Thursday May 04, 2006 Ponder This
Thursday May 04, 2006 Sun Ray's with LDAP Authentication
I am really trying to close the gap
between sharing
and not sharing here with the blog. I really struggle with it.
There is a lot I want to share regarding my thoughts on Desktop
Virtualization.
A big area I think we can improve on
regarding sharing, is how we solve things and do things. I feel
it is way to hard to find information even with Google. ThinGuy has
been doing a really good job and I am trying to follow his example
more often. I find it remarkably hard to get cookbooks and white
papers pushed through the system. I suspect customers and partners
are dying for this stuff.
One of the biggest topics I hear
time and time again is authenticating users in a Sun Ray environment
via LDAP. I hear is over and over. I will agree it is not always a
simple task. I have just completed a draft cookbook on this
subject. It covers LDAP Client configuration, What too look out for
if Access Manager is used, Executable Automount Home Directories,
Account Management, Password Aging and a couple other topics.
It
offers an example PAM.conf file and sample automounter script. It is
by no means an exhaustive guide but gets you going in the right
direction. If you are interested in it let me know and I will send it
to you. Possible I will post it here after I have cleaned it up a
little more. It been requested that I expand it to cover IDM and Active Directory which I am looking into.
Posted by ponderthis ( May 04 2006, 12:00:00 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [18]
Monday April 24, 2006 I am really slacking on the blog front.
There is a lot happening and that is not an excuse. I do need to try
and do a better job. I've been hard at work focusing on and driving Desktop
VIrtualization Solutions at Sun. More details to come along the way.
There is a lot that really needed to fall into place. Technology and Partnerships most importantly. VMware is leading the charge in this new frontier. I believe the time is right for change. It has been a long time coming and is inevitable. I feel the only barrier is the ability to get customers from where they are today forward. It will also take customers that are ready and willing to make a change. Ironicly I meet a lot of managers that want to take this step, but feel their staff is not willign to learn a new approch. They are trying to figure out how they can get them to embrace a new way of doing things and not replace them. I meet with a lot of people and discuss this topic often and find most are slow to move, becasue of this issue around change and innovation. I would ahve loved to have that type of management at past employers as I often flet they were too conservative. Ultimately, I feel it leads to reducing the competitive edge.
VMware has announce the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. Sun is a member of this effort, as well as most the other players there you would expect. It has been great working with VMware. They are doing a really good job and have been a great partner. I am really excited about the solution we are pulling together, it very different from what others are trying to offer.
On my side, I have been heads down sorting this out, working on supporting material and meeting with customers. There has not been a lot of messaging, as we have been actually working on deployments and architectures with customers. At first I was skeptical but now that we have done some testing and deployments, I think Desktop Virtualization will play a big part in contributing to changes on the desktop.
Stay Posted...
Sunday March 12, 2006 Well, getting ready to finish packing my bags before I head out for Singapore. I have been doing a lot recently in the area of virtualization. That word virtualization, is kinda broad? Some might say, What kind of virtualization? I am not exactly ready yet to disclose any of the details but, I think it is some cool stuff and has the opportunity to change the way we think about things. Nothing I am creating or building, just in how we leverage it and bring things together. I adopted a project in Singapore several months back since a lot of what we are thinking about and planning is being tested by a customer in that part of the world.
I will also take some time to meet the local desktop team and spend some time with a great local partner. If I get a chance I will send a update from there.
Posted by ponderthis ( Mar 12 2006, 09:45:00 AM EST ) Permalink Comments [2]
Tuesday March 07, 2006 I just completed reading an article published this month in It Architect When I first saw the title, I had a bit of hope some of our technology might get a plug. Unfortunately, we did not get any. In summary, the article covers the headaches related with managing remote office locations. The article is focused on offices with fewer than ,or slightly more than five workers.
The intention of the article was to focus on solutions that are marketed differently, than what is being deployed today and recent innovations that have come to market. Unless I missed something, everything I read was another device or product that could improve the management nightmare. Nothing really solving the management nightmare.
