Sun Ray Bruce's Desktop Tales Maurice Bonotto's Weblog about everything Desktop @ Sun and also Not @ Sun.

Resizing XP Virtualmachine Boot Hard disk

We setup yet another proof of concept for Sun VDI with VMware ESX and Virtualcentre at the backend. VMware Virtualcentre was installed as a virtual machine as it is now supported by VMware.

 The problem we had was that the initial VM that was built with the customers SOE on there was only created with a 8GB boot disk, so once you have Windows XP service pack 2, and then install service pack 3, and install MS Office and other basic applications you basically fill up the 8GB. So we needed to resize the hardisk without needed to rebuild the XP virtualmachine (as we had no XP CD handy).

 So this is what we did:

- Shutdown the VM, then made a clone of it in case the process didn't work.

- Logged into Virtualcentre via the VMware client and then into Edit settings for that virtualmachine.

- Then went to the Hard Disk and then increased it's size to 14GB (or as required).

- Then started up the Virtualmachine again and logged as in Administrator.

 - Downloaded EASEUS partition manager (basic edition is free to use for XP and Vista), and used that to increase the size of the C drive to expand to use the extra 6GB (ie. from 8GB to 14GB). This requires a couple of reboots but it the process works fine. You could use Parition Magic or Acronis Disk Director or any similar tool but EASEUS is the one we found first but is easy to use.

So that's it, I thought I would blog it just in case someone else needs to do this.

Posted at 10:49AM Mar 25, 2009 by sunraybruce in General  | 

Sun Ray load balancing with Windows 2008 and 2X Loadbalancer

Had a sucessful installation at a customer today where we installed a Sun Ray environment talking to a Windows 2008 Terminal Server farm. We used a third party bit of software called 2X Loadbalancer which costs very little but does a good job at loadbalancing. So I thought I would blog this in case anyone else was interested in doing this.

So I have to thank some of the guys in Desktop Engineering for the basic instructions. I have just added the other steps required to get it all working.

I had 2 Sun Ray servers and 2 Terminal servers setup. So the steps were:

1. a. Install Sun Ray server as usual on Solaris 10x8 server with latest patches installed. Say yes to Kiosk mode during setup. Setup failover group and made sure all that was working. I used Sun ray 4.1, the -01 patch for Sun Ray 4.1, Sun Ray Windows Connector 2.1, and Solaris 10 x86 Update 6.

b. Customer already installed 2 Windows 2008 servers with Terminal services enabled.

2. Download the following from www.2x.com. 2X LoadBalancer, 2X Terminal Server Agent and 2X Client Gateway.

3. Install 2X Loadbalancer, Terminal Server Agent and Client gateway on the primary Terminal server, and install the Agent on the other Terminal server.

4. Launch 2X config console and under Farm add both (W2003) terminal servers, the Farm--> Add both TS1 & TS2

5. Change TS1 & TS2 rdp port to something 9000 from standard 3389 --> In the farm edit the TS properties and replace RDP port 3389 with 9000.

6. From 2X console LoadBalancer option, select LoadBalncer alogorithm as either "Round Robin" or "Resource Based".

7. We changed so that the 2X Gateway listens at port 81, So use uttsc with -P 81 option. You can use default Port 80, but if you have IIS installed on the W2008 server then you need to change the port to something else.

8. I then used the usbdrived from http://blogs.sun.com/danielc/entry/a_usb_drive_daemon_for1 to make USB drive mounting alot easier.

9. Installed the ScreenLock package from http://wiki.sun-rays.org/index.php/SRSS_Addon:_SRWC_Lockscreen which automatically locks the screen once the smartcard is removed.

10. Then setup Kiosk mode on Sun Ray. I chose the Java Desktop System and inserted the following logic in the JDS Kiosk mode script in /etc/opt/SUNWut/sessions/jds3/jds3-kiosk-session (backuped up the original once first!!!!!). The code takes the username from the User Name field of a registered smartcard and logs into the terminal server with that user. If no card is used then blank login is done. Also turns on sound, client drive mapping for the USB drive, and required switches.

__________________________________________________________________

USERNAME=`/opt/SUNWut/sbin/utuser -p $SUN_SUNRAY_TOKEN | grep "User Name" | cut -f2 -d=`

WINTS=psydmts01

DOMAIN=addomain

if [ ! -z "$USERNAME" ];

then

exec /opt/SUNWuttsc/bin/uttsc -m -b -A 24 -E wallpaper -E theming -u $USERNAME -d $DOMAIN -r sound:high -r disk:USBDRVS=$HOME/USBDRVS -P 81 $WINTS

else

exec /opt/SUNWuttsc/bin/uttsc -m -b -A 24 -E wallpaper -E theming -r sound:high -r disk:USBDRVS=$HOME/USBDRVS -P 81 $WINTS

fi

____________________________________________________________________

11. Restart Sun Ray services and that was it.

The only gotcha we found was with the Windows Firewall which blocked port 81.

As far as testing went we tested different scenario's such as getting a session on one Sun Ray server and then going to the other Sun Ray server and starting a new session and regaining your Windows session. Also load balancing scenarios for the Windows side and Sun Ray side of things, and it all worked fine.

So it was a nice outcome and the customer is very happy with it. Hope this helps someone. This is may not be the best way to do this but it did achieve the outcome and met customers exact requirements.

Posted at 03:28PM Feb 02, 2009 by sunraybruce in General  | 

Resizing Windows Sessions

From a partner of ours in New Zealand CCL and Ian Jones in our Auckland office is a script that resizes your Windows session when you move from Sun Ray to Sun Ray of different resolutions. This is based on card insertion using utaction.

