% fortune -ae paul murphy

The Sun Ray Server

If you're not sure what this series is about, please have a look at my July 24th entry below. In brief, I'm moving and while I'm out of contact I've asked readers to comment on a series of chapter summaries for a book I'm thinking of doing on Sun Rays and the Smart Display Architecture.

The longest single section in that book, by page count, will be the technical reference chapter dealing with the specifics of connecting, configuring, and managing Sun Rays. Drawn mainly from Sun's own documentation and with the usual absurd levels of redundancy that go with covering this material separately for Linux on x86 and Solaris on SPARC (with asides for Linux on SPARC and Solaris on x86), this will get pretty boring.

It's also essential to this kind of guide because the book's intended to sell to sysadmins who then get their bosses to read other bits of it....

My problem, of course, is that just including the obvious isn't going to be enough. So if I give you the list below as stuff I've thought about including, can you tell me what I've missed or should emphasize?

1. Stand alone server set up and admin issues including capacity guidelines;

2. desktop display power and networking requirements, sparing recommendations, and related issues.

3. N1 and alternative auto-failover server set up and admin issues including tools for log review;

4. Sun Ray Server (software) integration with identity management and the Sun Enterprise Suite;

5. RDP, Citrix, Secure Global Desktop, bandwidth, WiFi use, and related Wintel integration issues;

6. Use of Solaris zones/containers to give ad hoc and organizational groups their own (virtual) computers;

7. Smart card uses, programming, and global distribution;

8. Issues affecting home ADSL/Cable user support.

In addition this chapter is the place to put a "Tips" section that provides answers to a bunch of FAQs -like how to do follow me printing or manage multiple color spaces on the same device - as well as links to places people can get help - user groups, developer blogs, bigadmin, and so on.

It's not clear as I write this whether Sun's recently announced re-entry into the blade/rack business offers an easy way to order up a 'Sun Pod' - a rack with the UPS, network gear, AMD, and T1 servers all nicely integrated. One way or the other, however, this chapter will have a subsection on setting up that type of pod.