Jumping VDI

Hi,

A quick interruption in my run through of Sun VDI 3. The US Army has already a lot of experience in deploying VDI in connection with Sun Ray. Read more about their 4-digit VDI deployment here.

-Dirk

Well, talking about the highlights, can be a short story or quite a long story. But this of course depends on the level of detail. My plan is to stay high-level for now and then dive into the architecture later and explain the Sun VDI 3 step by step.

So what is new with the upcoming release:

Sun VDI 3 = SRSS + SRWC + VDC

In comparison to the last release SUN VDI 3 is now a single product built out of Sun Ray Server software, the Sun Ray Windows Connector and the VDI Broker. The whole installation and configuration process is streamlined and drastically simplified.

A new hypervisor: xVM VirtualBox

The new release introduces xVM VirtualBox as an alternative hypervisor for VDI. VirtualBox allows to run Windows desktop as well as Linux or Solaris desktops, all under a VDI type deployment accessed through RDP and ALP remote protocols.

Linked Cloning: Sun VDI 3 plus Unified Storage.

Sun VDI 3 utilizes directly the capabilities of the ZFS file system. This includes linked clones and the related storage saving. Specifically the direct support of the recently released Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems makes this a very interesting combination.

Extended client support

Besides Sun Ray clients it is also possible to access virtual desktops directly through Windows RDP clients. This increases the deployment options dramatically and also simplifies deployment scenarios including Secure Global Desktop.

And of course there is the Active Directory integration, Sun Ray token management, increased scalability for the VMware Virtual Infrastructure, multiple desktops per user, an embedded MySQL cluster and many other things. I will detail this in subsequent postings.

-Dirk

« previous | next »

Hi again,

Sun VDI 3 has been driven by a few release objectives and this is not only about the feature set. It is also about integration. The top 3 objectives have been:

Integration
This actually covers a few topics. On the one hand we focussed on better integration with directory service in general and also with the integration or related topics such as token administration, which is important if you intend to use the Sun Ray as your client device. But integration covers also the aspect of making the whole installation and configuration experience much more straightforward in comparison to VDI 2.

Scalability
This covers a couple, such as how many desktops can be hosted by one group of VDI hosts. It also includes improvements around how quickly a desktop can be cloned, started and accessed by the user.

Choice
The VMware VI is broadly adopted these days and gets also more footprint in the VDI space. However, if customers want better storage utilization, access to desktops other than Windows or simply a VDI platform that is self-contained and simple to deploy, there is a need for an alternative. This need has been addressed with Sun VDI 3.

The next article will summarize the highlights of the upcoming VDI 3 release.

-Dirk

« previous | next»

Hello,

As you probably already know, we have released Sun VDI 3 EA2 last week. You can find the download on the VDI download page, please scroll to the bottom. The related documentation can be found on our Sun VDI wiki. And then there is our newly created forum, the Sun VDI forum. Please use this as another technical resource and feedback channel.

In the next couple of days I plan to circulate a series of blog entries that intend to give an technical overview on SUN VDI 3. These entries should complement the documentation on the Sun VDI wiki.

More to come soon ...

- Dirk