Call the following script with utaction so this would be in your CAM mode script which Windows desktop would start this for each Windows session:

/opt/SUNWut/bin/utaction -c /opt/SUNRayAddons/utresize

Just save the following text between the -----  as the utresize script and save to /opt/SUNRayAddons:

---------------------------------------------------

 ---------------------------------------------------

I don't claim any credit for this but I thought I would post it for the benefit of everyone.

This together with the Windows ScreenLock package found are very neat tools to make Windows Sun Ray environments alot nicer.

Cyaz later....

Posted at 02:17PM Nov 06, 2008 by sunraybruce in General  | 

Barcode Scanners and Sun Ray's

As I have had many people ask me lately about barcode scanners and if they work and what brands and other questions, so all the better topic to talk about today.

Basically with 1D and 2D Barcode scanners there are two types.

There are the simple devices that just act like a keyboard (the most general types) and I have found that most of these devices work fine (out of 20 different types we have encountered only 1 type didn't work properly and was more likely to be a fault with the scanner not being calibrated rather than it not working.), but out of the 10 different brands we have seen in proof of concepts I have only had one not work. The Symbol brand seems to be the major player in this space and we have never had a problems with those, so I would always recommend these. Because these types of barcode scanners act like a keyboard you dont need any drivers for Windows when you connect Sun Ray's to VDI or Terminal Services, it's just like another keyboard, it just works.



There are also simple barcode scanners that are PS2, and also these work fine with a PS2 to USB adapter. I have found though that a majority of PS2 to USB adapters work fine, but a couple that didn't work properly dropping characters, but that was related to the adapter.

The other type of barcode scanners are those expensive ones that have memory and that usually synchronise with a base unit which is either connected to a PC via serial, USB, Wired network or even wireless ones. Usually these devices require Windows drivers. The serial devices you can get to work with the Windows Connector using the -r comport command,

uttsc -A 16 -m -b -r comport:COM1=$DTDEVROOT/dev/term/a

Refer to ThinGuys blog entry for detailed instructions on serial port forwarding Sun Ray Serial Port Mapping

The USB devices that need Windows drivers won't work on a Sun Ray unless you use a third-party solution like a USB Server from Keyspan like this one which you install an agent on your Windows session (whether it be XP with a VDI solution or the Windows Terminal Server), and you plug in your USB device and you claim it using the agent software. We have used this successfully with devices such as USB floppy drives and DVD drives, image scanners, and other USB devices that require Windows drivers.

The wireless ones and networked ones work fine as they have nothing to do with the Sun Ray environment. There are even 1D and 2D barcode scanners that are built into mobile devices such as the Motorola MC57 that will change the way things happen in warehouses moving forward.



Mind you with RFID tags Barcodes may eventually become a thing of the past. but the same rules would apply to those types of devices.

Signing off...
M

Posted at 11:42AM Sep 04, 2008 by sunraybruce in General  | 

Avaya and Sun Ray Setup for an Airline

It's been a while since my last blog entry but I thought this was too good not to blog about.

We finished successfully a Proof of concept with a company in the Airlines sector. A three day Proof of concept in which the first day we setup the Sun Ray and Sun Secure Global Desktop software, as well as the Windows Terminal Server, AD Integration, and installed applications.

The main pain being that the clients firewall within their internal network was blocking everything so it was a constant pain to get ports unblocked for what was required.

So basically in three days we setup a total production environment with access from inside and outside the network. Try and do that with Citrix and Wyse!!!!!

All three environments run on Windows Terminal Services delivered to the Sun Ray using the Windows Connector for Sun Ray. All environments the data always remains in the datacentre and is completely centrally managed, no minature OS on the client and drivers to manage like other thin clients.

The environments we setup were:

- Airports

We setup a couple of Sun Ray's with a Serial receipt printer, Bag Tag Printer and USB barcode scanner (Symbol) and had one setup with the airline check-in functionality and another with departure gate setup just with the barcode scanner (ie. to scan the boarding passes). Their character based airline booking system worked perfectly. The hotdesking ie. moving your session from one Sun Ray to another works fine, even in the middle of a transaction, and printers follow you.

- Call Centre

We setup Sun Ray's with their Avaya VOIP phones. We installed Avaya IP Agent for Citrix on the Terminal Server (and unlike the name of the product says it works perfectly with Windows Terminal Services). So it all worked perfectly, printing to network printers, logging into their phone, accepting phone calls via the IP Agent Software, diversion to mobiles and so on.

- Call Centre Operator from home

To save on fuel costs and also real estate costs they were looking at relocating some of their call centre at their homes. Problems they have is security of having a client out offsite, and the cost of phones and so on.

So we setup a Sun Ray with VPN client to VPN in over the internet to the Sun Ray server in the datacentre. Also with the Avaya software you are able to setup the phone extension in the office to link in with the users home phone, so they can accept and make calls using their home's analogue phone.

- Back Office Users

The office suite, outlook, and Internet Explorer, and their web applications worked fine as expected, as did all of their other applications. The Avaya VOIP software to control the phones also worked well. The hotdesking was also very useful being able to access your desktop from any Sun Ray in the company.

-Remote Users

We also setup Sun Secure Global Desktop to be able to access their desktops via their existing normal PC, Mac or other kind of client. This also worked perfectly. It was also there as a sort of Disaster Recovery solution as they can get to this using any internet access point.

So it was a good Proof of concept, the customer understood Thin Client computing and it was very successful.

