Think Thin: Thin Client and Server Based Computing Group Blog

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

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

While most of our readers by now recognize the technical guidelines for scaling and performance of a VDI setup based on shared experiences (Sun and VMware), it is always good to have a "measureable" standard reference to use as a starting point. Here are official references of a set of independent test reports commissioned by Sun and produced by Lionbridge/Veritest:

• Sun Fire X4450 (with 16x Intel Xeon 7400 series processors)
• Sun Fire X4450 (with 16x Intel Xeon 7300 series processors)
• Sun Fire X4600 M2 (with 32x AMD Opteron 8356 processors)

The tests were performed using Windows XP SP3 with 512MB and 1 vCPU as the base VDI desktop.

found on SearchServerVirtualization.com: Virtual desktop infrastructure with Sun Ray 2 devices, 29-Dec-2008 by Rick Vanover.

Additionally HERE you can find some instructions/scripts which can help to install, configure and connect your SGD server to Active Directory.

     Hot off the presses is Sun's Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software 2.0, just released last night. Included is the new Sun Virtual Desktop Connector, acting as a broker between Sun Ray and Secure Global Desktop infrastructure and VMware virtual machines.  This solution provides exceptional flexibility in deploying virtual desktops in an easy, secure manner to both Sun Ray clients as well as a variety of other clients, with a choice of desktop operating systems, including Windows, Solaris and Linux. This would probably be a good time to note our recent announcement of entering an OEM agreement with VMware, making it that much easier for a complete solution from Sun.

     Heck, so many interesting things happening in this space, it's hard to keep track of it all. Wouldn't want to miss our purchase of innotek and their VirtualBox technology, an open source virtualization software technology that allows running virtual machines under a variety of host operating systems to run many different guest OSes, including Solaris, Linux, Windows and OS X. Nor would I want to forget the ongoing work incorporating Xen open source technology into both OpenSolaris, and into xVM Server,  giving you the ability to run guest operating systems with no hypervisor knowledge as usual, and those guest operating systems that are hypervisor aware and can take advantage of performance enhancements through direct hypervisor calls.

 

Sun's APOC (A Point of Control) is now officially Open Source, dual licensed under  CDDL/GPLv2.  What is APOC?  Well, for those of you that have longed for an Active Directory like tool to help deploy 'nix desktops, APOC is that tool.  APOC stores user settings, preferences, configurations, lock downs, etc into LDAP.

Find out more about APOC at Freedesktop.org and on Alberto's blog.
 

VMworld 2006 Ponderings