Tim's Work Life

Notes for a live roll out of Sun Ray's and VDI

2009-02-25T20:52:00.001-06:00

So for the last 8 hours I've been rolling out Sun Ray's at one of my customers in Mexico City. Just wanted to write some of my thoughts down

sunray-servers and sunray-config-servers do not need reverse lookup working
Sunray-servers and sunray-config-server do need a domain attached with the IP address
Do not have 2 different DHCP scopes on the same subnet...Werid things can happen
Sun Ray's don't take a lot of bandwidth if done correctly.

I'll write more l8r, but that's it for now.

vda 2.0

2009-02-20T16:28:00.002-06:00

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted, It's been very busy. Next week I will be overseas installing Sun Ray's that connect back to the states...Should be fun.

So while setting this environment, there are a couple of things that I've found that others might be running into.

When Upgrading VDA 1.0 with different patches, you need to make sure you Solaris/Linux patches match your Windows patches, otherwise you will get, "Agent can't communicate with Server errors"

Installing FABAN

2008-12-01T13:09:00.001-06:00

First, download the Master from here. The documentation is here.

Copied from the Documentation section

Login using the selected user on all the systems.
Choose one of the machines not part of the SUT to be the
master.
Note that the master may or may not actually drive the
load.
Untar faban-kit-<build>.tar.gz
in the chosen directory on the master system. This will create a sub-directory named faban. We will refer to this directory as FABAN_HOME. For instance, if you choose to untar the tar file in /opt directory (assuming the user name is faban), then /opt/faban is going to be the FABAN_HOME. Use the following command to untar the files:

$ gunzip -c <filename>| tar xvf -

Linux and some other Unix systems use gnu tar which automatically
recognizes gzip-compressed files. If your system uses gnu tar, you can
alternatively use the following command:

$ tar xvf
<filename>

If you install Faban just to use fhb, you can
go directly to the fhb resources listed in Next
Steps.
Install the Faban agent on all systems in the rig that need
the agent. Note: This may include systems that are in the SUT, too. You
may use the same command as in (3) above. Alternatively, you can also
install the xtremely small Faban agent package instead. To do
so, you'll need to generate the Faban agent package first using the
following command:

$ FABAN_HOME/bin/makeagent

This will create a file called faban-agent.tar.gz
in your system's tmp directory. You'll need to copy this faban-agent.tar.gz
to all the systems and install it into the respective FABAN_HOME,
i.e. possibly same FABAN_HOME
for the whole rig.

If it is not possible to install Faban in the same path for all
path-compatible systems, symbolic links for FABAN_HOME work on
all systems but
the master.
Set JAVA_HOME: You think this would be easy, and on most OS'es it is, but Apple makes this so difficult. On my OS X Mac, set the JAVA_HOME to the the following.

export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/home

Execute $FABAN_HOME/master/bin/startup.sh
Point your browser to http://localhost:9980 or http://<IP>:9980

Sun Unified Storage 7000

2008-11-18T00:23:00.001-06:00

I was at an internal training all week last week and didn't get a chance to talk about our new Storage products. I know, I know, Stop laughing. And yes I did say Storage products. And no, they are not OEM'ed and YES they do work.

Don't believe me. Try it out yourself. Go here and download the VMWare image and run it on your laptop or vmware farm.

Let me know what you think. I started the VMWare image and it asked me for a password, so I gave it, and it booted up. I entered the website it gave me, and logged in with root and then the password I gave it. No issues. I then added the 15 x2GB drives that it came setup with and created a pool. After that I added a mount point and shared out an NFS point that I was writing to it on my MAC SWEET.

Then I, started writing data to it to see how that dashboard and anyalitics worked. It was awesome, as I could see which files were being written to and how long it took just at a glance.

Don't beleive me, try it for yourself. It's only a 500MB download.

Did you miss the annoucement?

One great review is here

A quote from the peice, which is my favorite so far:

At the same time, the new capabilities offered with products like
the Sun 7000-series storage appliances are paving the way for new takes
on old ideas, such as video-on-demand. Let's just say that a 48TB 7210
can store quite a few HD movies, and there's no such thing as an
overabundance of scratch space when working with audio and video
projects.
So, in the immortal words of Kent Brockman, I, for one, welcome our new storage overlords.

Sun layoffs

2008-11-17T15:40:00.001-06:00

Well, since everyone is asking, I thought I would post on this. The full article is here.
Bottom line, Sun is right sizing. We have made a ton of puchases and
need to right size. I think the below from the article Sum's it up.

Andrew Kotarba, president and CEO of Dewpoint, a Lansing, Mich.-based
solution provider and Sun partner, said that while he hates to see
6,000 people lose their jobs, the Sun partner community agrees it needs
to be done.

"You have a company that still has a healthy revenue run rate,"
Kotarba said. "It needs to get profitable. It gets the pressure off
their back from the earnings report."

Kotarba, too, sees a big opportunity for the channel in the
layoffs. "Sun placed bets on its channel partners to go to market for
them," he said. "With the cuts, they will depend on us more. Dewpoint
is heavily invested in Sun. This is an opportunity for us to do more."

Whether the cuts are enough remains to be seen, however. "Sun
said it will save $700 million to $800 million annually," Kotarba said.
"If there are no other serious downturns, it should be enough. We all
go through this as business owners. We need revenue to be higher than
expenses."

Kotarba said a lot of the questions about Sun's viability are
actually started by competitors, but that Sun's balance sheet and
technology show it to be a very viable company.

"Sun's technology is second to none," he said.
"Some customers ask about it, some don't. We don't have that discussion
with Sun's installed base of customers. They know Sun and its
technology. But when trying to displaceDell (NSDQ: Dell) or HP (NYSE:HPQ) or IBM (NYSE:IBM),
you need firepower. With all the noise in the marketplace, it's hard.
We need the merits of the technology to stand on their own."

Is SUN going any where, I don't think so. Though we have to make a profit. That's what we are trying to do.

So
that's my thoughts as well. We have a great Free software stack. I've
been called by many customers, and in the first breath they ask if I'm
ok, and in the second they ask if we can help them save money cause
they are doing Layoff's as well. :-}

Yes we can:

Glass Fish Application Server $7,875 for Platinum Plus support per 4 sockets, not cores.

Mysql 5K for Mysql Enterprise per Server

Amber Road - Unified Storage - 1-7 Dollars per GB or less

Can we help you save money? YES WE CAN, just ask us.

Linux Customer Adovating Solaris and zfs

2008-11-12T15:47:00.001-06:00

http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2008/10/10/success-with-opensolaris-zfs-mysql-in-production/

This is a customer that took OpenSolaris and tested compression and zfs and mysql in production.

Great read for you Linux Lovers.