Signing off.. M

Posted at 11:31AM Aug 26, 2008 by sunraybruce in General  |  Comments[1]

What a weekend of pain...

Hi All,

I spent the weekend working on the house and buying the tiles for my house rennovation.

So I started by pulling down this old 1970's wooden panelling and to my surprise I found a rising damp problem... oh well there goes another $1000 towards the rennovation budget. The we decided to tile the kitchen because some of the floor boards were water damaged, so it's a matter of changing tact.

Apart from that everything went fairly well. I installed Solaris Express and installed all the drivers for my notebook and they all worked, even the wireless card. My notebook is a Samsung M50 which is the lightest 17" notebook around and has the longest batter life. Mind you it is single core which is it's only downside, and now it has Solaris Inside!!!

Also finshed installing my home PC with WinXP. I also installed VmWare Workstation 6 Beta and Solaris 10 11/06. The I put on there Sun Ray Software 3.1 and Sun Secure Global Desktop 4.3 and it all worked nicely. Now while I am using my PC my fiancee can use the SUn Ray in the lounge room ;-) I just wish I could do that with my Plasma TV.

Oh well... and I also found a couple of other cool sites for Sun Ray users out there... I actually found it on Wikipedia on the Sun Ray page.

So there was:

I am now a Wikipedian

Last night as I was waiting for the hundreds of Microsoft patches and Service Packs to install on my PC (I didn't realise how many fixes there have been since the vanilla version of Windows XP), I decided to look at Wikipedia.

So I did a search on the two main products I specialise in i.e. Sun Secure Global Desktop (SGD) and Sun Ray Server and I found that there wasn't a page for SGD, so I made one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Secure_Global_Desktop

Good thing was there were heaps of other Wiki's there relating to Sun products, but in my opinion there could be more. I recommend to anyone within Sun and also people in the IT community to support Wikipedia and other such projects as we are just making the world a smarter place.

The Sun Ray wiki is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray

So this is going to be a short one as I am about to pass out so good night to all until next time...

Cyaz.

Posted at 09:34AM Mar 09, 2007 by sunraybruce in General  |  Comments[1]

I give up.. I hate Vista...

Oh well my battle with 64bit Vista has ended... last night I gave up on it and decided to reinstall my Windows XP.

I couldn't install my VPN clients that I use, I couldn't find drivers for fairly recent components, and the just make things work DirectX doesn't work properly, so my favourite game Battlefield 2142 doesn't work.

In case any one plays Battlefield 2142 my nick is donmozza. I am a member of the TOG clan (The Older Gamers http://www.theoldergamers.com ) who are made up of over 25 gamers. Teach those young kids a lesson (NOT!!!) Geeezz some of the younger kids are good. Mind you the annoying thing is that people use cheats to gain an advantage which just isn't sport.

I don't understand how customers could move to Vista... many corporate PC's just aren't up to Vista recommendations, and Computer component vendors still don't have Vista drivers available or they may have but they only cover products that are less than 12 months old. Plus Cisco and Checkpoint's VPN clients don't exist for Vista 64bit.

Mind if someone wanted to go to Vista and didn't have the desktops with a sufficient configuration, you could go one of two ways.

First you could move your applications to Terminal Services running on Vista, and then use Secure Global Desktop or Sun Ray Appliances to connect to those Vista RDP sessions. This currently isn't supported but is on the near horizon. Mind you if you are using published applications then you can't really see much of Vista and there really isn't much point. Just stick with a Windows 2003 Terminal Server until Longhorn comes out.

Otherwise you could use VMware's Virtualised Desktop Infrastructure with Sun Secure Global Desktop as a migration strategy for Vista. There is a Virtualised Desktop Access (VDA) kit which can be downloaded from http://www.sun.com/downloads which integrate SGD and VDI and Sun Ray thin clients if you were also interested in replacing your desktop PC's with Thin Appliances.

So at 3am this morning I finished reinstalling Windows XP, and it will probably take me a couple of days to get everything to where it was. I also installed Solaris Express (x64 version) on the box so it dual boots. Solaris absolutely flies on my PC, which has an AMD FX-60 Dual Core CPU and 2GB of memory. I also installed my XFX NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS card and this screams. I got a 3DMark06 score of 8760 without tweaking.

That's basically it for today, Until next time.

Posted at 05:57PM Mar 08, 2007 by sunraybruce in General  | 

The Proof of concept turned into Production

Yesterday I was at a client site installing Sun Ray's in the store which being trialled as an option to remove the old Wyse Green Screens, as well as these old backend Dell PC's.

So I walked in and due to the very nasty thunderstorm a couple nights ago their old Stallion Terminal Server died and their phones where down, with the only thing up was the Frame Relay network. It would have taken them one week to find a "working" replacement for the Terminal Server, if indeed they could find one. There was also a power outage in the Data Centre the Servers were located at, but because they were in a Data Centre the UPS kept them up until power was returned, that meant the Sun Ray's were able to still run off a battery powered Sun Ray server ;-) You generally don't have a UPS on every desktop in one's organisation. Even if the power did go out on the store, upon power resumption, the Sun Ray's would within seconds take you back to where you were before, no data loss.

So what happened????

I showed up with Sun Ray's in the back of my car. So I went in, removed the Wyse terminals, plugged in the Sun Ray's, plug in their smartcards and within seconds they have their desktop and applications. So the Proof of concept actually turned into a Production install - talk about pressure!!!