There are a lot of technology's in the market, I feel can solve or drastically decreased the management nightmare in remote offices. None were given any consideration. It my opinion part of the challenge today, is architect innovation, and the willingness to do things different from what is already known or feels comfortable. What I call, the fear of the unknown. I suffered from this early in my career and left behind some preaty bad decision at past employers, for others to manage. I also use too take data security for granted. However, the rapid rate at which personal information is leaking or being stolen, frightens me. One area of the article covers WAFS and Content Management Solutions. These solutions have had a nice growth rate, as remote office managers try to control the ammount of data going across the network, in doing so, they are putting the data outside the enterprise, where it could more easily be compromised. Granted, some places will limit what data is allowed to get cached. This section of the article also linked back to an article on leveraging virtualzation for server consolidation. It mentions none of those solutions was available for less than 10,000 dollars. It's not clear to me, how server consolidation solves remote management problems but, I do like the challenge of of a 10,000 dollar price point.
I Looked at a five user, remote satallite office, with five users and the following assumptions. An existing T1 or high quality DSL line is in place. An existing Router/VPN appliance is already in place as well as an existing network printer. A quick pricing exercise on our web site put me pretty close to the mark!
Quantity Description List Price Line Total
5 Sun Ray 170 Ultra-Thin Client $869.00 $4,345.00
25 RTU, Single Seat Only $99.00 $2475.00
5 Keyboard $50.00 $250.00
1 Sun Fire X4100 Server $3,495.00 $3,495.00
Total: $10,565
Ok, Ok, so I did not hit the 10,000 mark. I could keep ringing the water out of rag, and squeeze more out of it but, I think this short exercise gets the point across. In this situation you a remote office could run their desktop session across a secure VPN connection. Sure, you might want to consider a backup network drop if connectivity is un-reliable. You might want to add another server for failover. But, all in all if you want zero data in a remote office and an administrator that does not have nightmares when he is sleeping at night, this is something to consider. This drastically different solution does not meet the innovation mark of new technology. We have had it for a while and it is being adopted and deployed.
Leveraging the low bandwidth capability of a Sun Ray based solution, can pave the road to a nightmare free, highly secure, easy to manage remote office solution. You have the choice of delivering your Linux, Solaris or Windows based desktop. Where the required amount of bandwidth may be too high for say a larger regional office, I feel remote offices are where the most bang for the buck is. You can get a surprising amount of clients running full screen desktop down a small low end pipe. For quest from a real world user see below " Quotes from the Customer."
Posted by ponderthis ( Mar 07 2006, 11:25:00 PM EST ) Permalink Comments [0]
Monday February 20, 2006 Closing the week out with a sore back and jealosy
A few weeks back, after returning from Holland and back and forth to California three times. Which for me is almost a long as going to Holland. I suddenly realized my back was bugging me. Could it be? Am I getting old? Out of shape?
Well, refusing that I am getting old or out of shape. I had to come to terms that my office chair has reached the end of the road. I was chatting on the phone with Thin Guy, hoping for some sympathy. After all, I consoled him a few weeks back when someone lifted his Black Razor phone. It was as if some one had ran over his first puppy dog.
I did not get any consoling in return. Nope, nada, all I got was yea my wife bought me a Herman Miller - Aron chair. I love it, it is so sweet! Gloating about it was not enough, he had to take it a step further and send me pictures of it. I mean, it is not like I have not been scowering ebay trying to land one. But being the cheap-o I am I just keep suffering with a sore back.
Here is Thin Guys nice fancy chair 
Then there is my beat up, hand me down
Tuesday January 24, 2006 I have recently been working with a Sun Ray customer, prepairing to expand their deployment. Over a year ago they moved Sun Rays into production at their Call Centers. Since then, as the acceptance of our solution has grown on others in the company, they have been looking at other ways to leverage Sun Ray's.
One area I mentioned, is what I call Secure Work From Home. In this case, a Sun Ray would be deployed to approved users homes and then connect back into the corporate datacenter via a Secure VPN. So, no data leaves the network and no virus's enter the network. Another area, they came up with was to deploy them in their hospitality locations as terminals for the front desk. Again, connecting across the Internet via a secure VPN. In this case there are no PC's to run and fix, if it has a hardware problem or needs to be re-imaged. It also helps when they are doing software upgrades. They just upgrade the servers and everyone is set. There is also the added benefit of an extended desktop lifecyle leveraging the 1g five year warranty.
Here are some quotes from the customer regarding their experience:
This quote was after using Secure Work From home for a couple of days
" My "Sun Ray at Home" performance has gotten "BETTER" over the past couple of days since it was installed. Last night, it was performing flawlessly ... no lags, no trails on window movement, and responses equally as fast as when I'm working on my Sun Ray at the Office .... it's even more impressive to me than when I first saw it work a couple of days ago! Even for a long-time Sun Ray advocate like me ... this is stunning thing to see how excellent it's working for me "at Home" over the VPN tunnel thru the Internet."