More Sun Ray Bandwidth

2008-11-07T09:13:00.001-06:00

I've been doing some testing this morning with Bandwidth over Sun Ray's. YOUR RESULTS WILL VARY, THESE ARE JUST AN EXAMPLE, USING MY APPLICATIONS.

First, I forced Sun Ray to 1024x768@60hz

/opt/SUNWut/sbin/utresadm -a -c -t default 1024x768@60

the -t default means no matter what token is put in, default the resolution to 1024x768@60

using SRSS 4.1.

Test 1: forced UTTSC with -A 8 to force 8 bit windows mode

lost      0/00% pkts     93 cpu   0% kbytes     35 0.014 Mbps 1.5(2.0) ms
lost      0/00% pkts     97 cpu   0% kbytes     36 0.014 Mbps 2.0(2.0) ms
lost      0/00% pkts     92 cpu   0% kbytes     35 0.014 Mbps 1.4(1.7) ms
lost      0/00% pkts     94 cpu   0% kbytes     35 0.014 Mbps 1.7(1.7) ms
lost      0/00% pkts     95 cpu   0% kbytes     35 0.014 Mbps 1.5(1.6) ms
lost      0/00% pkts     93 cpu   0% kbytes     35 0.014 Mbps 1.5(1.5) ms
lost      0/00% pkts     93 cpu   3% kbytes     35 0.014 Mbps 2.1(1.8) ms

Test 2: Forced UTTSC with a -A 15 No Compression forced on the DTU

lost      0/00% pkts    873 cpu   0% kbytes    779 0.060 Mbps 5.1(5.1) ms
lost      0/00% pkts    158 cpu   4% kbytes    144 0.056 Mbps 2.0(3.5) ms
lost      0/00% pkts    157 cpu   0% kbytes    144 0.056 Mbps 2.0(2.8) ms
lost      0/00% pkts    130 cpu   0% kbytes    135 0.053 Mbps 1.5(2.2) ms

Test 3: Forced UTTSC with a -A 15 and Forced compression on the DTU

lost      0/00% pkts     60 cpu   0% kbytes     34 0.013 Mbps 4.5(4.5) ms
lost      0/00% pkts     60 cpu   0% kbytes     34 0.013 Mbps 1.9(3.2) ms
lost      0/00% pkts    106 cpu   0% kbytes     39 0.016 Mbps 2.2(2.7) ms
-------
lost      0/00% pkts    458 cpu   0% kbytes    203 0.016 Mbps 1.6(1.6) ms
lost      0/00% pkts    104 cpu   0% kbytes     38 0.015 Mbps 1.6(1.6) ms

Test 4: Forced UTTSC with a -A 16 and Forced Compression on the DTU

lost      0/00% pkts    107 cpu   0% kbytes     38 0.015 Mbps 2.0(2.0) ms
lost      0/00% pkts    104 cpu   0% kbytes     38 0.015 Mbps 1.5(1.7) ms
lost      0/00% pkts    106 cpu   4% kbytes     38 0.015 Mbps 1.5(1.6) ms
-------
lost      0/00% pkts    592 cpu   1% kbytes    254 0.019 Mbps 1.5(1.5) ms
lost      0/00% pkts    106 cpu   0% kbytes     38 0.015 Mbps 1.5(1.5) ms

Test 4: Forced UTTSC with a -A 16 and No compressions on the DTU

lost      0/00% pkts    100 cpu   0% kbytes     98 0.038 Mbps 3.4(2.7) ms
lost      0/00% pkts    101 cpu   4% kbytes     98 0.038 Mbps 2.9(2.8) ms
lost      0/00% pkts    100 cpu   0% kbytes     98 0.038 Mbps 1.9(2.3) ms
lost      0/00% pkts    110 cpu   0% kbytes     94 0.037 Mbps 2.1(2.0) ms

I stopped here, as I would never do 24 bit unless you twisted my arm, I feel there is very little need for an average user to use 24bit color depth.

What does this all mean? The protocol that's being used with the Sun Ray's is an adaptive protocol. I like to describe it with a toll booth. Let's say I have 8 lanes to pay the toll's and no one else on the toll way. I can use all 8 lanes if necessary, but as more traffic is added to the toll way, the ability to use all 8 lanes decrease, so the protocol adapts itself to it's current setting.

The problem with this is 2 fold: 1) if you are testing on a private LAN, you will typically always have higher bandwidth numbers than if your LAN was being fully utilized. In other words, when test a couple of Sun Ray's and you see 38Kbps, you can't take that number and mutiple it by the number of Sun Ray's being used at once, because our protocol will adapt as the network get's more utilized. 2) if you have a SRSS server on the other side of a WAN from your Sun Ray, the Protocol has a tendency not to approximate the bandwidth correctly, because it may see a very quick LAN and not the slow WAN.

Solution: in the 4.1SRSS DTU firmware, there is a force compression option in the advanced menu. You can also force from the params file, but I don't know how to do that yet, and is next on the list.

Solaris 10 U6 is here

2008-10-31T08:03:00.001-05:00

I know this will be the hot topic on all of the blogs today, but I'll add mine as well.

U6 is here. What does U6 provide?

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-0547/ghgdx?a=view

Short list if you don't want to go to the link:

ZFS Root Pool or ZFS boot
ZFS Command improvements
Lock stat provider for Dtrace
Zones: Upgrade on Attach YEA
Zones: Different Default routes on shared IP's
Zones: ZFS permitted as Zone Root
x64: Support for 256 Processors
Adobe Reader: Finally
Flash Player: WOW
And Much Much more

I'm upgrading all my systems today, and will let you know how that goes either late tonight or tomorrow.

Sun Ray Bandwidth

2008-10-25T14:04:00.001-05:00

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:

Sun Ray 2FS with a single monitor attached - Mexico
USB Keyboard and mouse - Mexico
Sun Ray server was a x6250 - AMD Procs - Chicago
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

Poor Man's VDI ...

2008-10-22T01:04:00.001-05:00

Once again, I'm amazed at some of our Partners and what they do. DJ, who works for a Sun VAR in the Switzerland, www.acceleris.ch, sent me this. If you are in need of saving money, call DJ an Acceleris.

Here is just one instance of DJ wanting to help the community more than any one company could do. This is why Sun Microsystems is a partner centric organization. The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. Or the Community is greater the the sum of just Sun's Parts.

Here is what DJ wrote to me, and he ask that I share it with you!

________________________________

In my opinion (yes I admit: I am biased ;-) ) this stuff is highly useful for anyone who has to work with a tight budget ... and given the current financial crisis worldwide I could imagine that many people in many companies and IT departments have tight budgets too now ...