The applications are being served up by Secure Global Desktop, located in Sydney Data Centre), mainly Windows published applications running of a Windows 2003 Terminal Server (also in the same Data Centre), but also some Terminal Based applications, which they might expand to assist them to remotely manage their servers. The Sun Ray server is also located in Sydney, has been setup in Controlled Access Mode (CAM).

Funny thing was I just found out that day that my Software Practice colleague was actually setting up Sun Ray's in a different companies store next door, which was actually pretty amazing when you consider the size of Sydney.

So once all was setup (which took me a day to setup SGD and Sun Ray and the Terminal Server), then all we had to do was get the Sun Ray's to a store in Brisbane (1.5 hour flight from Sydney), and also to a store in Sydney, and just plug the Sun Ray's in, and there you have it a completely centralised Desktop environment running completely on Sun Hardware and Software (apart from Windows 2003 the only non-Sun product). It took quicker to setup the servers than to ship the units.

So everything on the main did go smoothly but I encountered a couple of little annoying snags along the way but they were easily resolvable and I found the answers in the SGD and Sun Ray Product documentation on http://docs.sun.com. The first two were part of the initial 1 day setup, the other two where an onsite fix.

First thing first.. when you setup a Windows Terminal Server (whether it be for Citrix, SGD or Terminal Services, first thing is that you need to turn off the Screensaver and automatic screen lock (I think there is a Group Policy to do this), otherwise you will be logged into a published application on a Windows server and you go and leave it idle for 10min, and then come back and Secure Global Desktop will ask you for your Windows password again, because the Windows screenlock is telling it that it needs it.

Next thing, if you setup Secure Global Desktop and your Windows Terminal Server is standalone (ie not part of LDAP or Active Directory or NT Domain) when you setup the server in Object Manager under NT Domain box, put the Workgroup of the Terminal Server. E.g. if the workgroup is MS_HOME then put MS_HOME in the NT Domain box.

Another one is that in Solaris using a Sun Keyboard (i.e. the one with the Sun Keys) I found out that F11 and F12 are actually mapped to the Sun_Stop and Sun_Again Buttons. So F1-F10 are the normal Function keys, but F11-F20 are actually the Sun Keys on the left hand side of a Sun Keyboard (going fro top to bottom). The actual F11 and F12 aren't mapped to anything by default, apparently this is a historical thing. And no Stop-A does nothing on a Sun Ray in case you were curious. F11 and F12 I have found in terminal based applications are always important so it's good to document this somehow.

So how did I fix this.. well from some knowledge of my colleagues, I used xmodmap to map the F11 and F12 keys to the Stop and Again keys using the following commands in my kiosk mode script:

# Change keyboard mapping for F11 and F12 on a Sun Ray /usr/openwin/bin/xmodmap -e 'keycode 75 = 0xffc8' /usr/openwin/bin/xmodmap -e 'keycode 76 = 0xffc9'

Then the next thing wasn't really a problem, just made things neater, was getting rid of the security warnings (for an initial SGD connection). Mainly the Java applet trust dialog box, and the Secure Global Desktop Certificate.

So when one ticks do you trust the application vendor and when you tick the box and select yes, a preference is set in a file located in the .java directory.

For the Secure Global Desktop security warnings you need to install the certificate on the client. So if it's a Fat PC you are connecting from you need to copy the pem (i.e. X509 Certificate) file into the $HOME/.tarantella directory (In Unix and Linux) and in the users Tarantella directory in Windows somewhere in their Application Data directory under Documents and Settings in Windows XP. See the documentation where I got this solution from http://docs.sun.com/source/819-6255/unsup_certs.html and http://docs.sun.com/source/819-6255/prompts_rootcerts.html

So to stop all the "Do you Trust" pop-ups and the SGD Security Warnings that come up when in CAM mode, I did the following:

Created a user called test. Logged into the Sun Ray as test (I chose CDE as the desktop environment as CAM mode is based on CDE). I started up Mozilla, then logged into SGD, ticked all the boxes and said yes to everything, and then logged out and shutdown Mozilla.

In that users home directory, I tarred up the $HOME/.java and $HOME/.tarantella.

Then I created a prototype directory in /var/opt/SUNWut/kiosk/prototypes/CAMmoz which actually gets created when you create a CAM application through the Sun Ray webadmin. I then untarred the previously created tar file into here and I recursivley changed ownwership or .java and .tarantella to user root, group utadmin. So that when the CAM session starts, these directories become copied into the CAM users home directory.

More info goto: http://docs.sun.com/source/819-2384/cam.html

I thought I would blog it as it will probably be a useful jog to my memory when I need it next, and in case someone is struggling with this.

Also I thought I would like to thank Thin Guy because his Blog has been so useful in the past. Hope mine serves some use to people out there, whether they be colleagues from Sun or customers out there.

Cyaz....

Posted at 09:55AM Mar 06, 2007 by sunraybruce in General  | 

Purple Heart and Bravery award for installing Vista

After an all night effort I still haven't finished my Vista install...

Mid last week my PC at home had an issue where it wouldn't boot.. basically something happened to the Windows Boot Loader and also Windows itself that made it unrepairable... so as the week before I bought an AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 Dual Core CPU it was bundled with a copy of Vista Home Basic x64, so I said why not be brave and install it.

So first it started to install, then for some reason the screen went blank but the install kept on going... so it finally rebooted itself but it actually didn't complete the install. So I tried again and it did install...

