (32-bit and 64-bit)
o Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 Update 3 (32-bit and 64-bit)

3) Windows Server 2008
Sun Ray Software 5 enables customers to display applications within Windows Server 2008 in 32 bit color. Windows Server 2008 Session Directory support is also included.

Supported platforms:
o Solaris 10 5/09 or higher (SPARC and X86)
o SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 Service Pack 2 (32-bit and 64-bit)
o Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 Update 3 (32-bit and 64-bit)

4) Sun Desktop Access Client (code name was "Sun Ray Soft Client").
The Sun Desktop Access Client is a software application that easily installs on common client operating systems and provides the ability to connect to centralized desktops running on Sun's desktop virtualization software products. An alternative to using a Sun Ray Thin Client, the Sun Desktop Access Client meets the needs of end-users who do not fit the desktop thin client model or who may need to connect from their existing laptop or desktop PC. The Sun Desktop Access Client also provides the flexibility to 'hotdesk' to and from your Sun Ray Thin Client and any supported Sun Desktop Access Client enabled PC.

Supported platforms:
o Microsoft Windows XP
o Microsoft Windows Vista
o Microsoft Windows 7

You download the software here:
https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/CDS-CDS_SMI-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?ProductRef=SRS-5-EA2-SP-LX-G-B@CDS-CDS_SMI

After you have downloaded and tested the software, please fill out the survey here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=edIU7UCv9CbC_2bFiyD8POow_3d_3d

Documentation is available here:
http://wikis.sun.com/display/SRS/Home

Support is available through the Sun Ray Software Forum here:
http://forums.sun.com/forum.jspa?forumID=875

If you have additional feed-back for the product team, please send it here:
srs-feedback@sun.com

Thank you for your participation in the Sun VDI 3.1 and/or the Sun Ray Software 5 Early Access 2 Program!

-- 
Angela Carducci
Product Line Manager
Desktop Virtualization Marketing
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
angela.carducci@sun.com
twitter.com/angelacarducci
http://www.sun.com/vdi

The Sun Ray was announced to the world on 9/9/99.  Happy Birthday little guy! Have you been working out?  You've definitely lost some weight!

Here are some trade articles from various sources that ran on 9/08/99, the day before the announcement:

Forbes: Corona is a ray of sun (shine)

cnet: Sun looks toward a new dawn in thin clients

SRO/ZDNet (via Linux Today): Sun Takes Another Shot At The PC

Wired (via Linux Today): Sun Tries Net Appliance, Again.

Note: The Sun Desktop Access Client is the proper name for what was called the Sun Ray Soft Client.  Since this name change took effect after the Early Access 1 code, the commands and file paths will change with EA2/RR.  This post will be updated as the changes occur in the product.  Notable differences are directory names and executable names between EA1 and what will be the final product.  This article is for the code that was available with EA1 hence the directory names of "Scalp" and the binary name "alpclient.exe"

It's possible to use the new Sun Desktop Access Client (SDAC) to make many Sun Ray Connections from a single Windows instance, the trick is to use different connection profiles.  This is great for scalability testing of different servers where actually having hundreds of Sun Ray Ultra Thin Clients set up for sizing is impractical.  Here's how you do it.

How To:

1. Install the SDAC on a supported MS Windows Platforms (XP, Vista, Windows 7)
2. Run the soft client and choose all the options you'd like to have.  I prefer to have the soft client run in a window rather than fullscreen and I also like to constrain the screen to 800x600 so I can see many of the SDAC instances at one time.  Once you've set all your options, go ahead and connect to a server, then end your session.
3. Now we must go and edit the "default" SDAC profile which contains all the preferences you just set
1. XP: Open the file C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Sun\scalp\default
2. Vista\Windows7: Open the file C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Sun\scalp\default
3. Remove the Line that starts with DSAKey=
   
4. Save the file
4. Now we must create a profile for each connection we wish to make
1. Open a command prompt and navigate to the directory noted above as determined by which version of MS Windows you are running
2. In that window type the following:
   FOR /L %i in (0,1,XXX) DO copy default SDAC%i.txt
1. Where XXX is the number of unique copies you wish to make
   
3. You will now have XXX  uniquely name copies of the default connection profile with no DSA Key info
   
5. Now we want to launch the SDAC from the command line so we can pass the unique profile name to each instance
1. From the same command prompt, navigate to C:\Program Files\Sun Ray\alpclient
2. Type the following
   FOR /L %i in (0,1,XXX) DO alpclient --profile SDAC%i.txt IP/Name_of_Sun_Ray_Server
1. Example to launch 50 soft clients to a server at 192.168.7.10:
   FOR /L %i in (0,1,50) DO alpclient --profile SDAC%i.txt 192.168.7.10
   
2. As the command executes the SDAC will inject a new random DSA Key into each connection profile and connect to the Sun Ray Server.
   
3. For the sake of this blog, I'm just showing a login screen, but if your Sun Ray Server was configured for Kiosk Mode you could actually run programs automatically in each SDAC Instance.  This is particularly useful for windows sizing tests where you can pass a windows user name and password via uttsc and combine that with something like AutoIT to actually simulate real working users.
1. Note on the windows sizing link:  That blog was done during the days of CAM where users where named utcuXX.  Since Kiosk mode (SRSS 4 and greater) the user ids are utkuXX so change the directions accordingly.
   
   
   
6. You use different Sun Ray Server administrative commands to view all the new sessions 
   
7. Caveats/Tips:
1. The SDAC uses around 15 MB of RAM per instance so size the number of connections you wish to launch according to how much available RAM you have on the MS Windows instance you are launching them from.
1. A MS Windows XP instance with 2GB of RAM should be able to launch 100 or so SDAC sessions.
2. The beefier the client, the faster the SDAC sessions will start.
   