So all this is written under the following assumptions:

a) You cannot afford or simply don't want to pay the mind-boggling license costs for VMware's ESX and "Virtual Infrastructure" products
b) you don't have the server hardware required to run VMware ESX anyway ... but having VDI-like features would be nice.
c) but you have a reasonably strong PC somewhere somehow and you have a few Sun Ray DTU's which you could use
d) you don't mind not (yet) having the management abilities VI3 offers and you're perfectly happy with any alternative ... (Sun will soon release xVM Server and xVM OpsCenter anyway)

I myself implemented my "Poor Man's VDI" on the following configuration:

- Sun Ultra 24 PC, Intel Quad-Core CPU, 8 GB RAM, 250 GB disk
- OS: Solaris Express, build 98
- SRSS 4.1

and last but not least: VirtualBox 2.0.2 :-)

Here we go:

1.) Install Solaris

... confgure a few demo user accounts, and then install SRSS (I use Solaris Express build-98 + SRSS 4.1), configure it the way you want, e.g. Kiosk Mode and everything. On my setup I use Opera 9.61 as "kiosk mode browser":

- get the Solaris package for Opera: http://www.opera.com/download/solaris/
- unpack and install it
- switch to a normal account (not root!) and launch it: /usr/local/bin/opera
- Opera will open and and ask you to confirm the license ... Hit "I agree" ... you shouldn't see that window ever again.
- adjust Opera to your own liking, e.g. set the homepage to http://www.sun.com
- quit Opera

Now we copy your newly generated Opera settings somewhere else so every Kiosk user gets these same settings:

cp -r /export/home/yourusername/.opera /opt/
mv /opt/.opera /opt/opera-prototype
chown -R root:root /opt/opera-prototype
find /opt/opera-protype -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /opt/opera-prototype -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \:

Then in the Sun Ray Admin Console make sure that this command gets executed in the kiosk mode (I placed it into a script: /usr/bin/opera_kiosk.sh), e.g. as "Executable" and mode set to "Critical":

#! /bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/opera -personaldir /opt/opera-prototype -resetonexit -kioskmode -nosplash -nomail -nomaillinks -noprint -nosave -nohotlist -nomenu -nocontextmenu -nodownload -nosession -kioskbuttons -kioskwindows http://www.sun.com

=> Result: a very good looking but pretty much locked-down web browser ... ideal for kiosk mode sessions.

2.) Download and install VirtualBox

e.g. from here:
http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.0.2/VirtualBox-2.0.2-36488-SunOS_amd64.tar.gz

3.) switch to normal user accounts and create a few VM's in VirtualBox.

Make sure that the guest addons are installed. In my case I have a virtual Ubuntu machine in one account; another account has a virtual Windows XP, and then again another account has a virtual Novell SLED installation, and so on ...

Piece of advice: Don't use spaces in the names, e.g. don't call your VM "My OpenSolaris test VM" but rather something like "OpenSolaris_Test"

And if you want: Configure your VM to perform an "Auto Login", e.g. not ask for username and password. User authentication and access to your VM will be handled by the Sun Ray server later, so there is no need for extra authentication via the guest-OS, IMHO

4.) Each user who wants to use "Poor Man's VDI" should have an ".autovm" file in their $HOME directory.

The file should contain the name of the virtual machine that you want to access when you login via dtlogin, e.g.:

echo my_WinXP > ~/.autovm

... If they don't have that file and try to access the "AutoVM" session (see below for that) they will get an error message and be returned back to dtlogin.

5.) Configure dtlogin

But first credit where credit is due: For the life of me I could not figure out how to create a custom session for "dtlogin" (on Linux with "gdm" it is sooo easy!) ... I then ran across this web page which shows how to create a custom "IceWM" session for dtlogin ... So I more or less "borrowed" everything from here: http://www.softagalleria.net/icewm.php   .... And then I installed XFCE and borrowed even more from the various scripts there.

We need to create a bunch of files now:

a) /usr/bin/vbox_autovm :

#! /usr/bin/bash
AUTOVM=`cat $HOME/.autovm`
if [ -z $AUTOVM ]
then
    /usr/bin/zenity --error --text="You have not yet configured your ~/.autovm file. Please ask your administrator."
    exit 1
fi
/usr/bin/VBoxSDL -fullscreen -vm $AUTOVM

b) /usr/dt/config/Xsession.autovm :

#!/bin/ksh
#####################################################################
### File:              Xsession.autovm Version 0.1
###
### Default Location: /usr/dt/config/Xsession.autovm
###
### Purpose:           Automatic start of VirtualBox VMs
###
### Invoked by:        Solaris Desktop Login Manager (dtlogin)
###
#####################################################################

DTDSPMSG=/usr/dt/bin/dtdspmsg

export SESSIONTYPE="altDt"
export SDT_ALT_SESSION="/usr/dt/config/Xsession2.autovm"
export SDT_ALT_HELLO="/bin/true"
export SDT_NO_TOOLTALK="1"
export SDT_NO_DTDBCACHE="1"
export START_SPECKEYSD="no"
exec /usr/dt/bin/Xsession

c) /usr/dt/config/Xsession2.autovm :

#!/bin/ksh
#####################################################################
### File:              Xsession2.autovm Version 0.1 $Revision: 1.0 $
###
### Default Location: /usr/dt/config/Xsession2.autovm
###
### Purpose:           Launch VirtualBox VMs
###
### Invoked by:        /usr/dt/bin/Xsession
###
#####################################################################

# First a little namespace cleanup of vars associated with this
# (and /usr/dt/bin/Xsession.ow) scripts.

unset SDT_ALT_SESSION
unset SDT_ALT_HELLO
unset SDT_NO_DSDM

if [ -f /etc/dt/config/Xinitrc.autovm ]; then
    XINITRC="/etc/dt/config/Xinitrc.autovm"
else
    XINITRC="/usr/dt/config/Xinitrc.autovm"
fi

if [ -x /usr/dt/bin/xmbind ]; then
    /usr/dt/bin/xmbind
fi

echo 'AutoVM'

if [ -f $XINITRC ]; then
    echo "using xinitrc file: $XINITRC"
    /bin/ksh $XINITRC
else
    echo "xinitrc file: $XINITRC not found"
fi

d) /usr/dt/config/Xinitrc.autovm :

#!/bin/ksh
#####################################################################
### File:              Xinitrc.autovm Version 0.1 $Revision: 1.0 $
###
### Default Location: /usr/dt/config/Xinitrc.autovm
###
### Purpose:           Launch VirtualBox VMs
###
### Invoked by:        /usr/dt/bin/Xsession
###
#####################################################################

if [ "x$LC_ALL" = x -a "x$LANG" = x -o "x$LANG" = xC ]; then
export LC_ALL="C"
export LC_CTYPE="C"
else
export LC_MESSAGES=$LANG
fi

export G_FILENAME_ENCODING=@locale,UTF-8
export G_BROKEN_FILENAMES=yes

/usr/openwin/bin/xrdb -merge << EOF
! Default CDE resources
*WindowColor:           #8A008A008A00
!*WindowForeground:      #FF0000000000
!*DataBackground:        #0000FF000000
*DataForeground:        #FF0000000000
*WorkspaceColor:        #8A008A008A00
*Color.Background:      #FF000000FF00
!*Color.Foreground:      #0000FF000000
*foreground:            #000000000000
! Hack for Dtmail
*XmText*background: seashell
*XmTextField*background: seashell
*Message_List*background: seashell
*background:    #AE00B200C300
Dthello*string:        Welcome to the OpenSolaris Xfce Desktop
EOF

if [ -f $HOME/.Xdefaults ]; then
    xrdb -merge $HOME/.Xdefaults        # Load Users X11 resource database
fi