Then when it reboot and started Vista it got to the point where Windows starts up and the monitor went to sleep. So then I rebooted into VGA compatible mode and it did eventually come up. So while it was up I went to install my old programs on there, and found an issue... my VPN clients didn't work with Vista... and many other utilities didn't work anymore under Vista. WHAT A PAIN!!!! So at this point I thought that I would have a second crack at fixing graphics card issue.

So I downloaded latest drivers from ATI, which are now owned by AMD (BTW... An excellent combination of products I can't wait to see what they will come out with in the near future), and rebooted and the same thing happened... except this time the only mode it would come up in is Safe Mode.

So I decided to Google the issue to see if there is a known problem... and to my surprise there was.... just my luck... I found out that there is an issue with my motherboard A8R32-MVP Deluxe and my specific brand and chipset and model of my graphics card Gigabyte ATI Radeon X1900XTX 512MB PCI-E card where the latest Catalyst drivers don't work. Even on Windows XP it wouldn't work with any ATI driver later than the one the card shipped with.

So now its going to cost me over $500 to change graphics card to one that works (and has similar specs to the Radeon X1900XTX). I think I might go with an NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS 320MB PCI-E card as the specs look good. Thanks to Ebay I can sell my old card and recuperate the money I spent on it. So in summary Vista was free but I will need to spend $500 odd dollars to actually use it!!!

Funniest thing of the lot is that I installed Solaris Express on there and it worked first time no issues.... pity Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 and Fifa 2007 don't run on anything but Windows... (well they do run on Playstation 2's but that's not a real computer).

Now thinking about it... Google and Ebay will play a big part of fixing my issue and they both Sun Microsystems customers... so if you look at 6 degrees of separation... Sun fixed my problem... Having worked for Sun for 11 years now it always brings a smile to my face when I see "Powered by Sun". Cool things is earlier in the week I has an issue finding a hotel for a work trip.. so I went to http://wotif.com and found a really nice hotel at half the rack rate. Cool thing was that it ran on Sun products. I brought my little cousins to see Charlottes Web and the Spiders and Charlotte are created on Sun hardware. My bank that I have my home loan and general banking with (which I won't mention their name), their Internet banking runs on Sun. My drivers licence and car registration information is all stored on Sun equipment... Sun is everywhere.

Signing off... just about to go and finish off another Proof of Concept...

Cyaz, Maurice

Posted at 08:55AM Mar 02, 2007 by sunraybruce in General  | 

The Balance of Desktop and Life

Well a long time between blogs but it's just been a busy end and start of the year. Between work and home life it's getting a bit ridiculous but it's all good. Just bought a house and am in the middle of renovating it, and then getting married in October so it's all happening.

Lately my time has been spent working on many Desktop product Proof of Concepts and Deployments around Australia and New Zealand and I have others queued up to be worked on, and there seems to be a buzz about Sun and it's products from both our customers and internally.

In my customer base I am hearing that some of our competitors have some really nice stories (on paper that is) but the good thing is once we go head to head with their products, and customers see that within days our products working in their environment they are always swayed to Sun. There is a difference between marketing and actually doing something.

Also other Vendors are integrating VmWare's Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) into their Solutions. Good news is that Sun has available for download (on Sun's download site a Virtual Desktop Access Kit to be able to integrate Sun Ray and Secure Global Desktop with VDI and get secure remote access to your VDI sessions. This is an excellent solution when some of a customers applications don't lend themselves to run on a Terminal Services environment. Each person still has their own PC, but with SGD and Sun Ray they can have access to it anywhere in the world.

One can integrate Sun Desktop products into their customers environments and can show them Secure Global Desktop integrated with Active Directory or LDAP as an authentication mechanism, and then centralising their application deployment to their users, role based access and deployment of applications, publish Windows, Solaris, Linux, Mainframe and AS400 applications and desktop, and out-of-the box also setting up Secure Remote Access out of the box, and access to their desktop applications from any Java enabled browser in the world. Then also showing mobility with Sun Ray hot-desking technology where they can access their desktops via any Sun Ray in the organisation by inserting their smartcard.

Then Sun also has a best of breed Identity Management solution which integrates into Secure Global Desktop and Sun Ray, and setup Single-Sign-On and adding users to all the different back-end systems with just filling in one webform.

Then you could integrate it all into Sun Java Enterprise Portal Server and give portal access to applications, email, calendar and other information.

So, on the same infrastructure you can host your environment, your suppliers environment and your customers environment. Then the subscription pricing available on our Java Enterprise System software products, so you have a predictable cost structure year after year, and also get access to all the software you require, it's just a total compelling story. We are one of the only IT Vendors int he world who can offer end to end solutions with our own products, and each product is fantastic in it's own right.

I put it to any customers out there, if you are looking at thin client technology make sure you download the products off of the Sun website and try them out. Don't take my word for it, take your own.

We also chatted the other day with colleagues of mine from a Sun partner, that if for example a Partner who resells Novell products, goes into their SuSe customers, took the SuSe desktop managed by ZenWorks, installed Sun Ray Server Software on SuSe then within an hour, plug in Sun Ray's into the network, and there you have it... a Thin Client solution. Plus they could also use Sun Secure Global Desktop to remotely access not only Windows applications but also Linux applications remotely and securely. You could do the same with Red Hat. Anyways something to think about.

With Citrix and basically any Windows Thin Client out there, they completely lock you into a Windows environment, and Secure Global Desktop and Sun Ray gives you choice, especially with the software back ended by Sun X64 servers that support Windows, Linux and Solaris, maybe you are running a Windows environment for the next few years, but then on that same infrastructure you can move to an open source desktop without having to buy more.

