Sun Ray
Encyclopedia
The Sun Ray from Oracle
is a stateless
thin client
solution aimed at corporate environments, originally introduced by Sun Microsystems
in September 1999. It features a smartcard reader and is often integrated into a flat panel display
.
The idea of a stateless desktop was a significant shift from, and the eventual successor to, Sun's earlier line of diskless Java-only desktops, the JavaStation
.
NeWT included 8MB of EDO DRAM and 4MB of NOR Flash. The graphics controller used was the ATI Rage 128 because of its low power, 2D rendering performance, and low cost. It also included an ATI video encoder for TV out (later removed in Sun Ray 1), a Philips Semiconductor SAA7114 video decoder/scaler, Crystal Semiconductor audio CODEC, Sun Microelectronics Ethernet controller, PCI USB host interface with 4 port hub, and I2C Smartcard interface. The motherboard and daughtercard were housed in an off-the-shelf commercial mini-ITX PC case with internal +12/+5VDC auto ranging power supply.
NeWT was designed to have as much feature parity with a modern business PC in every way possible. The client didn't use a commercial operating system. Instead it used a real-time exec
which was originally developed in Sun Labs as part of a Ethernet-based security camera project codenamed NetCam. Less than 60 NeWT's were ever built and very few survive today. However one currently resides in the collection of the Computer History Museum
in Mountain View, California.
Sun Ray clients are connected via an Ethernet
network to the Sun Ray Server. Sun Ray Server Software (SRSS) is available for the Solaris Operating System
and Linux
. Sun developed a separate network display protocol, Appliance Link Protocol
(ALP), for the Sun Ray system.
The Sun Ray Server Software has two basic modes of operation — Generic Session or Kiosk Mode. In a generic session, the user will see the Solaris or GNU/Linux login screen of the operating system that is running SRSS. In kiosk mode, the log in screen on the Unix side is omitted and the user is automatically logged in as a kiosk user. At the end of a session, the home directory and settings of the kiosk user are removed to provide a clean environment for the next session.
This allows kiosk mode to be used for guest internet access or informational displays but is also the basis of presenting Windows sessions to the user. Sun has integrated a RDP
client into the Sun Ray software that can be used in kiosk mode to start a full screen Windows session. In this mode, no window manager or Unix desktop is started — the only indication that Unix is involved at all is a brief period where the typical X background with black mouse cursor is displayed before it is replaced with the solid grey background and white mouse cursor of the Windows environment. The Windows environment can be any OS that supports RDP (Windows 2000, XP or newer) or any OS running in a Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
setup.
In 2007, Sun and UK company Thruput integrated the Sun Ray 2FS with 28" (2048 x 2048), 30" (2560 x 1600) and 56" (3840 x 2160) displays; in 2008 they trialled an external graphics accelerator that enables the Sun Ray to be used with any high resolution display.
Older systems that are no longer shipping:
Sun's OEM partners have also produced wi-fi
notebook versions of Sun Ray:
Discontinued software implementation (circa 1999):
codenamed Copernicus (US 6993,617 B2) which was based on the MicroSparc IIep core, but added 4MB of on-chip DRAM, USB,
and smartcard interface in addition to the memory controller and PCI interface already on the Microsparc IIep.
The Sun Ray 2 & 3 clients use the MIPS architecture
-based RMI Alchemy Au1550 processor
.
A pure software solution is available in Sun Ray Software 5 (SRS5).
.
This setup is flexible and works well in many environments because the intermediate Sun Ray Server layer is transparent to the Windows desktop. At the same time however, this transparency can also become an issue for software that is location dependent. If location dependent information needs to be added it is possible to extend the functionality of the Sun Ray software with additional custom scripts. The Sun Ray Wiki offers a "Follow Me Printing" setup as an example, e.g. a user always gets the nearest printer as default printer when going from room to room or location to location, also inside their Windows session. It is relatively easy for an administrator to extend and add to this functionality as required.
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
is a stateless
Stateless server
In computing, a stateless protocol is a communications protocol that treats each request as an independent transaction that is unrelated to any previous request so that the communication consists of independent pairs of requests and responses...
thin client
Thin client
A thin client is a computer or a computer program which depends heavily on some other computer to fulfill its traditional computational roles. This stands in contrast to the traditional fat client, a computer designed to take on these roles by itself...
solution aimed at corporate environments, originally introduced by Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
in September 1999. It features a smartcard reader and is often integrated into a flat panel display
Flat panel display
Flat panel displays encompass a growing number of electronic visual display technologies. They are far lighter and thinner than traditional television sets and video displays that use cathode ray tubes , and are usually less than thick...
.