/usr/bin/linc-cleanup-sockets

command=/usr/bin/vbox_autovm

if [ -x "/usr/bin/dbus-launch" -a -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" ]; then
    command="/usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session $command"
else
    echo "$0: dbus-launch not found."
fi

if [ -x "/usr/bin/ssh-agent" ] && [ -z "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ]; then
    command="/usr/bin/ssh-agent -- $command"
else
    echo "$0: ssh-agent not found."
fi

echo 'Starting AutoVM'
exec $command

e) /usr/dt/config/C/Xresources.d/Xresources.autovm :

Dtlogin*altDtsIncrement:    True
Dtlogin*altDtName:    AutoVM
Dtlogin*altDtKey:     /usr/bin/vbox_autovm
Dtlogin*altDtStart:     /usr/dt/config/Xsession.autovm
Dtlogin*altDtLogo:    XFCE

=> this last file also needs to be copied to the other locales ... as "root":

find /usr/dt/config -name Xresources.d -exec cp /usr/dt/config/C/Xresources.d/Xresources.autovm {} \;

Voila, done!

If you did correctly setup everything and if you did not forget to create that ~/.autovm file that contains the name of the VM you want to start, you should now be able to go to your next best Sun Ray, type in your username into the "dtlogin" mask, select "AutoVM" as your session type, type in your password .... and you should now be watching how your favourite VM is booting. And it boots pretty fast (yes, VirtualBox rocks!)

Once it's booted you can just leave it like that ... Session hotdesking of course works as well. Insert your SmartCard into another DTU and your VM follows you wherever you go ...

I tested this stuff here in my lab and my colleagues here are pretty happy with it especially given the price tag for the software (not including possible license costs needed for proprietary guest Operating Systems in your VM's ...): Zero. All the software needed (Solaris + SRSS + VirtualBox) to implement this type of "Poor Man's VDI" can be downloaded for free from SUN's web site.

Insert card ... we have a Novell SLED running. Insert another card ... Windows XP ... Insert another card: Ubuntu .... Insert another card: Solaris desktop. .... Even better: Thanks to the "Remote Control" scripts you already posted this also works from SGD, e.g. a user can access whatever VM he has started in the office via the "My Sun Ray Session" menu entry inside SGD ... :-)

So what exactly do I need VMware and their incredibly expensive licenses for?? :-)

Remote Control Sun Ray Session with SGD

2008-10-10T02:40:00.001-05:00

One thing I love about the Internet, is the ability to bring us closer. You have noticed a post for DJ. DJ asked me, in the comments of one of my blogs to go more in-depth in some of the serial ports to work with VDI, so I did. Come to find out DJ works in Europe for a Sun Reseller, and was on-site at a customer looking for help. With out even knowing it, my blog post helped a customer out and Sun sold the customer on Sun as a company.

All that to say, DJ wanted to return something back to the community, so below is a script he wrong integrating SGD and SRSS. This is what Open Source is all about. People doing some cool things and returning them to the community to make the community stronger!

Thanks DJ for the script, it's been great meeting you, and I am still working on the open LDAP integration.

__________________
Here we go:

I gave my users a new menu option in their SSGD menus: "My Sun Ray Session". When they click on it a new window opens and taaadaaa! they are indeed back into their Sun Ray session which they left at the office.

Here is how it works:

The menu point "My Sun Ray Session" is a script that resides on the Sun Ray server itself, e.g. /usr/bin/my_sunray.sh ... so when a user clicks on this menu entry inside their SSGD webtop then SSGD does a "ssh -X" connection to the Sun Ray server and launches this script:

#! /bin/bash
# set -x

VNCDISPLAY=`grep 'VNCDISPLAY' /tmp/RemoteControl/$LOGNAME.agent.settings.vnc | cut -d'=' -f2`
FCPASS=`grep 'FCPASS' /tmp/RemoteControl/$LOGNAME.agent.settings.vnc | cut -d'=' -f2`

if [ -z $VNCDISPLAY ]
        then
                # echo "You don't seem to have a Sun Ray session."
                /usr/bin/zenity --error --text="You don't seem to have a Sun Ray session."
                exit 1
        fi

/usr/bin/create_vnc_passwd.sh $FCPASS > /dev/null
/usr/bin/vncviewer -shared -passwd $HOME/.vnc/passwd $VNCDISPLAY > /dev/null

As explained above: My script assumes that the "Remote Control Toolkit" is installed and working in "agent mode". You can get it from here: http://wiki.sun-rays.org/index.php/SRSS_Addon:_Remote_Control_Toolkit

So this explains the first few lines in my script: The "Remote Control Toolkit" stores the information you'd need to access the VNC session in a file called "/tmp/RemoteControl/YourUserNameHere.agent.settings.vnc"

The problem with this file is that there does not seem to be an automatic way how the password that gets randomly generated could be transferred over into a format that is readable for the "vncviewer" program. Hence I need a little "expect" script to help me out with this .... so that explains the "/usr/bin/create_vnc_passwd.sh" script which I am calling in the second-last line:

#! /usr/bin/expect --
spawn /usr/bin/vncpasswd
sleep 1
expect "Password:"
send "$argv\r"
expect "Verify:"
send "$argv\r"
send "\r"
expect "$"

... this script takes the "full-controll password" ($FCPASS) as argument ("$argv") and then calls "vncpasswd" so it generates the VNC-readable "~/.vnc/passwd" file.

Once that file is generated we can call "vncviewer" (last line in the "my_sunray.sh" script) and supply the newly generated "passwd" file as argument. Voila.

Result: even though the password was randomly generated when the Sun Ray session started the user is not prompted to type a password when he connects to his session via SSGD, my quick + dirty scripts do all that automagically.

I had to come up with this stuff for a customer company ... on one hand their users would like to have access to their Sun Ray sessions from home, on the other hand the company's policy-makers don't want to open any additional ports on the outside firewalls, they don't want any VPN or IPSEC solution (because that's exactly why they bought SSGD as a sort of a "VPN-replacement"...) and they don't want to give their users Sun Ray thin-client units for home use ... Voila. With these scripts they can now use SSGD and access their Sun Ray sessions remotely (if they have an open session).