Some argue that they run no operating system on their thin client, but they all run an Operating system of some flavour or another (Linux, Proprietary Thin OS, WinCE, Windows Mobile, Win XP Embedded, Windows NT Embedded and many others) , which maybe small but still an OS that needs to be managed and patched. On a Sun Ray the OS (which is on the other Thin Clients firmware) is on the server which is managed on the server. Some of the thin clients specifications out there resemble a PC (some have more memory and faster CPU than one of my desktops at home!!) but all they do is replace the hard drive with flash memory. I find it's ridiculous to have different model thin clients all with different OS options, different hardware options, different peripheral options, why not just stick with a PC. Sun Ray is soooo simple, one Sun Ray model in three form factors, which you can Run Solaris, Windows, SuSe, and Red Hat.

Anyways that's it for now hopefully I can start blogging a bit more.

Cyaz, Maurice

Posted at 03:53PM Mar 01, 2007 by sunraybruce in General  | 

I went to the Gold Coast and What did I see???

I have just returned for a relaxing break over our Anzac holidays at the Gold Coast.

We went to Sea World and Wet and Wild, as well as just hanging around the pool at the hotel drinking cocktails... anyways it was well worth the money. We stayed at the Outrigger Sun City Resort at Surfers Paridise and it was absolutely superb. Room was excellent, water coastal views, buffet breakfasts Australian style, great service, excellent pools and waterslides, and most important;y the cocktails were to die for.

But while I was doing the tourist thing around the Gold Coast, I walked into an internet cafe there to check my email. Went to the counter, asked for 30min worth and he gave me a smartcard. WHen I sent to sit down I found that they were using Sun Ray thin clients instead of PC's that are usually used. I asked the person about them and he gave me the same type of pitch that I would give to our customers, and it's just refreshing to see that customers actually get the benefits that they are told about when they eventually use the product. They were running Windows fullscreen using RDesktop running it on Solaris 10 x86.

He explained that he has smartcards for his regular users (like a membership card) who absolutely love the fact that when they go there, they plug their card in and continue to use the terminal where they left it. He is even thinking of creating a billing infrasturcture to go with it, so his regular customers can subscribe to the service, and get billed monthly or quarterly.

For the casual users he uses smartcards so he has a timing system, that the customer buys some time, he initialises the cards credit with the time, and when the card is inserted it basically counts down. When you remove the card the timer stops. So when the time runs out the sessions suspends, and if the customer wants more time then he/she just buys more buy bringing the card to the cashier, buying more time, and when this is done the session is resumed from where they were. If they don't want to renew the time, the session then after a timeout

He is now looking at using Secure Global Desktop to not only offer access to desktops locally but offer desktop aplications to his users remotely. Being able to log into there Windows session, not only within the Internet Kiosk place, but also anywhere where there is a web browser, and many of his customer were interested in this service.

This business wasn't very big at all, like around 12 thin clients, and a couple of PC's for those who still really really really want to use them. I was just sooo impressed that the thin client message has gotten out to even such a small business as his, and that out of all the technoligies he chose ours as this means he can offer, Windows, Linux and Solaris desktop and applications to all his users.

So here I sign off as I have heaps of work to do, so until next time... Arrivederci!!!!

Posted at 01:44PM Apr 26, 2006 by sunraybruce in General  | 

A Day in the life of a Clinician

Hi All,

I've been doing lots of work with hospitals over the past couple of years with both our Sun Ray thin clients and Secure Global Desktop. It's amazed me how appropriate this technologies are in a Hospital type of environment. Even if the hospital runs nothing but Windows it is still and excellent and cost effective solution which is easily integratable into many Hospital IT environments.

Issues not being able to have PC's near beds and in EU units as they are not compliant to medical instrumenation standards and can interfer with Medical Equipment. Only having PC's at the ward reception areas and nurses having their passwords written on their monitor so that is a doctor needs that PC urgently then can unlock their screen so that they can log out of their Windows desktop so that the doctors can log back in, start their applications and get access to their information. This means in an emergency it could take a doctor a few minutes to get a patients details on screen or even the paperfiles, as opposed to seconds in a Sun Ray environment.

You could do this with a PC but there if soo much earth leakage and the fans in the power supplies can propogate airborne bacteria and the EMF could interfere with crucial medical equipment, that it can't be done. This is why you don't see PC's all over hospitals as there aren't many places that you can have a PC without effecting equipment. Sun Ray's have been tested and are way below medical equipment standards with relatition to EMF and Earth Leakage. Also not having any fans means they cannot propogate any airborne creepy crawlies.

Also for things such as Xray terminals. Normal XRay terminals cost up to $20000 Australian (if not more). Sun Ray's can do upto 1920x1200 resolutions at 32bit colour, and you can even run 2 monitors off of one unit. You could run 2 x 24: LCD monitors off of one Sun Ray. No other thin client can do this kinds of resolutions.

Also being able to access you desktop from anywhere in the world via a Web Browser. Sun Secure Global Desktop has this capablity, plus you can integrate it with a Sun Ray environment so that your Windows sessions can move from the Sun Ray to the SGD session upon connection. True Global Mobility.

So I wanted to write a story about how Sun's desktop technologies can change the way hospitals work.

Comes into the hosptial and goes to their office or staff room. Plugs their smartcard in, logs in and checks their email, appointments etc.. opens up some Hospital Information System Applications like PiMs, maybe their XRay applications like Agfa, etc.. Then they go and do their rounds...

