Slashdot Mirror
Sun's Global Desktop Released
aphaenogaster writes "Suns Global Desktop version 4.2 has been released and appears to be quite effective. Applications load very quickly, and is not limited to Sparc or Solaris. Applications piped to a desktop across a slow DSL line appear to work very well. Sun has also set up a test server for users to play with."
To put it better, who innovated first? Was is SUN or NoMachine? You can test Linux out via a slow DSL line at http://www.nomachine.com/. A faster one would be better though.
For those of you who wondered... this isn't new, just a new name. I'll never understand why their marketing chose to change the name to something nobody knew. Perhaps trying to re-launch it?
Sun has actually done a good job of fixing a lot of java bugs since they acquired Tarantella.
For those of you who don't know about how SGD/Tarantella work, it's a session server/screen scraper combo that allow you to have access to Windows and Linux apps or entire desktops that can be served from arrays of application servers.
It uses a protocol called AIP that adapts to the available bandwidth and can scale down well for low bandwidth links.
The good things about SGD are:
- Transportable workspaces
- great for providing VERY LOW bandwidth links to console-based apps
- enterprise authentication
- ability to create and serve applications based on centrally managed user and application groupings
- ability to manage many different OS sessions and mix of sessions from OSes in a single login session
- pass-through printing to local printer
- ability to connect local hard drive to remote systems
- Client is trivial to install for users
- a rich html application page can be created that can serve many of the requirements for previously locally installed apps
- works very well for deployments that many many users to a few application set profiles that can load balance between arrays of application servers
The bad things about SGD are:
- it's a 3-tier architecture and if/when you overload the server or hit an OS bug and need to restart it, UNIX users lose x-sessions
- not ideal for mapping of many users to unique resources where sessions are very long lived
- some java 2d and 3d stuff takes up a lot of bandwidth
It's worth checking out. Some users prefer vnc or NX, but SGD really is an enterprise solution - not just a machine a to machine b tool for a single user.
Well, maybe if you did a little reading...
And if you're being forced to use a browser to access your server, who says that you're not on a machine with keyloggers and screen capturing?
I admit I work for Sun.
SGD proxies RDP sessions from Windows servers, or it can use Citrix.
Here are some archived Sun employee blog posts about SGD (aka Tarantella, aka Secure Global Desktop).
-Eric Boutilier
Actually, SGD translates native display protocols like RDP, X11, ICA etc. into AIP, so it's not just dumb proxying.
Well, over the past several yeas, Sun has gotten REALLY GOOD at the whole thin client thing. A modern Sun Ray setup bears no resemblance to the terminals of old, or even X terminals. They're essentially stateless devices you just "plug in", and everything runs off the server. When I say "everything", I even mean your whole session and screen contents (something X terminals and serial terminals don't do as nicely). You can even detach and re-attach (i.e. hot-desking) your session between thin clients. (I equate it to "VNC in a box, that doesn't suck")
Heck, the UI performance is even good enough that you *can* use it comfortably as a primary desktop, for 2D stuff.
But guess what? There's more!
These things also support audio (with hot-desking, so you're mp3s are still playing in the background and hit the speakers of the next thin client when you re-attach your session). These things also support USB peripherals as well! (a couple of days ago, I plugged my SD card reader into one to get some photos from my digital camera... normally I have one hooked to a USBRS-232 box for some embedded stuff I do)
Yes, I actually have a home installation of the Sun Ray 150 model, and I've been REALLY happy with it. I get a persistant session not tied to a portable device (something not do-able with laptops, unless thinking of the Tadpole COMET15 SunRay laptop), and essentially computer access in every room. It rocks!
Ok, this was an engineering firm, and unfortunately, because of some of the software that was REQUIRED for a customer contract, this lady had to have admin rights on her machine. Yeah, that's windows for you. Further, it didn't take me 2 months to diagnose the problem, it took about 30 minutes, but it had been happening for 2 months every year for the last 5 (since they hired her).
Also, she was about 3rd in command at the company, way above me, or even the IT manager... One word from her and we'd both be fired.. So yeah we pretty much had to do what she said.
As far as the SBA audit, I was hired about 1 month before it happened, and was in the process of gathering all the licensing info, and doing an audit of all of the IT assets (they had about 30 computers whose leases had expired, and they hadn't returned, it was a complete mess). In short, it wasn't my fault, and my bosses recognized that, and I actually got a raise and a promotion after the SBA mess because of the job I did cleaning it all up.