SRSS in a fusion VM

2008-10-10T02:14:00.001-05:00

So I finally got around to setting up my vmware Fusion with Sun Ray server software. All worked well, except the stupid bridge interface was being connected to my wireless card when it was connected. That's not what I wanted, I wanted the Bridge to always go out en0.

I had no idea how to do this, so I start digging.

In /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion there's a file called boot.sh This is where the change needed to be. I opened it up and on line 704, I uncommented:

"$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet0.pid vmnet0 en0"

and commented out

#"$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet0.pid vmnet0 ''

did a sudo ./boot.sh --restart and all is happy, I can know surf the web on wireless and have my SRSS and sun ray connected to the ethernet.

LIFE IS GRAND!

NetApp faces Sun lawsuit loss • The Register

2008-10-07T07:57:00.001-05:00

NetApp faces Sun lawsuit loss • The Register

That's right, last week solaris is Dead, and zfs and D-Trace were really relegated to nice to have's

Well, I think this win for SUN is huge

NetApp was unable to comment immediately on this story. Sun's win - if it is a win - and the PTO decisions potentially turn NetApp's WAFL IP into, well, IP waffle. Sun gets a welcome PR boost to its ZFS and open source credentials, leaving NetApp with a bloody nose and a 22-patent IT infringement case to deal with. Oh, and the economy is going down the tubes too. It isn't so sunny in Sunnyvale right now.

Gotta Love it.

T

USB using NTFS...Problems mounting, I think NOT

2008-10-01T14:24:00.001-05:00

Had a customer, Thanks Kevin, wanting to mount NTFS USB drive on Solaris.

He downloaded these to packages from here

FSWfsmisc FSWpart

and look at that NTFS on Solaris.

FAA using Solaris?

2008-10-01T14:21:00.001-05:00

How the FAA Is Bringing Its Air Traffic Systems into the 21st Century

Wow, since Solaris is dead, I'd be afraid to fly. NOT...This is a great feather in the Solaris hat.

Sun's
open-source OpenSolaris/ZFS/SunFire server/Thumper storage
infrastructure—which features built-in, state-of-the-art virtualization
capability—was a key building block on which the FAA IT evaluation
group settled. Some of the new software is already being used in the
air traffic system; ZFS (Sun's open-source Zettabyte File System) is
being used in the FAA's air traffic data center.

"The FAA uses a large quantity of Sun Solaris servers in a variety of configurations to support some of our noncritical business applications,"
Andy Isaksen, manager of the Communications Infrastructure Engineering
Team for NADIN and architect of the original mainframe system, said.
"ZFS is being used on at least one service within the Air Traffic
Organization Enterprise Data Center."

ScribeFire with Blogger

2008-09-28T09:54:00.001-05:00

Getting started with ScribeFire - ScribeFire: Fire up your blogging

Ok, I'm probably one of the last ones to start using ScribeFire, but I wanted to post using it, so here goes.

ScribFire, Blogger,

Is Solarid Dead? Part 2 The Community on Attack.

2008-09-28T08:03:00.005-05:00

Wow, I'm amazed at the out cry of both Linux and Solaris users responding to Zemlin's remarks. Waking a sleeping giant comes to mind.

Check out the comments in these links:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/09/24/39NF-linux-killing-solaris_1.html#commentForm
http://www.osnews.com/comments/20324

My favorite here is:

So, the Linux camp: why attack Solaris all the time? If you are threatened by Solaris (but want it's technology), you really dont have to attack. It is not the right way to get it's hot technology. Why not let Solaris be? Why are you being such a great pr*cks all the time? Why is it ok to bully others? Can someone explain the Linux culture of attacking people and companies and OS? Is it because of Linus Torvalds?

Stating that Linux scales badly above 4-8 cpu was not really correct maybe. It is better to state that Linux doesnt scale well above 16 cores:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8769
Unless you do scientic number crunching, then there is a special Linux kernel tailored to that, allowing massively many CPUs, but it can do nothing else than that.

I dont know if you have seen what Andrew Morton says about Linux kernel? It is really buggy (beyond repair?)
http://lwn.net/Articles/285088/

Of course, there are links that showing to migrate from Solaris to Linux is better. But for instance this link, I think doesnt tell the whole picture:
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,s...
If you migrated old Solaris 8 Sparc machines to new Solaris 10 machines then you would also see a big performance boost. Possibly even more a boost than going to RHEL as this link shows (Solaris on T1 Niagara CPU being 50 times faster than Linux on AMD opteron):

http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,s...

I wish that the NY Times allowed comments. So the Community to get there voice heard

Is Solaris Dead? Let's ask Paul Krill

2008-09-26T23:46:00.005-05:00

Recently, there seems to have been an attack on Solaris being dead. Two articles here and here make such a claim.

While everyone is entitled to there own opinion, I have a hard time with these articles. Why? because the Authors ask a single person, Who works for the Linux foundation, and takes his word as the truth. There are no facts presented in the articles. Jim Zemlin spends his career talking up Linux. That's his job.

The first big issue I have with the articale, is that he distances Linux from Unix. Last time I checked, when working in Linux, you use ls, chmod, chown, ps, just like every other unix does. So why the distancing? What's wrong with Unix?

Issue two.

Sun officials believe the 16-year-old Solaris platform remains a pivotal, innovative platform. But at the Linux Foundation, there is a no-conciliatory stance; the attitude there is to tell Solaris and Sun to move out of the way. "The future is Linux and Microsoft Windows," says foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin. "It is not Unix or Solaris."

In the above paragraph, Mr. Krill, states that Sun officials beleive the Solaris is Pivotal and innovative, but the LF sais it's not. No facts, No number, no studies, he takes the words of Jim Zemlin, over the words of Sun's executives. WHY?

Issue Three.

Linux also is less costly to run, Zemlin claims. Sun, he declared, should just move over to Linux. Zemlin also held out little hope for other IBM's AIX and Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX Unix platforms. "It's certainly true that Unix is on the decline," he says.

Less Costly to Run Linux...HMMMM. Let's take a look at that. From here we see a 3+ socket box costs $3,600 dollars list to support for 3 years for solaris x86. I searched for support from the Linux Foundation's website, but couldn't find any. HMMM...Ok so let's use Red Hat's support. From here for 3+ sockets would be $4,047 dollars for 3 years. So, where is the Cheaper part? I'm confused.

Issue three:

Thanks to its strong support of the x86 hardware architecture, "in terms of overall volume, Linux is just a much higher volume product than Solaris ever was," says Al Gillen, an IDC analyst. IDC data show that worldwide Linux shipments in 2006 were about 2.4 million in 2006 and nearly 2.7 million in 2007. By contrast, Solaris shipments totaled 376,000 in 2006 and 371,000 last year.