They go into the wards and to visit Mr Brown so they plug their smartcard into the Sun Ray at his bedside and enter the password to disable the screenlock that was turned on when he removed his smartcard in the office and there he has access into PiMs already logged in, enter the patients name and his records are there within 10sec. He needs to check their XRays so he logs into the Agfa application and gets the patients XRays. Then he removes his smartcard and goes around finishing his rounds.

Then all of a sudden there is an emergency.. he has to rush to the Emergency Unit as someone has come in unconcious, and the doctors need to act now. The clinician then inserts their smartcard into the Sun Ray at the EU and plugs in the patients name and he has his records, and he finds out within 10 sec that the patient is allergic to penicillin. Luckily he checked as they were about to administer penicillin to the patient and that would have killed him. Patient is stable so he is able to go back to his/her office and checks, finish paperwork and so on.

The next day he goes into another hospital and plugs his smartcard into the Sun Ray there, puts in his password and he has all his applications there ready for use, no need to log in again and restart all his applications.

In the afternoon he goes to his private clinic and he has a Sun Ray there and plugs his smartcard in and he had access to his session there.

At the end of the day he goes home, and he doesn't have a Sun Ray there he just has a Windows PC. All of a sudden he gets a call that one of his patients has come into the EU and is not in a good state. The doctor then goes to his PC starts a Web Browser and logs into Sun Secure Global Desktop and starts a Windows sessions. His Windows session transfers from his Sun Ray at the hospital to his home PC via via the Web Browser. He then has instant access to PiMs to check on the patients history. Then he decides that he needs to go into the hospital, so he leaves and goes there. When he gets the EU, he puts his smartcard into a Sun Ray, logs into Windows and his Windows session that was using at home via Sun Secure Global Desktop has transferred back to the Sun Ray he is at, and has immediate access to his applications and the patients data that he had opened at home.

That afternoon he has to fly out so he goes home, picks up his bags and is waiting at the airport lounge. While he is called to check on a document that someone has emailed him. So he pulls out his Apple Notebook, fires up the web browser, logs into Sun Secure Global Desktop, and starts his Windows seesion, which has everything as he left it in the EU, so he reads his email, and logs off of Sun Secure Global Desktop.

And thats the end of the story... It is fictional and does sound like something very futuristic, but we have all the tools here now and have implemented this technology in Hospitals as well as in other industries such as Call Centres, Retail, Manufacturing, Banking and Finance, Bank Tellers, Airports, and so on.

The old excuses of why not to call Sun for desktop solutions:

1. They don't run Windows... WRONG!!!! We can run Windows Full Screen on a Sun Ray like a Windows Based Terminal, or run published applications.

2. Sun is too expensive... WRONG!!! Now with out AMD Opteron x4x00 servers and the new Sun Ray thin clients it is no longer an expensive proposition to go with Sun Ray. The x4x00 series servers are cheaper than you think, just check out the prices on http://www.sun.com

3. It's Windows and Sun won't support it... WRONG!!!! You could run the Sun Ray's on AMD Opteron servers, also Windows 2003 Terminal Server on the same type of boxes, run Sun Ray thin clients and Secure Global Desktop, and you have a total desktop infrastructure that is supported by Sun, every component including Windows Server support on our x4x00 range of servers. We are the only vendor who can support full solutions like these as we own all the components.

No more excuses... Just give it a try...

Interested to know more just drop me an email or see your local Sun Sales Representative.

Cyaz, Maurice

Posted at 05:07PM Apr 12, 2006 by sunraybruce in General  | 

Sydney Australian LinuxWorld 2006

LinuxWorld 2006

What a great time we had, sitting in between IBM, RedHat and Oracle, standing out not only in our bright Orange shirts and really colourful stand, but also in our technology that we were showcasing.

I am constantly amazed by the technology that we bring out at Sun and it's times like this that I love that I am working for Sun. I complete my 10 years at Sun in June and this is the most excitited I have been.

Between Solaris 10 with Zones and DTrace and all of it other fantastic features, having the OpenSolaris Project with thousands of members joining daily, our UltraSPARC T1 CPU and servers, the AMD Opteron range of servers, Sun Ray Software 4.0 with the Windows RDP Connector, the new Sun Ray 2 thin clients, Secure Global Desktop and other products we had on display, we were constantly flooded with interest.

We had HP complaining to event organisers that Sun shouldn't be at Linuxworld because Solaris is not Linux, but as one of the attendees actually told us, was a comment made by someone recently, that "Solaris is a better Linux that Linux is!!!".

We also had Oracle still trying to push their Oracle on Linux gig (but when will they learn!!). We actually asked the Oracle guys what platform do they run their Corporate systems on, and they didn't know that it was Sun Solaris. We had many a disgruntled Oracle customers telling anicdotes of how much pain they have gone through with trying to run Oracle grids with Linux. One particular customer said that it took them 2 years to try to get it to work, then they decided to goto Solaris 10 x86 using x4100 AMD x64 systems and it then took them 1 month to implement it and get it working.

We were by far the most busiest stand, and I have never spoken so much in my life. After day 2 most of us on stand duty had sore throats, and were just struggling. Attendees commented that Sun must be a great place to work, as all the Stand guys were just so uptempo and exctited that this passed onto them. It's not hard to be enthused when you have products that you can be enthused about.

It's funny though the kind of reactions we got from the attendees. Like we had our dual core AMD Opteron 64bit based Sun Fire x4100 server with it's top off, showing the fanstastic design, and people were walking past and admiring it, but then walking on. When we actually spoke to them about 90% of the attendees said "It's a amazing system but it's a bit out of our price range!!!!". When we then mentioned to them the price range and that it supports Linux, Windows and Solaris, and that we can offer support for the hardware and the software, they were immediately asking "So where I can I these from!!!".

