Managing Sunrays in Technical Environments
Moazam Raja
October 2001
Systems administrators who manage servers and labs that are used by programmers/developers
have very different jobs from their peers who deal with just regular users.
Developers usually do not need as much hand holding as typical users, but when
they do need help, they can present very difficult problems and scenarios. Also,
developers in technical markets have strict deadlines, an ever-increasing appetite
for compute power, and the need for regular data backups. The special breed
of systems administrators who serve developers can use all the help they can
get in alleviating maintenance troubles and headaches. In many developer-based
groups, the Sun Ray desktop appliance is a great fit, and can be just the right
answer for both the systems administrator and the developer. In environments
with hundreds of developers and only a handful of systems administrators, the
Sun Ray model of computing can also be a lifesaver.
The Sun Ray appliance is a zero-administration and zero-maintenance device, which can be used to replace the traditional desktop workstation. It is a 100% noise-free device with no fans or disk drives, and it delivers crisp 24-bit color. The basic ingredients of a Sun Ray setup are:
Sun Ray Server hardware with two 100-Mb Ethernet cards
Sun Ray Server software
Dedicated network interconnect for Sun Ray appliances
100-Mb Ethernet Switch
Sun Ray appliances
Over the long term, one of the benefits of using Sun Ray appliances is the
upgrade path. As developers' needs increase, the systems administrator does
not need to deploy newer and faster desktop units to every developer, but
can instead simply upgrade the Sun Ray server, or the compute/application
servers that are housed in a lab environment.
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