Where do these people come up with this information? Why did this go down, because we give it away for free so people don't order it anymore. They just download it from the site.

I could go on, but why? Three strikes and your out in my view. Does this make you mad? Do you want your voice heard?

Discredit Paul Krill here and here. Don't let these onesided stories live on...Comment on them!

Corrupt Boot Archive on X86 Solaris

2008-09-26T10:40:00.006-05:00

I had a customer upgrade the LSI firmware, and for some reason the boot archive became corrupt. So I went to work. Found the below instructions and went to work.

x86: How to Boot the Failsafe Archive to Forcibly Update a Corrupt Boot Archive
This procedure shows how to rebuild an inconsistent or corrupt boot archive in the event you are not prompted by the system to update the boot archive the system, or in the event of a system hang or looping sequence occurs.
Stop the system by using one of the methods that are described in the procedure, x86: How to Stop a System for Recovery Purposes.
If the system displays the Press any key to reboot prompt, press any key to reboot the system.
You can also use the Reset button at this prompt.
When the boot sequence begins, the GRUB menu is displayed.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Solaris 10.1... X86                                                     |
| Solaris failsafe                                                        |
|                                                                         |
|                                                                         |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  Use the  and  keys to select which entry is highlighted.
  Press enter to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the
  commands before booting, or 'c' for a command-line.
Note - The contents of the GRUB menus vary, depending on the Solaris release you are running.
Use the arrow keys to navigate the GRUB menu, then select the Solaris failsafe entry. Type b or press Enter to boot the failsafe archive.
If any boot archives are out of date, a message that is similar to the following is displayed:
Searching for installed OS instances...

An out of sync boot archive was detected on /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0.
The boot archive is a cache of files used during boot and
should be kept in sync to ensure proper system operation.

Do you wish to automatically update this boot archive? [y,n,?]
    
Type y, then press Enter to update the inconsistent boot archive.
The system displays the following message:
Updating boot archive on /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0.
The boot archive on /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 was updated successfully.
If no inconsistent boot archives are found, a message that is similar to the following is displayed:
Searching for installed OS instances...

Solaris 10.1... X86 was found on /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0.
Do you wish to have it mounted read-write on /a? [y,n,?]
This message is also displayed after any inconsistent boot archives are updated successfully.
Mount the device that contains the corrupt boot archive on /a by typing the corresponding number of the device, then press Enter.
Note - If any inconsistent boot archives were updated in the previous step, the device is already mounted on /a. Proceed to Step 6.
To forcibly update the corrupt boot archive, type:
# bootadm update-archive -f -R /a
Unmount the device.
# umount /a
Reboot the system.
# init 6

This didn't fix my problem, so I booted into safe mode again and when it tried to mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 it did an automatic fsck, and we fixed some bad blocks and links and such.
I then went into /a/etc/vfstab, and noticed that the disks were pointing to c2 instead of c0 so I changed those as well, init 6 and still not booting. Did a format to see if it could even see the disks.

Ok, so then I booted in failsafe mode and the did the following:

mount disk on /a
rm /a/dev/dsk/*
rm /a/dev/rdsk/*
mv /a/etc/path_to_inst /a/etc/path_to_inst.bk
devfsadm -r /a -p /a/etc/path_to_inst

Then init 6 and everything is working.

T

Just for you DJ:

2008-09-22T07:35:00.008-05:00

DJ requested that I put a blurb on how I was able to get redirection working in my vmware+vdi+xpVM solution.

After someone told me how to do it, it was actually quite simple.

1. First, without using vdi, use uttsc and redirect the serial port that you want to windows. For example:

/opt/SUNWuttsc/bin/uttsc -r comport:COM2=$DTDEVROOT/unit/dev/term/a -m -b -t 1800 [ipaddress]

The above command redirects {-r} to COM2 what ever device is on serial {$DTDEVROOT/unit/dev/term/a}. Couple of caveats. The serial port on all sun ray 2's is 9600 baud 8,n,1,off. So if your device attached to the sun ray is say and 19200 baud, it won't work. Test this via command line first and get it working. Once that is done, move on to step 2.

2. So all of the Sun Ray compents are great, because they are shell scripts, so they are easily modified. If we were just using uttsc to a windows term server, we would just put it into the web gui of the Sun Ray interface. No such luck with VDI.

So we have to actually modify the VDI shell script that does all of the "Magic".

stop VDA: /opt/SUNWvda/sbin/vda-service stop
Backup the VDA script. cp /etc/opt/SUNWkio/sessions/vda/vda /etc/opt/SUNWkio/sessions/vda/vda.bk
On line 97 and 99, of the /etc/opt/SUNWkio/sessions/vda/vda script, you will see the lines that start with $theUTTSCScript. Add the "-r comport:COM2=$DTDEVROOT/unit/dev/term/a" to both of the lines, either before or just after the current {-r disk:u=...}
Kill all of the VDA/Kiosk Sessions {utrestart -c}, as one's that already exist won't issue this script. Restart the VDA {vda-service stop}
Insert your card, and botta Bing. Should be good to go.

I hope this help DJ.

iPhone 2.1: I Love you

2008-09-13T07:05:00.002-05:00

Wow, what a difference a Firmware Upgrade makes!!! For the first time I can Use 3G all day long...I went from noon to aprox 10pm using my iPhone. I'll post more battery times this week when I'm working.

For all of those people who I told I hated my iPhone I love it now. I feel like I literally have a new iPhone.

What was fixed for me:

Echo: I was getting a really nasty echo when using my iPhone. It seems to have gone away. When jumping between towers, 1 or 2 sentences might be echoed, but I use to have it where it echoed all of the time. YEA
Battery Life: As I said above, 3g Battery life seems to have increased significantly
Push: I will try to turn my push technology back on, as I can handle the battery life.
Apps: With being able to turn 3g back on, the apps are know much more viable.
Backup Time: Significantly reduced
Contacts: They don't stick any more...Before, I'd have to wait 1 or 2 seconds before I could scroll through my contacts.
Downloads: at 1.2mbps as apposed to 755 kbps (YEA)

All in all, Great work Apple, know if you could have done this for the 2.0 version, you would not have had all the bad press.

iPhone Firmware 2.1: What now?

2008-09-12T09:56:00.003-05:00

Well, here we go again, on the Apple Roller coaster ride, will 2.1 do what it's supposed to?

We will find out, back to battery testing with 3G and edge, and see if they are closer now...I won't hold my breath.

Mac and Speech

2008-09-06T06:41:00.004-05:00

This week I tried to see if I could get my MAC to do voice recognition. Being a former windows user, I'm used to how my Tablet PC worked. Basically, I could speak e-mails instead of typing them.

Why you ask? So I can work out, and still do work. How sad is that! So I like to speak e-mails while running on the elliptical. Since I was diagnosed with Arthritis in my knee, at 32, I've decided I need to run a lot more, but finding the time is always tough.