2. It's helpful to set you task bar to "Group similar taskbar buttons".  Right click on your task bar and choose properties to set this.
   
3. The X/Y coordinates on the initial launch will all be the same so the SDAC Windows will all be stacked on top of each other initially.  You can arrange them in a tiled or cascaded fashion by right clicking on the Windows Task Bar and choosing the either the Cascade or Tiling options
   
4. If you are using Kiosk Mode for these tests, ensure that you have enough Kiosk users configured.  The default is 25 kiosk users and you can extend that using /opt/SUNWkio/bin/kioskuseradm extend -c XXX
1. Where XXX is the number of Kiosk users you wish to add
   

Enjoy!

Last time I talked to you, I was trying to ease you into the new way we are delivering the Sun Ray Software 5 documentation.  What can I say, I'm a very nurturing person.

Positive Feedback

The good news is that my prediction that everything was going to be o.k. held true.  After going through a vigorous Early Access program (which ended on July 31st), the wiki documentation held its own.  In fact, we actually received the following positive feedback from customers:

• "I like the new wiki format for documentation."
• "wikis.sun.com online documentation is huge improvement"
• "I relied heavily on the wiki.. certain steps are always tricky during an upgrade and the wiki documents these better."
• "Again the wiki is cool, but it is hard to find information sometime and customers want pdfs."

Dynamic PDFs

The last feedback brings up a good point about some users still wanting (or needing) PDFs, and I forgot to mention in my last post that we have that covered as well.  On both the SRSS and SRWC documentation sites, you can dynamically build PDFs based on all the information on the wiki.  And, the PDFs will be in sync with the latest content on the wiki.  Here are the specific pages where you can get to the PDFs, and the links to these pages are also provided on the left-hand nav bar on each site:

• http://wikis.sun.com/display/SRSS4dot2/Printable+PDFs
  
• http://wikis.sun.com/display/SRWC2dot2/Printable+PDFs

I know these PDFs are not as slick as what you are used to from Sun, but we are working on that and the output will continue to improve. I'm on it.

Comments, Calling All Comments

Now, even with the positive feedback, there is still room for improvement...there is always room for improvement. We are getting ready for the next Early Access program and we are continuing to improve the content based on reviews and comments.   If you are feeling some post-EA1 blues and want to provide more input to the SRS 5 release, you are in luck.  The wikis are always open for comments and you can make comments on a specific page.

Here's how to provide a comment on the wiki:

• Log in to wikis.sun.com.
• Navigate to the page. 
• Choose Comment from the Add icon.
  The comment section is displayed.
  
• Enter your comment. 
• Click Post.

From our good friends over at the Sun xVM Ops Center team, see the How to comment on a Sun Wiki page screencast for a visual, step-by-step tutorial.

Looking forward to your comments, and I'll be back again soon with some more documentation goodness.

(BTW, if you are wondering why I've included a picture of a koala bear, I don't have a good answer for you.  I like when blogs have pictures and I didn't have one to provide.  So, I thought I would give you a random koala bear picture.  It's hard not to smile when you see one of these marsupials.  Again, I'm all about the nurturing....)

Paul

A new post is on my blog at http://blogs.sun.com/jreilly/ with a video showing a Sun Ray Gobi 8 Laptop accessing Sun VDI 3 over 3G Wireless and VPN.  Then running multimedia redirection technology.  The Sun Ray protocol combined with a laptop and 3G wireless can deliver a excellent hosted virtual desktop environment to mobile users.  Granted,  good 3G wireless coverage is required.

But far bigger news than cats and dogs sleeping together!  I kid, but how cool is this Microsoft Whitepaper on VDI using Sun Rays!

With the recent release of Sun Ray Server Software 5 Early Access release we put together some How-To's to get you started.

• Sun Ray Server Software 4.2
  
• Sun Ray Soft Client 1.0
• Sun Ray connector for Windows 2.2

For those of you who have used the Sun Ray Software product before and are ready to help us test out the new Sun Ray Software 5 EA 1 release, you might notice a change to the product documentation.

You've been used to seeing this:

And now you are seeing this:

First of all, don't panic!  Take a deep breath.  Everything is going to be o.k.

To coincide with the change in the VDI 3 product, the official SRS 5 product documentation has moved to a wiki.  Although there are a number of advantages with using a wiki, we are focusing on the following benefits to the SRS 5 customers:

• The ability for you to provide feedback (comments) on a per page basis, much like a blog.
• Giving you information in a more topic based structure, specifically focusing on tasks (procedures).
• Instantaneous updates to you from the product team during the Early Access programs.
• Exposing more information at a higher level, so you can hopefully find it more easily.

I also want to make it clear that the change to the wiki has not changed our commitment to provide quality documentation. The SRS 5 documentation wiki is based on an enterprise-level wiki, it has dedicated writers assigned to it working closely with the product teams, and this new platform should help improve the accuracy of the content. 

My job is to moderate the documentation wikis and to make sure you get the information you need.  And, to do that, your continued comments and feedback are vital.

Once you get to the main SRS 5 Information Center page, just click the SRS 5 Documentation tab and check out both the new Sun Ray Sever Software 4.2 and Sun Ray Connector for Windows OS 2.2 wikis. 

I'll be back in the next few weeks to do a tour of each of the new wikis and give you the highlights.  If there is anything you'd like me to focus on, just leave a comment on the wiki or on this blog.

I look forward to your feedback.
Paul Kasper