Sun Ray Bandwidth

For the last year, I have been involved with some extensive research and proof of concepts at one of my customers.  One of the big misconceptions that I deal with, is Sun Ray's take a lot of bandwidth.  I hear that "Compared to Citrix, Sun Ray's don't even compare".  Well, I one day I was sick of hearing this with no rebuttal, so I challenged this person. 

I said let's look at your full screen citrix and see the settings.  So we opened up his settings at 800x640 and 16 colors.  He had been comparing these network bandwidth utilization with that of a Sun Ray running 1900x1200.  Seems a bit unfair doesn't it?

The Thin Thin Blog did a great job of suggesting that Citrix and Sun Ray's are similar in Bandwidth consumption.  This is a pretty old blog, so I thought I would add my 2 cents.

Here's how it goes.  I was asked to go to Mexico, and try a connection with a Sun Ray connected through a WAN back to the Chicago Area.  Before I went I started looking at Latency.  On average, the latency is aprox 150ms on average.  I saw this go up to as high as 800ms Latency.  This concerned me going down to Mexico, but it ended up ok, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We arrived and started plugging things in, so here's the setup:

1. Sun Ray 2FS with a single monitor attached - Mexico
   
2. USB Keyboard and mouse - Mexico
   
3. Sun Ray server was a x6250 - AMD Procs - Chicago
   
4. VMware server was a x4420 - Intel Procs - Chicago
   

We used SRSS 4.0, but 4.1 came out as we where in mexico, so I would suggest that as of this writting.  We used Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure connected to VMware Virtual Center.  Why did we choose this?  Basically, because we had no time to do application remediation.  Meaning, we could literaly "Suck" up the PC that the end user is working on, and send it to the server and replace the Desktop with a Sun Ray.  Why would anyone want to do this?  First, sharing of resources, second, easier mangability, third upgradability.  I'll go into that more another day.  If I don't, someone remind me to. :}

We also used the GUI firmware on the Sun Ray, that allows us to put in the IP address and Sun Ray server manually.  This is great when doing a POC, and you or your company doesn't have a DHCP server.  I would suggest this for a large scale roleout, but for a dozen or so, it works.

We plugged in the Sun Ray's and started monitoring.  We monitored in 3 locations.  On the VMware server, on the Sun Ray server, and on the actual Network. 

Here is the network bandwidth for one of the two Sun Ray's we brought.  As you can see, we averaged about 30 Kbps.  This isn't just a workstation sitting idle, it's acutally someone working on it.  I have all of the VMware charts and all, but this is the most telling with Bandwidth.



So what exactly where we displaying?  a 1024x768 desktop at 8 Bit color.  I could have done less Kbps, with a lower color depth, but 30 Kbps is what we were trying to hit.

Let me know if you have questions or comments.

T

Bandwidth, citrix, Sun Ray, vmware, VDI, VDC, VDA