I was surprised the Apple didn't include software to take speech and turn it into text. That's the first problem. Ok, so I'm also cheap, so I really don't want to drop 150 bucks to try a dictation tool. Being the savvy internet user that I am, I started searching the internet, nothing in sourceforge. :(

So I'll keep looking, but I see nothing promising, which is very disappointing. Oh Well...Back to the drawing board

Sun Ray default ports

2008-09-03T21:58:00.002-05:00

Ok, this is really a post for myself on webadmin default ports for a Sun Ray Environment:

SRSS - 1660/1661 (Username default is admin)
VDC - 1800/1801 (Username default is root)
SGD - 80/443 (Username default is root)

Also, if VDC is tied into SGD, if the SGD demo licenses expires, VDC and SGD will stop working.

Daughter already into networking

2008-09-01T13:55:00.002-05:00

Well, we already know who Jenna takes after. We have ton's of play toys for her, but all she ever wants to do is play with cables and computers. She's so cute. Don't you think?

Great Article on Zombies

2008-09-01T13:53:00.001-05:00

Check it out: Here

Missing the Ultra-Thin point

2008-09-01T08:46:00.002-05:00

I just read this article on ZDnet: I don't think Mr. Murphy is really hitting the point.

1) Sun Ray's aren't good at everything
2) Sun Ray's are Great at somethings (This beg's the question of #1, but I thought I would say it for completeness)
3) Most corporations have at least 50% of there people using desktop's
4) Desktop's are expensive to manage. (Regardless of OS)
5) Managing desktops is easier to do centrally. (Regardless of the OS)

Hence, an Ultra-Thin type of client is easier and cheaper to manage if it's centralized.

Is Sun Ray's the only answer? NO. Is it AN answer? YES.

Want to run Citrix on a Sun Ray, No Problem, Want to RDP to a Windows Term Server, No Problem. In my humble opinion, this is what makes Sun Rays such a great solution, flexibility.

Red Hat Sun Ray's?

2008-09-01T08:08:00.004-05:00

This week I spent most of my time working on Red Hat Sun Ray's. Red Hat? I though Sun made Sun Ray's why would they support Red Hat?

Actually Sun support's Red Hat and Solaris Native, meaning the Sun Ray Server Software is compiled for Red Hat and Solaris. Using Sun's Desktop Connector, or UTTSC, you can connect to any RDP enabled device. (Windows Terminal Server, Windows servers and using the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), you can connect to VM Ware Images that are part of a Pool and automaitically clone, start and shutdown.

The question isn't, can Sun Ray's work for you, it's which way to best impliment Sun Ray's for you.

All of this information can be found at: http://www.sun.com/desktop/

Jott.com

2008-08-26T07:17:00.003-05:00

I'm really starting to get into Jott. One thing I hate doing is taking notes or action items. Now with my iPhone I use Jott. I can call into jott and publish a list for myself, or I can just record a list on my iPhone. I can also post to my twitter feed as well as my blog, just be calling in and they record what I want to say. What an amazing use of voice to text recognition.

They also have a desktop app called Jott express so you can push notes from your desktop while offline. YEA.

Thanks Jott.com

This is a test from...

2008-08-26T07:08:00.002-05:00

This is a test from cellphone blogging to my blog.
Bye. listen

Powered by Jott

I'd hate to be that programmer

2008-08-24T19:57:00.002-05:00

So, why is QA and high volume testing crucial to deployment of an application?

Ohio Voting Machines Contained Programming Error That Dropped Votes

The long story is here. The short story, is that a programmer had a logic issue with their code, and when there were high volumes of votes coming in, it would "lose" some of them. So 1+1+1 would sometimes equal 1 vote instead of 3.

So the next time management asks, do we have to do volume and load testing? Refer to this story and ask them if they want to make front page news?

2.0.2 firmware: Battery Life with No 3g

2008-08-20T18:33:00.002-05:00

Usage: 5 hours 52 minutes
Standby: 12 hours, 25 minutes

So 3G eats approx 30% more battery life than no 3g. Anyone besides me see an issue with that? Why would a company put out a product with this type of battery drain? If I have to plug it in, it isn't very portable.

2.0.2 firmware: 3g Battery life

2008-08-19T15:17:00.002-05:00

So today, I fully charged, turned 3g on and didn't plug it in again.

Usage: 4 hours, 10 Minutes
Standby: 8 Hours, 56 Minutes

So I can use 3G for 4 hours, and then I get the 20% battery life message.

You make the decision, but being the Road warrior that I am, 4 hours just doesn't cut it.

Chime in, what are your times?

Let me know

2.0.2 Firmware: iPhone 3g Speed Tests

2008-08-19T04:20:00.004-05:00

I know everyone is complaining about 3g speed on the iPhone. Where I'm sitting, on my couch, with 3 - 4 3G bars, I'm getting 1 mbps or .125 MBps which is pretty good in my estimation. My 3G cellular cards gets aprox 1.1 mbps.

Anyone else care to chime in? If you are looking for a good way to test the 3G, go to i.dslr.net/iphone_speedtest.html.

Let me know your speeds.

iPhone 2.0.2: will it be the saving Grace?

2008-08-18T20:37:00.003-05:00

So the great features about the new iPhone 3g? 3G, which I' ve had to turn off because the battery life goes from aprox 8 hours down to 2. WHO would release a phone with 3G in the name with those kind of battery issues?

So I just downloaded 2.0.2. The discussion thread on Apple is here. I've noticed the Contacts aren't delayed anymore. Since the 2.0 release, when you went into contacts, the contact list was unusable for approx. 2-5 seconds which is really annoying.

The 3G looks no "Stronger" or weaker in this release. I hate that Apple only said "Bug Fixes" and didn't outline what fixes were made. How RUDE.

I doubt that 2.0.2 has done a whole lot. I will check out battery time today and see where it stands.

Gobi 8: Update 2

2008-08-17T20:54:00.002-05:00

I tried using the Gobi 8 via cellular wireless this last week. It was hit or miss to say the least. The concept is great, but the implementation is less than desirable. Couple of new features that need to be added before I would take this Thin laptop on the road.

Cellular status: Why can't someone show me a strength meeter either on the screen or in lights on the frame by the battery.
being able to setup Profiles differently: Today the profiles and networks are setup together. I'd rather have the Sun Ray server and VPN information saved separately from the network information. I typically only use 1 Sun Ray server and VPN server but attache to many networks

Other than those 2 things, the Gobi 8 is great, and I have used it via ethernet and Wi-FI with great success.

Accutech Gobi 8: Thin Laptop?