We also demonstrated features of Solaris 10, and about 80% of those users hadn't used Solaris in about 3-4 years as when Solaris x86 went away they decided to move to Linux as it was their only option for Unix on x86. Once these people heard of Solaris 10 x86 features they all then proceeded to take a Solaris 10 x86 DVD and try it out. We handed out over 2000 Solaris 10 x86/x64 DVD's on that day, and people still wanted more.

Also with Solaris Enterprise System, and OpenSolaris we had alot of people saying that they will give Sun a go again, after a couple of years being in the wilderness "playing with Linux". We had College and University lecturers saying that as Solaris 10 is free and that with Solaris Enterprise System you can download and try many of our middleware and other software suites for free, that they will start adding Sun to the learning curriculums as they see that if their students learn Solaris then they will be worth something in the workforce. Currently they teach their students Linux, but they are always unsure on what Linux to teach their students (eg. RedHat, Debian, SuSe and derivatives of all those) and the only reason they taught their students Linux is that it was FREE. But now that Solaris is free, and is supported on many different x86/x64 platforms, and that Solaris is the major Unix in installed bases, that it would more in their students interest to teach them Solaris instead of Linux.

The main 2 misconceptions in IT land that "Sun is too expensive", "Solaris is proprietry" are just untrue now so I challenge people who are using this as the reason to stay away from Sun and Solaris to give us a go, cause it will be worth your while. Sun is back and stronger than ever, and the next year shows alot of promise.

Signing Off... Sun Ray Bruce.

Posted at 02:15PM Apr 06, 2006 by sunraybruce in General  |  Comments[0]

AMD64, IntelP4 and Windows XP x64 and more

I spend most of yesterday installing Windows XP Professional 64bit on my desktop at home, as I just upgraded my home PC to the following spec:

Gigabyte Motherboard

Mind you I spent around $700, and if I added the hardrives, and sound cards that i already had I would have spent around $1300 for my desktop PC. I did the math, and if I had actually bought a Sun Ultra 20 AMD Opteron based workstation, I would have saved myself money and got alot better performance as I would have the Opteron CPU instead of the Athlon64, and also the case, motherboard and components are just so much better quality. Oh well, I might wait for the Dual Core AMD 64 workstations to come out soon.

So after spending 2 hours upgrading all the components, and a few cuts from the system case later, Windows XP Pro 64bit edition install OK, but then went to install drivers and found out that half of my components and peripherals that I only just bought 1-2 years ago don't have 64bit drivers.... Epson and Leadtek both told me, when I emailed them, for the products I had, that there are no plans for 64bit drivers for them. Then I also realised that the Cisco VPN client doesnt work either, and neither does my Trend Micro Antivirus Software, as they both have 32bit drivers, so I then decided not to progress any further.

So I pulled out my SuSe CD's and installed SLES9, and within a few hours, and assistance from Google and the thousands of FAQ's and forums on the web, I got all my peripherals working.

This is an interesting shift, as who would have thought that Linux would be where it is today. It is a very viable desktop alternative, and also a good platform for webservices type applications. Mind you I wouldn't recommend it for more than that. Things like Databases, CRM etc.. should live on Solaris 10 (x86, x64 or SPARC) as it is free and just a better OS platform, especially when installed on one of our Sun Fire AMD Opteron servers.



So I am happy to say I have a desktop now that I can use, and it absolutely flys.... I was very impressed to see that the AMD64 CPU's run at around 26 degreesC idle and the graphics card actually runs almost twice as hot idle (48 degreesC). My old Pentium 4 2.0GHz system, the CPU idled at 38 degreesC and when you actually put some load on it, it would go into the high 50 degreesC, and on average the chasis temperature was around 39 degreesC with 2 case fans, and big heatsink/fan on the CPU (funnily enough Intel recommend the chasis temp to be under 38 degreesC). The chasis temp is now 28 degreesC with my AMD setup so at least now it doesnt heat up my room.

There was also an interesting article reviewing the new P4's and AMD64 CPU's, and it's easy to see why the Intel CPU's run hotter. Intel have improved their heat/power consumption when the cpu is idle (still considerably higher than AMD), but when you actually use the CPU the power consumption is 50 Watts more.



The article is located here.

It was funny as I went to a customer site who we are starting a pilot at, we walked into their server room, and all their racks were half full so we thought we could put our pilot servers in those racks. We got an email the next day saying that they can't add anymore servers to the server room as the air conditioning and power needed to be upgraded as it has reached maximum capacity. They had just bought 12 2-Way Pentium 4 servers from Hell and now have to upgrade their server room to accomodate them. It's not hard to see why, for example an AMD Opteron Dual core CPU consumes 95 Watts of Power, where a Pentium 4 Dual Core CPU consumes 240Watts. Multiply that by 100's and there is the reason why server rooms are running out of cooling/power. I'm happy to say the customer is now looking at tossing 2 week old systems to replace them with AMD Opteron based Sun Fire X4x00 Servers as it's cheaper (about a quarter of the cost) to buy new servers than upgrade the server room.

I must go now as the girlfriend is calling, but the funniest thing of the week, is that Dell announced that they were going to start producing AMD based systems going forward. So I guess Hell has frozen over (or at least will be!!!) Hehehehe... :-)

Posted at 05:02PM Nov 28, 2005 by sunraybruce in General  |  Comments[1]