Think Thin: Thin Client and Server Based Computing Group Blog

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)

I'm in MPK this week for the xVM launch.  Here's a replay of the live webcast that was just done, where our VDI demo from a Sun Ray in Menlo Park accessed a Sun Ray Server and a Windows session in Hamburg, Germany.  Went pretty well, and now we can breath a big sigh of relief that the interwebs stayed up.  :)

Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

     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.

I'm slowly getting around to posting all the presentation slide decks we promised.  To be fair to my co-presenters, I'm the reason for the delay.  I have a lot of NDA material to strip out and notes to add to mine.  I'll keep updating this post, so check back for the others.

 In the meantime, enjoy a picture of an exhausted Matt Hatley who tried to power the event from a LifeCycle following the "Snake Incident".

SRS 4 09/07 Kiosk Deep Dive by Brad Lackey (OpenOffice | PDF )

Editors note:  Compare and contrast how much Kiosk has changed by comparing the SRSS 3.1 CAM slide deck 

Sun Ray with Solaris 10 Trusted Extensions by Matt Hatley (21 MB zip)

Zip file contains the following:

Presentations and How To:

• sr-deep-dive-aug2007.odp/.pdf - SNAP Presentation Sun Ray on Trusted Extensions
• tx-deepdive-srss4u2-build-log.txt - Detailed Build Log
  

Trusted Extensions DB Files:

• label_encodings
• tnrhtp
• tnrhdb
• tnzonecfg
  

TX Zone Build Files:

• sbu.cfg
• secret.cfg
• topsecret.cfg

Secure Global Desktop Deep Dive by Andy Hall (OpenOffice | PDF )

Editors note:  This deck doesn't do the preso justice since 99% is a demo that takes you through the full install and configuration of Secure Global Desktop.  Please attend the next Desktop Virtualization Days Event to see Andy speak

Desktop Virtualization Days Preso by Craig Bender (OpenOffice | PDF )

Editors note:  This deck has a lot of meeting information as well as an overview of what's new in Sun Ray, what is Virtual Desktop Computing, and why you should care.

Delivering Virtualized Desktops Preso by Craig Bender (OpenOffice | PDF )

Editors note:  Mostly Marketechture.  Really needs to be followed by a Sun VDAK Demo.

The 05 rev of the Sun Ray Server Software 3.1 patch has been released.

Solaris SPARC
Solaris X86
Linux

This is the first patch to have Sun Ray 2 specific firmware included, along with the following fixes:


6382740 Sun Ray 170 can get stuck sending exchangeAPDU to certain OpenPlatform-like smartcards, causing 26D
6459224 utreader allows only eight token readers, customer wants more
5025790 utreader output with options -c, -d is not giving meaning as said in usage
6457072 Support on Sun Ray for smartcard operations with 2048 bit keys
6443568 Some USB 2.0 hubs don't appear to work when attached to Sun Ray
6306412 KDE display is corrupt under numerous and quick graphic changes
6422934 utquery can fail to collect and report responses
6437329 utauthd crash in GroupManager.whichServer
6355343 utuser -r causes all DTUs in FOG to alternate between the "X" and "100F ...
6465742 Need Support for Starcos SPK23 family of cards
6468437 Support for Incrypto smart cards
6457990 Sometimes SR270, Sun Ray 2 and Sun Ray 2FS hang when Authenticated Smart Cards are used
6446288 Mouse pointer "floats" and/or doesn't reach the title bar when in full screen mode on MS windows
6471000 Sessions with very long tokens are not redirected correctly
6446769 Balance must be made read-only for speaker-option on 270 170
6428572 Provide firmware support for new Sun Ray 2,Sun Ray 2fs Sun Ray 270 units
6482453 Firmware panics on NULL value for redirectProps key

Everyone tells me I wrote an awesome posting over here.  Yet not one comment.  Preaching to the choir? 

You know us bloggers are a sensitive bunch.  Live and die by feedback and what not.

Kind of a damned if you post there, damned if you post here scenario.

Anyhow, Happy Election Day to all those in the US.  I hope you voted.

Vote Sun Ray, a chicken in every pot.  I promise.