2008-08-10T07:44:00.000-05:00

If you read my last post there is a picture of a "THIN LAPTOP". I know most of you are going, Come on Thin Laptop? So, I decided to write this post on my thin laptop. It handles WI-FI, Wired, or Cellular wireless. My first thought was, Can Cellular Wireless really support a full Screen being streamed to it.

Before we go further, I want to give you the details of the setup.

Using the Gobi 8, I inserted the Cellular Wirelles (ATT Serria Wireles 875) into the Laptop
When it asked me what profile I wanted to use, I choose one that had all of the settings setup for my Sun Ray Server.
It then asks me if I want to modify the settings before applying them, and I said yes.
I choose the correct server settings and then when it went to which network, I choose HSDPA (Cellular)

For APN use: wap.cingular
for Dial String use: *99***1#

Apply the settings and BAM I was on. So thin Laptop via Cellular. IT's AWESOME

Performance.
So sitting in my house, the performance isn't bad. I can type faster than the letters are displayed back to the screen, but that's not all that surprising is it? Let me tell you though, not having to worry about hard drives dying and losing data is great. It's usable. I will be letting my sales rep use it this week, we will see what she says.

So the Accutech guys want there Gobi 8 back, but that's ok, because Dynamic Graphics is sending me there version of the Thin Laptop.

Hope this helped

Sun Ray and Peripherals: Page 2

2008-08-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

In my last update, I gave you a general overview of Sun Ray's and a General Architecture. This post will be on Peripherals. This post will assume you are using Sun Ray Server Software (SRSS). Each Thin Client solution has there own way of doing Peripherals

USB:

Today, USB Sticks and Devices work on the Sun Ray's. I have even hooked up a USB DVD ROM drive and it worked well. Remember, that these are all done over the Network, so the speed of the device attached to the USB port is directly affected by Network Speeds.
Network Speeds:

10 Mbs = 1.25 MBs

100 Mbs = 12.5 MBs

1 Gbs = 125 MBs

10 Gbs = 1250 MBs

The USB storage devices show up as Network drives. By default these are on the U drive. I haven't done anything with printers yet, so I won't speak on those

Serial:
First thing to know, is the baud rate on the Sun Ray serial port is 9600 Baud. If your device is anything other than 9600 Baud it won't communicate. I've tested 3 different serial devices from printers (IER) to Bar Code Readers (Desko) to Magnetic readers built into the Keyboard. They all work well. This week I hope to have them all hooked up to the same sunray to see how that goes.

I had to change the VDA script, to add in the Serial ports, as they are passed through to the UTTSC script automatically. This is in /etc/opt/SUNWvda/sessions I beleive.

I can add more about this if you want, just let me know.

Sun Ray and Peripherals: Page 1

2008-08-09T07:56:00.000-05:00

Some of the biggest problems that customers have with "Thin" technology is External device support. Sun came out with Sun Ray's, our version of "Ultra - Thin" 10 years back. As usual, it took 10 years to create the perfect storm.

So what's the perfect storm?

RDP: 10 Years ago RDP didn't exisit. It wasn't until Version 5 (Which was actually version 2 as Version 4 was the first realease. Don't ask me why Microsoft did that.)
Vista Upgrade: Who really want's to go out and touch and replace all of these PC's again? Are companies getting sick of "Desktop" support?
Cost of Electricity: Keeps going UP and UP and UP
Economy: I'm not sure I need to say anything about this
HyperVisor support: This allows each person to have there "OWN" desktop for the day. Many "FAT" applications need to have there own Serial ports and IP address and do not like to share.

Shameless Sun Comercial

VDI: This allows a user to be assigned a pool. The pool will have a number of VirtualMachines started, but can, on the Fly, spin up more or decrease them when needed. So you don't need to have one VM per user in the Organization, just one per active user. This will cut down on the amount of software needed to purchase.
x86: 10 years ago, x86 wasn't part of Sun's portolio. It is today, which allows Sun to put together a full end to end solution for a customer.

Architecture

Below is an architecture that I put together for a customer. The great thing about Sun's implimentation of "Thin" is, it is very flexibile. From the same client, I can display Windows, Solaris, Linux, or a Mac Desktop. That's flexibility. It makes the OS more of a commidity that can be easily changed, as it all sits on the servers.

So you want to test Vista with a couple of users? Just create a vista pool and assign that user to it. You don't even need to leave the Data Center. Want to move them back? Have the log out and point the user back to the orginal Pool. It's that simple.

Below is a demo I just recently did with Windows on the left, Solaris in the middle and Linux on the Right. Yes that is a "Thin" laptop. No Hard Drive, No Solid State Disk, No memory. Just firmware to support Wireless, Wired, or Cellular connections.

Below is an architecture of a VMWARE/VDI environment. This is a small architecture. If you want to scale it, you can just do this multiple times. Want Redundency in Data Centers? No problem. Do one of these in each DC, and use a Global Load Bancer to balance acros DC's.
If you have any more questions, let me know, leave a comment

Today's work - Sun Ray on Linux and AMGH

2008-07-28T06:41:00.000-05:00

Started with a Redhat ES 4 Update 3 Linux VM.

Installed Tomcat 6.0
Installed Sun Ray Services software 4.0
Did a ./utconfig
Kept most of the defaults (Yes to failover group)
then did a ./utadm -c (you need to have a hostname in /etc/hosts for this to work)
./utadm -A xxx.xxx.xxx.0
./utadm -L on
./utrestart

So don't forget that IPtables is installed and running, so if you run into connection issues, there's a good chance it's a Firewall rule issue.

So I still didn't get a connection, so I downloaded the latest patches. 127555-03 and 128167-01 and applied them and rebooted. This will bring all of my sunray hosts to the same level.

After that, things started working. :) So firmware on Sun Ray and Firmware on Sun Ray server must match.

Ok, on to AMGH, the tougher part

First, Read http://blogs.sun.com/bobd/resource/Getting%20Started%20with%20AMGH.html
/opt/SUNWut/sbin/utamghadm -s /opt/SUNWutref/amgh/utamghref_script
Created Back_end_db in /opt/SUNWutref/amgh/back_end_db
It's just a flat file Mine looks like
token=user.1217252417-7053 host=linux-ray
And this worked great. Problem is it's always then pinned to the RHEL server. How do you get it to go back to it's orginal settings?

AMGH Linux Setup

create a script that returns
#!/bin/sh
echo use_firstserver=true
then you use /opt/SUNWut/sbin/utamghadm -s /path/to/amgh.sh
Then perform a cold restart on the Linux host
/opt/SUNWut/sbin/utrestart -c

Then try it out and see what happens.

One thing that I stumbled upon, is if you don't add {username=xxxx} in the backend DB, you might get taken back to the original FOG. Adding the username=xxxx in the DB, should fix your problem's.

Test Blog

2008-07-27T21:05:00.001-05:00

This is a test blog from my iPhone.

Posted with LifeCast