Desktop Virtualization the Sun Ray Way

Overview

Click here to download
the PDF version

Desktops represent the next phase in x86 virtualization. Hub City Media can help you bring it to your organization with the proven Sun Ray architecture. This approach provides users with the flexibility to reliably and securely view their applications and data from any Sun Ray device in the organization, with the business-wide benefits of centralized management.

Benefits

Hub City can help you deliver personalized virtual desktops to Sun Microsystems Sun Ray™ Virtual Display Clients using VMware’s VI3 virtualization platform to host desktop images in the datacenter and VMware View to manage the desktop connection.

  Good for users

• Provides a single view of all applications and data in a familiar, personalized environment at ANY Sun Ray device in the organization.

  Good for your organization

• Greater flexibility, reliability and security by managing desktops and applications from the datacenter
• Lower costs by centralizing management, administration and resources
• Increase security by moving data from desktops devices to the datacenter
• Improve business agility with faster provisioning and user flexibility with universal access

The costs of the physical desktop

PC deployments include a number of elements that are costly, time consuming and burdensome to IT departments over time. Desktop PC costs are often the single most expensive line item in an IT budget, with 70% of those costs associated with managing patches, upgrades, moves/adds/changes or technical support. Those time and resource demands grow as user roles, machine types and applications multiply.

Processes used to manage and support PCs are also time-consuming. For example, when you add users (or replace faulty machines) you enter into a provisioning lag. Often it can take a week or more to provide the physical PC. In addition, IT personnel must actually visit the user’s location to perform troubleshooting and maintenance.

Remote users are especially challenging, extending the lag time for any step requiring physical inspection of the PC. As companies become more global and decentralized, managing remote PCs or PCs in branch locations can increase PC management costs exponentially.

Remote users also present a security challenge. Shielding confidential information or intellectual property, adhering to requirements governing electronic privacy, and maintaining auditability become more difficult outside the firewall. In addition, physical desktops make solutions to pandemic scenarios extremely difficult and very expensive to solve.

The solutions: Desktop Virtualization

Desktop Virtualization (also known a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure or VDI) provides a way to cost-effectively overcome the challenges of maintaining physical desktops while providing the rich, personalized PC experience your end-users demand.

Provisioning of new desktops is a simple matter of placing the Sun Ray appliance on the desktop and attaching it to power and the network. An administrator quickly provisions the Virtual PC remotely in the VMware VI3 environment. The end-user is now ready to work. There are no PCs to build, patch and upgrade or even thin operating systems requiring any maintenance at the physical location—just a simple device that can provide a decade of service without any other on-site support.

When it comes time to upgrade your existing XP or Vista desktops to Windows 7, it will be simply a matter of building a new master image and having the end-user log off their existing session and log back in to the new environment. Likewise, when you need to apply patches or updates, you just update the master image – with the added security of being able to rollback the patch/update in the event of unexpected compatibility issues not uncovered during testing).

The ROI of VDI

The Desktop Virtualization advantages translate into a real reduction in ownership costs for supporting and maintaining your desktop infrastructure. Costs of supporting the PC infrastructure break down to ~30% for hardware and ~70% for management and support. While the hardware costs for each solution are similar, the management and support savings are significant. VDI solutions can lower the total cost of ownership of a PC infrastructure by approximately 40%.

In addition:

• The configuration of the virtual desktops can be regularly and fully monitored
• User and application activity from virtual desktops can be continuously monitored within the virtual network without the complexities and costs of additional network equipment
• You can ensure that all virtual desktops are based on a secure configuration and implement regular assessment and patching of virtual desktops to ensure configurations remain secure

The Sun Ray Virtual Desktop Architecture

VMware software combined with Sun software and Sun Ray Virtual Display Clients create a dynamic platform that brings virtualization to the desktop and enables user mobility.

Sun Ray Software

Sun Ray software enables users to access applications and services from any location using Sun Ray devices. Since Sun Ray clients do not contain any local processing or storage resources, these functions are performed centrally on servers. The Sun Ray Connector for VMware View Manager allows Sun Ray users to connect to Windows virtual machines via VMware View Manager software.

