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New Sun hardware: Sunray 2 Pictures

  Submitted by jamesd Oracle and SUN 15 Comments

“Sun is preparing to release new Sunrays. The first is SunRay 2, it has one DVI connector for monitors, with the USB ports on the front, a much needed improvement, and an integrated stand. The second looks much like the first but comes with dual DVI outputs for dual headed setups.” On a related note, Sun has laid off seven per cent of its SPARC processor and server group, as it pares back projects in an effort to save costs.

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15 Comments

  1. 2006-04-11 12:44 am
    chekr

    Preparing to release?

    have a look here:

    http://syndicator.sun-catalogue.com/degermany/germanycontext“ rel=”nofollow”>http://de.sun.com/catalog/?n-state=

  • 2006-04-11 1:37 am
    hhcv

    I couldn’t tell from the site – what OS are people using at the other end of these thin clients? Is linux an option?

    • 2006-04-11 1:52 am
      zemplar

      Solaris, Windows, Linux, …pretty much anything.

    • 2006-04-11 2:11 am
      jamesd

      The server is availible on either Solaris or Linux, With X grahpics are exported to the SunRay, you can run various vnc, and remote desktop type solutions on the ray so it can appear to be running any OS availible.

      • 2006-04-11 3:00 am
        kaiwai

        IIRC, doesn’t SUN use a different protocol for their SUN Ray appliances? I know that Microsoft uses the Citrix winframe, but would SUN have licenced Citrix, as weird as it would be for the king of the NIH syndrome?

        • 2006-04-11 7:41 am
          zerblat

          Well for one, Citrix’s ICA protocol is pretty high level. Does it even work with anything else than Windows (on the server, that is)?

          One of the main advantages of Sun Ray is that the clients are almost completely dumb and have no moving parts. The protocol they use is very low level, so there’s practically no processing client-side. Basically, they’re just sending the framebuffer over Ethernet. IOW more like VNC, but IIRC Sun Ray is actually older than VNC.

          • 2006-04-11 3:12 pm
            darrenmoffat

            Sun Ray does remote audio and usb storage access as well.

          • 2006-04-11 6:13 pm
            kaiwai

            Well for one, Citrix’s ICA protocol is pretty high level. Does it even work with anything else than Windows (on the server, that is)?

            Not quite correct; there is Citrix Metaframe which is the Winframe equivilant by on UNIX, hence the curiosity as to whether SUN licenced the protocol in Metaframe instead of developing their own transport protocol.

            One of the main advantages of Sun Ray is that the clients are almost completely dumb and have no moving parts. The protocol they use is very low level, so there’s practically no processing client-side. Basically, they’re just sending the framebuffer over Ethernet. IOW more like VNC, but IIRC Sun Ray is actually older than VNC.

            True, they probably use quite a lot of recycled technology from the old Java thin clients they sold a while back (they looked like a small expresso machine).

  • 2006-04-11 4:03 am
    hhcv

    Ah ok.. I’m just thinking that the network load pushing 2 monitors worth of X information would be huge as soon as you have more than a few of these running!~ Even if you were using a hosted citrix application – the compression really wouldn’t mean anything?

    • 2006-04-11 5:08 am
      ormandj

      Nope. I’ve done remote X sessions over 25kB/s links with only a slight delay/lag. It really isn’t bad at all. On even a 100mbit you’d be able to cram a crapload of these things. Considering any modern server is going to be spitting out data at 1gbit, dump that into a switch and pass it out as you see fit. I bet you could cram a thousand users on that bandwidth wise. You’d probably run into cpu/ram/etc issues far before you hit network capacity.

      • 2006-04-11 6:24 am
        kaiwai

        Nope. I’ve done remote X sessions over 25kB/s links with only a slight delay/lag. It really isn’t bad at all. On even a 100mbit you’d be able to cram a crapload of these things. Considering any modern server is going to be spitting out data at 1gbit, dump that into a switch and pass it out as you see fit. I bet you could cram a thousand users on that bandwidth wise. You’d probably run into cpu/ram/etc issues far before you hit network capacity.

        Going by the feedback I see on the SUN Blogs, there are end users who have SUN Ray appliances hooked up using a cable modem, so lets assume they compress it as well, end users have said that its like working on the network at SUN.

        The problem as I see it, they need to drastically lower the cost of their appliancs, get it down to US$100-$150 per appliance; and heck, throw free SUN Ray appliances to customers who order the complete SUN Stack – both server and client end software.

      • 2006-04-11 6:37 am
        RenatoRam

        And if it is at all possible, go the NX route: FreeNX eliminate a lot of the overhead of the X protocol and has been tested on modem links. Just as being in front of the real thing.

  • 2006-04-11 7:01 am
    pip11

    Unfortunately, the SunRAYs use a proprietary protocol for booting and server connection. It isn’t just a layer on top of X, but a framebuffer that gets (I assume) compressed and pushed over the network. The server software runs on Linux and Solaris, but isn’t free in any way, and the Rays are useless without. It’s especially bad because there isn’t any use for the Rays once they get dumped–there was a box of them at the UCSB surplus a few months back, and I’d pick one up if only as a cheap music player or something, but no go.

  • 2006-04-12 4:55 am
    pip11

    My knowledge was out of date…the protocol is still proprietary, but the Solaris and Linux server software is freely available (not open source though, at least not yet). I’ll be picking up some SunRays tomorrow.

  • 2006-04-12 9:57 am
    snotling

    I would say that it’s the perfect moment to start a project to create an open source implementation of the SunRay server software (SRSS), at least with the basic functionalities.

    It shouldn’t be too difficult as there has already been some work done on trying to decode the protocol : see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/sunray/ or http://www.leonerd.org.uk/sunray/ for example.

    At last, I could use my SunRay @ home without the actual software beast that SRSS is, which I find very difficult to install and to configure 🙂

    Anyone ready to tackle this challenge ?