Paul Roberts' Musings

Monday June 13, 2005

Let the SunRay shine

This isn't just corporate but-kissing: I really love the SunRay technology. For those who don't know, the SunRay is a very thin client which effectively works as a remote display for a session running on a high-powered shared server. I use one everyday at work and I love being able to pull my smartcard out of the device and travel to a different building (even a different town), plugin the card and have my session appear immediately on the screen as if I'd never left it. This ability particularly comes into its own for me because I split my working week between two different offices in different towns. Regardless of where I am I get the exact same work environment and can seemlessly shift from one office to the other and pick up exactly where I left off.

This technology would be so useful in any environment where large numbers of computers are shared. Besides the advantages offered to the system administrators (SunRay's themselves don't require maintenence: if they go wrong you just replace them entirely, which is easy to do as they are stateless) they are extremely convenient for the users. So many times when I was at university, making use of the shared lab there, did I wish we were all kitted out with SunRays instead of the standalone PCs, because often we would have to move from one area of the lab to another chasing the free machines as those we were on got booked up during the day. Its also a great way for people to feel some kind of ownership over thier use of shared computing resources, because you now that your session is yours, and it follows you wherever you go. Great stuff.