The idea of a stateless desktop was a significant shift from, and the eventual successor to, Sun's earlier line of diskless Java-only desktops, the JavaStation
JavaStation
The JavaStation was a Network Computer developed by Sun Microsystems between 1996 and 2000, intended to run only Java applications.The hardware is based on the design of the Sun SPARCstation series, a very successful line of UNIX workstations....
.
History
The concept began in Sun Microsystems Laboratories in 1997 as a project codenamed NeWT or NetWorkTerminal. The client was designed to be small, low cost, low power, and silent. It was based on the Sun Microelectronics MicroSparc IIep. Other processors initially considered for it included Intel's StrongARM, Philips Semiconductors TriMedia, National Semiconductors Geode. The MicroSparc IIep was selected because of its high level of integration, good performance, low cost, and general availability.NeWT included 8MB of EDO DRAM and 4MB of NOR Flash. The graphics controller used was the ATI Rage 128 because of its low power, 2D rendering performance, and low cost. It also included an ATI video encoder for TV out (later removed in Sun Ray 1), a Philips Semiconductor SAA7114 video decoder/scaler, Crystal Semiconductor audio CODEC, Sun Microelectronics Ethernet controller, PCI USB host interface with 4 port hub, and I2C Smartcard interface. The motherboard and daughtercard were housed in an off-the-shelf commercial mini-ITX PC case with internal +12/+5VDC auto ranging power supply.
NeWT was designed to have as much feature parity with a modern business PC in every way possible. The client didn't use a commercial operating system. Instead it used a real-time exec
Exec
Exec may refer to:* Exec, short for "executive officer"* exec , an operating system function for running a program* Exec , the OS kernel of Amiga computers...
which was originally developed in Sun Labs as part of a Ethernet-based security camera project codenamed NetCam. Less than 60 NeWT's were ever built and very few survive today. However one currently resides in the collection of the Computer History Museum
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, USA. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the stories and artifacts of the information age, and exploring the computing revolution and its impact on our lives.-History:The museum's origins...
in Mountain View, California.
Design
In contrast to a thick client, the Sun Ray is a networked display device, with applications running on a server elsewhere, and the state of the user's session being independent of the display. This enables another notable feature of the Sun Ray, portable sessions: a user can go from one Sun Ray to another and continue their work without closing any programs. With a smartcard, all the user has to do is slip in the card, enter their password when prompted, and they will be presented with their session. Without the smartcard, the procedure is almost identical, except the user must specify their username as well as password to get their session. In either case, if a session does not yet exist, a new one will be created the first time they connect.Sun Ray clients are connected via an Ethernet
Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
network to the Sun Ray Server. Sun Ray Server Software (SRSS) is available for the Solaris Operating System
Solaris Operating System
Solaris is a Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. It superseded their earlier SunOS in 1993. Oracle Solaris, as it is now known, has been owned by Oracle Corporation since Oracle's acquisition of Sun in January 2010....
and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
. Sun developed a separate network display protocol, Appliance Link Protocol
Appliance Link Protocol
The Appliance Link Protocol is used by Sun Ray ultra thin clients to talk to Sun Ray servers. The closed source implementation of the Sun Ray Server Software is developed and distributed by Sun Microsystems...
(ALP), for the Sun Ray system.
The Sun Ray Server Software has two basic modes of operation — Generic Session or Kiosk Mode. In a generic session, the user will see the Solaris or GNU/Linux login screen of the operating system that is running SRSS. In kiosk mode, the log in screen on the Unix side is omitted and the user is automatically logged in as a kiosk user. At the end of a session, the home directory and settings of the kiosk user are removed to provide a clean environment for the next session.
This allows kiosk mode to be used for guest internet access or informational displays but is also the basis of presenting Windows sessions to the user. Sun has integrated a RDP
Remote Desktop Protocol
Remote Desktop Protocol is a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft, which provides a user with a graphical interface to another computer. The protocol is an extension of the ITU-T T.128 application sharing protocol. Clients exist for most versions of Microsoft Windows , Linux, Unix, Mac OS...
client into the Sun Ray software that can be used in kiosk mode to start a full screen Windows session. In this mode, no window manager or Unix desktop is started — the only indication that Unix is involved at all is a brief period where the typical X background with black mouse cursor is displayed before it is replaced with the solid grey background and white mouse cursor of the Windows environment. The Windows environment can be any OS that supports RDP (Windows 2000, XP or newer) or any OS running in a Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
Sun VDI
Oracle VDI software is a connection broker that provides desktop virtualization to replace personal computers with virtual machines on a server. Users can access these VMs though any RDP client, or through the web via Sun Secure Global Desktop .Oracle Corporation released Oracle VDI 3.2.2 on...
setup.