Well to bad for you no more snow days!
This is all without any tuning out of the box. There is a lot you can do/probably should do to smooth things out with low bandwidth deployments. Especially, if you are using a GNOME based desktop. Currently, I think there are are some sweet spots I try and focus on with the customers I engage. The example here leverages a low cost pipe both at the end users home and at the remote counter locations. In both cases, they will have a small number of seats deployed and will not need to upgrade the bandwidth into each location. As we increase the number of connections served by the datacenter, we are going to have to increase the pipe. In this case it makes sense, the cost of managing distributed systems in these locations out weighs the added cost of the bandwidth for the datacenter.
Posted by ponderthis ( Jan 24 2006, 12:00:00 AM EST ) Permalink Comments [0]
Monday January 16, 2006 Well I took the plunge today and started to rebuild my lab. This is the fist step in preparing for part of my development this year. I will be posting more about what I am doing as things progress. The first task was rebuilding my Sun Ray server and getting S10 update one installed so I have new boot in place. I thought I was being a bit ambitious trying to get it all done in two hours! After all, I failed to back up the dhcp configs, preserve the SRSS config and back up my CAM scripts. The S10 install went well and I had the Sun Rays back up and running in 15 minutes minus my policies and CAM configs. Restoring my SGD config did not go as well. I un-tared it and it took what seemed like forever as I anxiously counted down the minutes till my flight to California left. I was hoping too get it going so I could finish everything up remotely. I use SGD as a secure remote access solution to access my lab and for demos when I am on the road. Time did not permit trouble shooting I have to catch a plane to California.
Posted by ponderthis ( Jan 16 2006, 12:00:00 AM EST ) Permalink Comments [0]
Saturday January 14, 2006 I just returned from a week in Holland visiting with partners and Desktop resources from all parts of EMEA that were attending a technical Secure Global Desktop Training. It was great to finally put some names with faces. Jon and Carsten did a great job delivering the SGD traning and bring a wealth of technical skills to the table. I love working with partners. It is always a struggle keeping them informed with the latest information but, that is why I love meeting with partners. There is always so much to discuss. I was able to have dinner with a consultant from a partner I have been working with and catch up on some exciting projects. I really look forward to working more with them as things progress. We were also invited to another partners CFO's home for dinner and were joined by a CEO of another company. The hospitality was first class. We were treated to the best Coconut Shrimp soup I have ever tasted. This was followed by a USDA steak from the grill. I must say, it was a bit surprising having a steak cut from a side side of beef imported from the states. The meal and company was great. I really look forward to meeting with them again. All in all it was hard for me to adjust to the small portions how beverages are servered. I fullfilled my mission to get Stroopwafels and the Hare was great.
Posted by ponderthis ( Jan 14 2006, 12:00:00 AM EST ) Permalink Comments [0]
Tuesday January 10, 2006 Today I arrived in Holland. I am very fortunate on this trip. I have a team mate meeting me and he is from Holland. He gave me a quick tour of the city and more importantly a tour of some of the rural areas. I am amazed by the ammount of farm land and greenspace. This is a duck hunters paradise. I wish I had my dog with me! JR took me by his house boat to check things out. Sailing and boating is just part of the culture here. Let's just say most the boats in these parts are not like the floating aluminum where I come from
Posted by ponderthis ( Jan 10 2006, 12:00:00 AM EST ) Permalink Comments [0]
Friday November 25, 2005 Immersion Week 2005 - Thin Guy on Ice
Every year the Sun Field organization holds a technical event where partners and internal people gather for networking and training. The last two years it has been in the Windy City. For the desktop track, Thin Guy and I tag teamed on a lot of the desktop training. The turn out for our session's was great as was the feedback. We actually got off kinda easy. Most the labs were pre-staged by the desktop resources in the US Desktop Practice.
The first night I stayed up most the night helping those guys fine tune some last minute issues. The only draw back was V20z's were used in each lab. So, we had like 20 of them in our lab and it was loud. You could hear them all the way down the hall.
We gave four training sessions:
Into to Sun Ray Server software
Advanced Sun Ray Server software
Into to Citrix
Advanced Citrix
The classes are not long and you have to cram a LOT of info into a short window. I hope everyone that attended found it useful. The best part is putting email address's with faces and networking with everyone.
It is preaty clear Thin Guy is a Jimmey Buffet fan. So, I figured as a spin-off of Margarettaville I would kick my blog off with
Thin Guy on Ice
