Think Thin: Thin Client and Server Based Computing Group Blog

From page four of Oracle's Oracle and Sun Overview and FAQ

"Yes, Oracle plans to continue Sun’s “desktop to datacenter virtualization” strategy and integrate with Oracle’s virtualization products. By unifying management across desktop virtualization, server virtualization, storage virtualization, and network virtualization, Oracle and Sun provide comprehensive, flexible, eco-efficient solutions to maximize utilization, consolidate to reduce costs, increase productivity, and decrease management complexity.

We expect to continue Sun’s desktop virtualization products: VDI, Secure Global Desktop, Sun Ray, and VirtualBox."

Ed note: Recommended Music to Read By

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

Sun is finally offering a hands on instructor led class for Sun VDI 3.  Since I personally know the folks that created the content for this course, I know it's going to be top notch!

A brief description:

This five-day workshop introduces you to Sun VDI Software 3 technology and software administration. Along with installing Sun VDI Software 3, you are introduced to the architectural details of the software, providing a foundation to understand the individual features introduced in subsequent modules. Through a combination of instructor-led lectures and hands-on labs, you are introduced to the following VDI components and features:

• Sun xVM VirtualBox and VMware® Virtual Center desktop brokers
• LDAP and Microsoft® Active Directory directory server integration
• Open Storage platform for the back-end storage of user desktops
• Sun Ray Software (SRS) and Sun Secure Global Desktop (SGD) for the display of user desktops
• Sun VDI administration tools

Sign up today!

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

When the VDI 3 team decided that all the documentation for our new product would be done on wikis.sun.com, I really didn't give it a lot of thought.  I'm a huge believer in and consumer of social media from blogs to twitter and I know the power they can have if used correctly. 

After we released the product there was a lot of negative feedback on the documentation for a variety of reasons such as no access to the internet, not portable, etc.  While those are valid concerns, I believe the primary reason for the negative feedback boiled down having to navigate something new.  But honestly I was starting to have my doubts as some customers weren't happy at all.  Maybe the world wasn't ready for wiki only documentation for a Sun product.

The VDI 3 team made the docs available in a PDF (Release notes included).  However the purpose of this entry isn't about changing to PDF, it's about the real benefit of the Wiki format for documentation.  Not to take anything away from the old documentation process, but in all fairness it is a slow process.  Now consider this.

Recently we added support for Solaris 10 U7 with our first patch for VDI 3, this allows one to use a S10 U7 Server instead of OpenSolaris for the iSCSI/ZFS storage magic that is a huge part of Sun VDI 3.  This morning a Systems Engineer asked this question:

Is somebody preparing instruction for Solaris10 Storage Server?

Within a couple of hours, this response came back:

I've added http://wikis.sun.com/display/VDI3/How+to+Set+Up+a+Solaris+Storage+Server

~Thomas

I could rattle off more 100 examples like that one for topics like clarification, errors, missing info, etc.  Changes that used to take days, weeks, or months to make its way into the official documentation and out to the user base is now done in minutes.  The response time is a credit to our great VDI engineering team, the agility is due to the wiki and the combination is a win, plain and simple.  Many thanks to the Sun VDI team and the Sun Community Services Engineering team.

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.

The Sun Desktop Virtualization Team is proud to announce the availablity of Sun Ray Software 4 10/08!  Download it now!

Sun Ray Software 4 10/08 includes the following new features:

Enhanced multimedia playback for Windows - Capabilities on the Sun Ray 2 family of clients for H.264 (MPEG4) and VC-1 (Windows Media Player 9) streams using Windows Media Player on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Enhanced multimedia playback for Solaris and Linux - Accelerated YUV playback with applications such as RealPlayer by leveraging standard Video for Sun Ray 1 and Sun Ray 2 family of clients where YUV streams are sent directly to the Sun Ray client

Please see the SRSS and SRWC documentation for more information on supported video types and known limitations (SRSS, SRWC)

Remote Hotdesk Authentication provides enhanced security by authenticating users before connection to existing user sessions in a separate session.

Support for 30-inch monitors on the Sun Ray 2FS virtual display clients via a single link to dual link converter box available from Thruput Ltd.

In-Session Desktop Resizing - Move between different sized displays and adjust your desktop size without logging out

Service tags support - Easily track and register Sun  Ray Server Software with Sun

Expansion of VPN Support - Along with Cisco EzVPN, SRSS 4.1 now includes support for Juniper/Netscreen IPSec based VPN solutions (no SSL support)

Configuration Enhancements - Ability to force compression on, enable lossless compression, force duplex, set keyboard country code, bandwidth limitations, syslog events, log host, and MTU via the "parms" file.

