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

• Announcement
• Product Page
• Documentation
• Download
  

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

PS_ The hidden major update: Sun VDI 3.1

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!

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

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

"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.

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

I should better get my closing talk ready...

World 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):

• WUD Prague with the Sun NetBeans UX team and the special guest Mr. Sun A11y Peter Korn.
• WUD Hamburg with a special session on sustainability.
  

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:

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

Overview – Agenda – Dates and Registration between now and Feb 2010.

[Photo: CC by Jim Linwood]

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

[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

Overview - Agenda - Register

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

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

Picks from the conference schedule:

• Seminar 03T - Sun Microsystems
  Tuesday 8:00am - 2:30pm (Off-Site Tour)
  
  
• Virtual Desktops: 60 Percent Cheaper, but Are They Worth It?
  Gerard Flynn, Thomas Hoover
  Wednesday 3:50pm - 4:40pm (Korbel Ballroom 4A/B)
  
  
• Deploying and Managing Desktop Virtualization for University Students and Faculty
  Jeff Cunningham
  Wednesday 4:55pm - 6:10pm (Hall F, Table 65)
  
  
• "I'm Thin and Green": Reducing the Desktop Carbon Footprint While Offering Anywhere, Anytime Computing Services
  Richard Toeniskoetter
  Thursday 8:10am - 9:00am (Korbel Ballroom 1E/F)
  
  
• It Is About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright Right
  Lawrence Lessig
  Thursday 9:30am - 11:00am (Wells Fargo Theater)
  
  
• Sun Microsystems, An EDUCAUSE Gold Partner - Project Wonderland and the Age of Immersive Education
  Kevin Roebuck
  Thursday 2:20pm - 3:10pm (Korbel Ballroom 3B)