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Sun's Global Desktop Released

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the shiny-new-toys dept.

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."

2 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. SGD isTarantella by poopie · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:Interesting, but... by lowoddnumber · · Score: 5, Informative
    ...what can it do that ssh and an X11 session can't?

    Well, maybe if you did a little reading...


    Supported Protocols
    Microsoft RDP
    X11
    HTTP, HTTPS
    SSH
    Citrix Independent Computing Architecture (ICA)
    Telnet VT, American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
    TN3270E
    TN5250

    Supported Application Types
    Microsoft Windows
    Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and AIX (character and graphical)
    IBM mainframe or AS/400
    HTML, Java

    Client Requirements
    Leading Java technology-enabled clients, including Microsoft Windows, Java Desktop System, Linux, and Mac OS X
    Sun Secure Global Desktop Native Client-enabled devices including thin clients, wireless PDAs, and pocket PCs
    Server Requirements

    Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) v3
    Microsoft Active Directory
    RSA SecurID
    Network Information Service (NIS)
    Microsoft Windows Domains
    HTTP, HTTPS including Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)-based client certificates


    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?


    Well, if I were a Sun salesman, I'd say you don't use a crappy Internet Explorer/Outlook Express spyware machine, you use a nice little Sunray which is supposed to use less power than a nightlight - 4 watts - http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2006-04/sunf lash.20060412.4.xml


    I admit I work for Sun.