VMware Infrastructure Software

VMware Infrastructure 3, comprising VMware ESX Server and VMware vCenter, is virtual technology for partitioning, consolidating and managing systems in mission-critical environments. VMware ESX Server provides a highly scalable virtual platform with advanced resource management capabilities, all of which is managed through VMware vCenter.

VMware View Manager

VMware View Manager is an enterprise-class desktop management broker that securely connects remote users to virtual desktops in the datacenter. An easy-to-use Web-based interface provides management of the centralized environment.

Architecture Overview

The Sun Ray technology and VMware View Manager solution uses a multilayered approach that centralizes and facilitates access to services and applications to bona-fide users while denying entry to those that are unknown or have insufficient privileges as shown in the following figure:

Sun Ray as the Display Device

The Sun Ray Virtual Display Client is a truly stateless device with an MTBF of ~22 years that is firmware-based, with no need to ever patch or update as is the case with thin clients. Each Sun Ray Client is equipped with a Smart Card reader for easy yet secure desktop access.

Key Capabilities

Desktop virtualization provides several key capabilities.

Session mobility (hot-desking)

Desktop virtualization gives users the ability to move from one Sun Ray client to another and resume a desktop session. Because the user session executes on a server rather than the client device, users can migrate from one Sun Ray client to another — without pausing or saving applications — and access the session from a different Sun Ray client. The session appears instantly in the new location once the user is identified through the insertion of an optional smart card. This hot-desking capability is possible whether a user moves to the next cubicle, works from a remote or home office, or checks in from a Sun Ray device on the other side of the world.

Regional hot-desking

Regional hot-desking gives users access to desktop sessions across a wide domain and longer distance than a single failover group. Enterprises with multiple failover groups and users that move from one location to another — such as between corporate headquarters and branch offices — can take advantage of regional hot-desking.

Stateless delivery of desktops and applications

The Sun Ray technology and VMware View Manager solution provides stateless connectivity to Sun Ray clients. Changes to the client device, such as a reboot or power outage, do not affect desktop environments or applications running in the virtualization layer. Upon restart, clients reconnect to the back-end servers and sessions resume where users left off.

Simplified deployment and administration

The Sun Ray technology and VMware View Manager solution centralizes software installation and management. Organizations need only install and maintain a single instance of an operating system on a virtualization layer server. The operating system is made available to qualified users over the network, eliminating the need to install and maintain environments on every client platform. Because operating systems are maintained in the datacenter, upgrade and patch installation processes are simplified, reducing administrative burden as well as the impact of malware attacks.

Data security

While users gain freedom in how, where, and when they access enterprise IT services, managers retain full control over who has what kind of access to specific resources and information. Security features help maintain process and data integrity. In addition, Sun Ray clients do not contain disk drives. Data is stored on central storage and thus are not vulnerable if the Sun Ray device is stolen. Furthermore, copying data to external USB devices is possible only if enterprise data management policies permit.

Performance

Many companies allow users to work from home or at a variety of office locations. With users working under a variety of network conditions, it is important for the system to provide the performance needed for users to be productive. The Sun Ray technology and VMware View Manager solution takes advantage of the high- performance Sun Ray Appliance Link Protocol (ALP) to transmit user input and screen updates from datacenters to the client over local and wide area networks. Additionally, Sun Ray multimedia enhancements for Windows Media Player provide increased performance of corporate communications and training videos by leveraging client-side compute resources, conserving server network bandwidth.

Scalability

When multiple Sun Ray servers are configured as a failover group, Sun Ray clients can connect to any Sun Ray server. Such a configuration provides high availability as well as scalability for Sun Ray clients. In addition, administrators can store and manage thousands of virtual desktops on hundreds of physical servers from a single management console. Reliability With less complex designs and no moving parts, Sun Ray devices contain fewer components that are likely to fail. Sun Ray clients can be simply replaced if needed, without the need to reload software, recover files, and configure network settings and user preferences.

Reference: VIRTUALIZING  DESKTOPS  WITH  SUN  RAY™  SOFTWARE  AND  VMWARE  VIEW  MANAGER  from  Sun  Microsystems Blueprints Online, Part No 820‐7120‐10 Revision 1.0, 3/3/09