Other Enhancements - New XServer (XNewt) based on Xorg 7.2, DNS lookup changes, Packet loss fixes for bad switches and certain low bandwidth scenarios, Group Manager support for Trusted Extensions,

New Add-On Components:

Sun Ray Connector for VMWare Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM 2.0) allows Sun Ray users to connect to Windows virtual machines via the VMWare Virtual Desktop Manager) Download here.

Smart Card authentication with PC/SC-Lite 1.1 this new release replaces PC/SC-Lite 1.0 and enables access to smart cards via USB readers or Sun Ray readers.  Download here

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

Kent Peacock, one of our illustrious Senior Engineers who helped give birth the to Sun Rays almost 10 years ago in Sun Labs has some great scripts that we use internally for watching how much bandwidth Sun Rays use. I asked him if it would be OK to share these scripts with our user community and he said "Please do!". You can grab a copy the scripts here. (Right click, Save Target/Link As...)

There are two scripts, utbwlist2 and utbw. The utbwlist2 script is for looking at all the Sun Ray devices on a server or host group and utbw is for looking at a single Sun Ray, typically ran by the user of the session from a terminal.

UTBWLIST2

utbwlist2 takes the following options:

-a get information from all members of the failover group
-h <server> target the given server
-f <filter> apply this regular expression filter to the IP addresses of the Sun Rays (useful for selecting subnets)


The output is as follows:

IP Address       Token/Name                          Pkts/s  Mbps  KBytes DTCPU
129.146.225.93   OpenPlatform.4090009c24a5d7061e1      91  21.310    2291  21%
129.146.97.135   auth.mk228279                        866   7.839   20067   9%
129.146.127.177  OpenPlatform.4090009c24a1890c091    1288   6.716   34384  14%
129.144.70.192   auth.shinseki                        536   6.033   15444  33%
129.146.55.170   OpenPlatform.4090009c24a5d704360     702   5.951   15234   9%
129.144.71.225   auth.de161882                        595   5.901   15105  18%
129.144.88.26    JavaBadgeNP.4090009c22b1e70d0d10     654   3.202   16392   9%
129.146.39.45    OpenPlatform.4090009c24a18c121f0     254   2.422    6200   9%
129.146.62.218   auth.tt8301                          242   2.376    6083  23%
129.146.35.155   auth.cb201937                        219   1.928    4935   7%
129.146.53.121   JavaBadgeNP.4090009c22b1e70f300c     189   1.801    4610   6%
129.146.39.49    OpenPlatform.4090614573162716094     189   1.709    4375   9%
129.146.32.47    OpenPlatform.4090009c243f2109191     159   1.634    4184   5%
129.144.89.119   OpenPlatform.4090614573162716105     163   1.550    3966   7%
129.144.89.125   OpenPlatform.4090009c24ac6116081     158   1.525    3904   6%

DTUS:                   Packets:                Bandwidth  Mbps     DTU CPU
Active      844  28%    Lost       1748         Total   154.610       1%
Total      2971         Total    515771         Average   0.182
Idle       1972         RActive     999         Ravg      0.154



The top block shows bandwidth use of the top Sun Rays, in decreasing order, where:

IP Address is the IP address of one of the top bandwidth consumers
Token/Name is the token presented by the Sun Ray
Pkts/s average packets received per second over the last 20 seconds
Mbps average bandwidth over 20 seconds
KBytes total KBytes received
DTCPU average CPU used on the Sun Ray.

The summary at the end gives totals for either the current server or the server listed using -h, and either just the server or the whole group if -a is present.

The summary block fields are defined as follows:

DTUS:
Active DTUs that have exceeded a small threshhold (1Kbps) of traffic over the last 20 seconds.
Total Total DTUs connected
Idle Number of DTUs that have not exceeded the traffic threshhold in the last minute

Packets:
Lost Total lost packets in last 20 seconds
Total Total packets received by DTUs
RActive "Real" active DTUS (Total - Idle)

Bandwidth Mbps:

Total Total average bandwidth across all Sun Rays in last 20 seconds
Average Average bandwidth per active Sun Ray
Ravg Average bandwidth per RActive Sun Ray

DTU CPU Total per-DTU average CPU use.


UTBW

The output of the utbw program applies to a single Sun Ray. It is usually run it in a shell window on the Sun Ray that you want to get the information about. It can also take a token as an argument, and it will monitor the Sun Ray bound to that token. The output contains the following fields (all measurements over the last 20 seconds):

lost 0/00% pkts 278697 cpu 0% kbytes 249436 0.145 Mbps 1.6(1.6) ms

Output decoded as follows:

lost/pct Lost packets and percent of total
pkts Total packets received
cpu DTU cpu used in last 20 seconds
kbytes Kbytes received
Mbps Average bandwidth
xx(yy) Instantaneous latency in milliseconds (xx) and smoothed average (yy)