Acetylcholinesterase

Best VDI Ever

Sun VDI 3.1 - The best VDI ever!

With many, many new features Sun VDI 3.1 launches today.
Some quick links:

As we say (did I mention this?) – The best VDI ever!

PS_ The hidden major update: Sun VDI 3.1

How to store the Big Bang

The best photo I've ever seen of a StorageTek unit:

"An automated magnetic tape vault at CERN computer center, seen on September 15th, 2008. The tapes are used to store the complete LHC data set, from which a fraction of the data is copied to overlying disk caches for fast and widespread access. The handling of the magnetic tape cartridges is now fully automated, as they are racked in vaults where they are moved between the storage shelves and the tape drives by robotic arms. (Claudia Marcelloni, Maximilien Brice, © CERN)" via The Boston Globe

This and other awesome photos have been posted to twitter over the weekend, because the Large Hadron Collider was finally switched on – and will produce tons of data about zillions of hardly existing particles. Yet another special form of virtualization!

Social Enterprise Tools. e.g. Sun VDI Engineering Team

Here are the slides and some references for my closing talk at Swiss Intranet Summit in Zürich.

Nov-19

Around one date - November nineteenth - he had penciled a heavy circle

via Today's Inspirataion: Louis Glanzman: "The real painting artist"

PDF and ODF links on your blog

"And now to something completely different". This famous line from Monty Python comes to mind whenever you click on a hyperlink that links to a PDF or ODF document. In order to indicate the type of the link I'm using icons by adding some lines to the stylesheet. Here is the code for GullFOSS, that you can copy and paste into your blog's stylesheet or CSS file without any modifications:

/* add odf icons for those links */ a[href$=".odp"] {     padding-left: 17px;     background: transparent url(http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/resource/design/odp.gif) no-repeat center left; } a[href$=".odt"] {     padding-left: 17px;     background: transparent url(http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/resource/design/odt.gif) no-repeat center left; } a[href$=".ods"] {     padding-left: 17px;     background: transparent url(http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/resource/design/ods.gif) no-repeat center left; } a[href$=".odg"] {     padding-left: 17px;     background: transparent url(http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/resource/design/odg.gif) no-repeat center left; } a[href$=".pdf"] {     padding-left: 16px;     background: transparent url(http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/resource/design/pdf.gif) no-repeat center left; }

Finally an example. The PDF at the bottom of Bill Verplank sketches metaphors gets the PDF icon from the style statement above.

Comments:

Two of those icons are unavailable (ods and odg).

Posted by Marc on November 13, 2009 at 03:13 PM CET #

Don`t you mean Month Python instead of Ponty Python?

Posted by Ramon van Belzen on November 13, 2009 at 04:16 PM CET #

Thanks, fixed.
Matthias

Posted by mprove on November 16, 2009 at 06:01 PM CET #

Zürich next week: Swiss Intranet Summit 09

Swiss Intranet Summit - Program (pdf)

> Swiss Intranet Summit, Zürich. 17-19 Nov 2009

I should better get my closing talk ready...

Designing for a Sustainable World - World Usabiltiy Day, Nov-12

World Usability DayWorld Usability Day 2009 is Thursday this week. The topic in 2009 is Designing for a Sustainable World. Hence check worldusabilityday.org for an event nearby – easy and CO2-friendly to reach.

Editor's picks (that's me):

How to export a desktop from VDI 3

This is a recipe how to export a VirtualBox desktop out of VDI 3 to a destination Solaris VirtualBox host. It is based on Dirk’s procedure and contains some modifications to make it work for me.

1. Tell the iSCSI initiator on the destination VitualBox host to accept static iSCSI connections:

iscsiadm modify discovery --static enable

2. Find out the IQN of the iSCSI target of the desktop to export. The easiest way is to look at the desktop as it is registered on the VirtualBox host. Here you can use the command:

VBoxManage list -l vms

It will show also the IQN and the host of the connected LUN. An IQN looks like this:

iqn.1986-03.com.sun:02:c856c247-you-do-not-have-to-read-this-9318dd9d6b48

3. Mount the LUN into your destination VirtualBox host:

iscsiadm add static-config <IQN>,<IP>

The IP is the IP of the storage server – it is not its host name.

4. List the new target

iscsiadm list target -S

The last line contains the important output: OS Device Name, e.g.:

/dev/rdsk/c2t600144F04AD2FA0C0000144FEDF91800d0s2

5. Make a raw copy of the content:

dd if=/dev/rdsk/c2t600144F04AD2FA0C0000144FEDF91800d0p0 of=/var/tmp/image.out

Note, replace the s2 at the end of the raw disk name with p0. Don’t ask why. And you will have a lot of time not to ask why because the copy operation takes quite some time.

6. Convert the raw image into a VDI file:

VBoxManage convertfromraw /var/tmp/image.out /var/tmp/image.vdi --format VDI --variant Standard

Dirk’s convertdd was not available on my Solaris machine, but VBoxManage convertfromraw does the same.

Last but not least it should be mentioned that all this is obsolete for VDI 3.1. We have added a function to export a VirtualBox desktop directly from the Sun VDI administration:

Dialog in VDI 3.1: Export Desktop to Folder

Virtualisation Roadshow in the UK

Sun Virtual Desktop Roadshow in the United Kingdom

Manchester – Leeds – Camberley, Surrey – London – Coventry – Edinburgh
Sun's Desktop Virtualisation Roadshow is coming to the United Kingdom.

OverviewAgendaDates and Registration between now and Feb 2010.

[Photo: CC by Jim Linwood]

Project Wonderland at EDUCAUSE 09

Here is yet another wonderful reason why booth #415 is hot at EDUCAUSE 2009 in Denver.

Wonderland [Image taken from Project Wonderland v0.5 User Preview 2]

A special talk on Wonderland by Kevin Roebuck is on Thursday 2:20pm - 3:10pm (Korbel Ballroom 3B): Sun Microsystems, An EDUCAUSE Gold Partner - Project Wonderland and the Age of Immersive Education

Comments:

thanks for great post

Posted by hotel guide on November 06, 2009 at 05:53 PM CET #

VDI Roadshow in Dublin, Nov-26

Virtaul Desktop Roadshow, 26-Nov-2009, Dublin

Overview - Agenda - Register

BTW_ sorry, green hills were not available in the image stock library. But rain is almost guaranteed.

Sun VDI at EDUCAUSE 09

Sun VDI welcome screen at EDUCAUSE 2009

EDUCAUSE 2009 is ready to start this week in Denver /Colorado. Do not miss to check out Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure – Sun VDI –  at booth #415 (floor plan).

See also Dirk’s posting on Sun VDI for the Education Market.

Picks from the conference schedule: