Sun at the DNC
Saturday Aug 30, 2008
This year the Democratic National Convention was held in Denver, CO. To use the cliche history was in the making. The DNC has a long history including the return of the DNC to Denver after 100 years! It was previously held here in 1908.
Sun chose to support the DNC by providing Cyber Cafes to the delegates from Ohio and Michigan. A Cyber Cafe consists of a server running Solaris and Sun Rays. The solution is configured to provide a FireFox web browser for Internet access.
Being on Sun's Desktop Virtualization team, and living in Denver, left me as the perfect candidate to setup, support and take down the cafes.
Sunday 8/24 was setup day. I got up bright and early and headed to the Curtis hotel where the Ohio Delegation was staying. The Curtis is a modern, pop-culture themed hotel, every floor has a different whimsical theme. One such whimsical item is that the elevators chime a different sound track on every floor when the doors open. We were on the second floor and I got to hear "Peak a boo, I see you" several dozen times.
When I got to the Curtis things where very hectic. The staff knew where the Cyber Cafe was supposed to be setup, but no one new where the server and Sun Rays were. After going through several people I finally found a gentleman who knew where they where, but he said we have a problem. I asked him what the problem was and he said you will see and marched off with me in tow.
Now there were several amusing moments during the week and this was one of them. I followed the gentlemen into a room, and literally wall to wall 40 feet by 20 feet are over 5000 gift bags with little stuffed Donkeys sticking their noses out the top of the bags. And yes against the far wall, with all of these little Donkeys in between us I could see the Sun labeled boxes. The delegates were great. We set up a fire brigade and cleared a path 2 feet wide by 20 feet deep to get to the servers. I am guessing we moved close to a 1000 little donkeys.
Here are the pictures of the Ohio Cyber Cafe:
Once the Curtis was up and running I headed off to the Renaissance hotel where the Michigan delegation was staying. The setup went quite smooth at the second hotel.
Here are the pictures of the Michigan Cyber Cafe:
And as I mentioned I got to support the solution for the week: Check out these signs!
I was not too concerned about the support part. The Sun Ray solution is rock solid. My only concern was really from curious participants who might decide to play with the cabling. Another humorous moment came from a support call. I answer the phone and I have someone excited on the other end of the phone saying the Sun Rays are down. I calm the gentleman down and ask him which hotel he is calling from, and if down means the web browser won't go anywhere (meaning the hotel has lost their Internet connection) or down means the web browser is not displaying on the Sun Rays. The gentleman proceeds to tell me that there are little white boxes on the Sun Rays. I announce the Sun Ray server is down and I am on my way. He repeats oh the server is down, and I hear another gentleman in the background say, "Oh that is what that plug must have been for!" The gentleman on the phone then tried to hurry of as quickly as he could. Obviously they unplugged the server for some reason, and as soon as they plugged it back in, everything was up and running!
The week wound up being an incredible experience. Getting to take part of something as important as our democratic process was amazing. The energy from the delegates was like nothing I have seen before. The Cyber Cafes were used non-stop, often with people waiting for a turn. It was amazing to be part of this, and to help make the best company in the world have a part of it!
Technorati Tags: Solaris, Sun Ray
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How about equal exposure for the RNC in St. Paul ?...