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Ask Me Anything #1

I'm lucky to be able to frequently talk to customers about our desktop products. These conversations often cover many of the same questions, so I thought I'd address them here in a regular feature called Ask Me Anything. But first, a few ground rules:

1. This is a new feature, so I don't expect to have enough visitors to actually provide me with a steady flow of questions yet. That's OK, we'll improvise -- I will start the ball rolling with some made up questions (based on real conversations, of course) and supplement as necessary.
   
2. You can ask me anything, but I the questions I answer here will depend on a couple of factors. The first is general interest -- if the question is specific to one installation and won't generally be useful to other folks then the forums (Sun Secure Global Desktop Software forum, Sun Ray Software forum) are probably the best place to ask. But if the question is interesting to the general public then it will be good fodder for the blog. The second factor is how certain I am that I can deliver the correct answer. I don't want to be spewing out useless info to you folks! If I can answer accurately myself or get the correct answer from someone who knows then I will. Otherwise, I'll save the question until I can get an accurate answer.
   
3. Although I will always try my best, there are no guarantees that my answers will be 100% correct. If I discover that a response was flawed, I will do my best to correct it as quickly as possible.
4. I've setup a Gmail address to use for this (that way I can avoid flooding my Sun mailbox if this gets popular). The address will be highlighted in each entry but will be in some sort of code to try to fool the spambots. Or at least slow them down.
   
5. And remember, this is a demonstration, not a competition. Please, no wagering.
   

OK, let's get started:

Can I connect to a Windows XP Pro desktop with either Sun Secure Global Desktop Software or Sun Ray Software?

Thanks,
A reader

Yes, you can with both.

Previous versions of Sun Secure Global Desktop Software (SGD) were limited to connecting to Windows Server operating systems, but starting with version 4.3, you can now specify a Windows XP Pro system as a server object. This means that you can, for example, allow a user to access a Windows XP Pro system that is sitting on their desk when they are out of the office using only a Java technology-enabled web browser.

For Sun Ray Clients, Windows connectivity is handled with the Sun Ray Connector for Windows which shares many attributes with the Windows connectivity in SGD, including the ability to connect to Windows XP Pro desktops. A common use of this capability might be to provide individualized Windows XP Pro environments for Sun Ray client users by running many copies of Windows XP Pro in virtualization software like VMware. Each user can have their own separate Windows XP Pro environment without the overhead of a full fat client on their desk. You might recognize this as the VDI, or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure idea. VMware has a good overview of VDI on their site.

 
What sort of operating system is on the Sun Ray clients? Is it some sort of stripped down Solaris?

Regards,
A reader

No, although you have to be careful to separate the device from the user experience.

One of the benefits of the Sun Ray architecture is that the device itself does almost nothing. This is a big difference versus other thin clients that embed a versions of Windows or Linux on the device itself. In the Sun Ray case, the device only needs to know how to do a few things (negotiate the network, connect to a Sun Ray Server, draw graphics, etc.) and the logic behind all that is contained in a small bit of firmware in the device. No Windows, no Solaris, no Linux, just the bare minimum to get the device on the network and functioning.

But just because there is no significant operating system in the device itself, it doesn't mean that users won't have a full featured graphical OS to use. Once the device is turned on and connected to a server, the user can be given a Solaris, Windows, or Linux desktop environment. From the user's perspective it feels like the operating system is locally on the system itself (except it boots faster than they'd expect), but all of the processing is being done on the server and the Sun Ray client is just the interface mechanism. That means you can do things like yank the power cord out of the back of a Sun Ray client, plug it back in, and continue working right where you left off with no lost data. It's a bit like unplugging your phone -- you won't be able to talk while it's unplugged, but once you plug it back in you're back in business.

That's it for the debut edition of Ask Me Anything. If you have a question please send it to askchrisanything at Google's mail service.

Posted at 03:16PM Jan 26, 2007 by Chris in Ask Me Anything  |