In 2007, Sun and UK company Thruput integrated the Sun Ray 2FS with 28" (2048 x 2048), 30" (2560 x 1600) and 56" (3840 x 2160) displays; in 2008 they trialled an external graphics accelerator that enables the Sun Ray to be used with any high resolution display.
Models
, Five models are in production:- Sun Ray 3 - Supports graphics resolutions of up to 1920 x 1200, Five Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0 ports, One serial port (DB9), One single-DVI-I video connector, 10/100/1000 Mbit/sec (RJ45) Ethernet
- Sun Ray 3i - Full HD 1920 x 1080 maximum resolution 16:9 widescreen 21.5" LCD display, Five USB 2.0 ports, Built-in smart card reader, VESA 100 x 100 mm mount and removable stand.
- Sun Ray 3 plus - support for dual heads Dual-Link DVI, Gigabit EthernetGigabit EthernetGigabit Ethernet is a term describing various technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second , as defined by the IEEE 802.3-2008 standard. It came into use beginning in 1999, gradually supplanting Fast Ethernet in wired local networks where it performed...
(RJ-45 and SFP+), Energy StarEnergy StarEnergy Star is an international standard for energy efficient consumer products originated in the United States of America. It was first created as a United States government program during the early 1990s, but Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan and the European Union have also adopted...
5.0 qualified (14.15 W in use) - Sun Ray 2 - small footprint, low power (4 watts). 2 Versions exist, the original based on DDR memory, the newer one based on DDR2. Firmware is not compatible between the DDR and the DDR2 models and SRSS needs patches to work correctly with the newer variant.
- Sun Ray 270 - integrated into a 17" LCD, mountable
Older systems that are no longer shipping:
- NeWT (AKA NetWork Terminal) - Original Sun Labs prototype, no display
- Sun Ray 1 - supports displays up to 1280×1024 at 85Hz
- Sun Ray 100 - integrated into a 17" CRT monitor
- Sun Ray 150 - integrated into a 15" LCD monitor
- Sun Ray 1g - supports displays up to 1920x1200 at 75 Hz
- Sun Ray 170 - integrated into a 17" LCD monitor
- Sun Ray 2FS - support for dual heads, 100BaseFX
Sun's OEM partners have also produced wi-fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
notebook versions of Sun Ray:
- Comet 12 - Sun Ray 12" notebook produced by General DynamicsGeneral DynamicsGeneral Dynamics Corporation is a U.S. defense conglomerate formed by mergers and divestitures, and as of 2008 it is the fifth largest defense contractor in the world. Its headquarters are in West Falls Church , unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, in the Falls Church area.The company has...
- Comet 15 - Sun Ray 15" notebook produced by General DynamicsGeneral DynamicsGeneral Dynamics Corporation is a U.S. defense conglomerate formed by mergers and divestitures, and as of 2008 it is the fifth largest defense contractor in the world. Its headquarters are in West Falls Church , unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, in the Falls Church area.The company has...
- Jasper 320 - Sun Ray 2 notebook produced by Naturetech
- Amber 808 - Sun Ray 2 tablet produced by Naturetech
- Opal 608 - Sun Ray 2 tablet produced by Naturetech
- Gobi 7 - Sun Ray 2 notebook produced by Accutech
- Gobi 8 - Sun Ray 2 notebook with 3G support produced by Accutech
- Ultra ThinPad - Sun Ray 2 notebook produced by Arima
- Ultra ThinTouch - Sun Ray 2 tablet produced by Arima
- UltraSlim - Sun Ray 2 variant produced by Arima
- Tadpole M1400 - Sun Ray 2 notebook with 3G support produced by Tadpole
Discontinued software implementation (circa 1999):
- JavaPC (Engine) V1.1
Hardware
The Sun Ray 1 clients used a 100Mhz MicroSparc IIep processor initially followed by a custom SOC versioncodenamed Copernicus (US 6993,617 B2) which was based on the MicroSparc IIep core, but added 4MB of on-chip DRAM, USB,
and smartcard interface in addition to the memory controller and PCI interface already on the Microsparc IIep.
The Sun Ray 2 & 3 clients use the MIPS architecture
MIPS architecture
MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, and later versions were 64-bit...
-based RMI Alchemy Au1550 processor
Alchemy (processor)
The Alchemy microprocessor is a low power processor family that uses MIPS architecture. The Alchemy family was used by AMD, Raza Microelectronics and Sun Microsystems in its embedded products such as Network processors....
.
A pure software solution is available in Sun Ray Software 5 (SRS5).
Sun Rays and Windows
In commercial environments, Sun Rays are most commonly deployed as a thin client to access a Windows desktop using the SRSS built-in RDP client uttsc. The desktop can be a Terminal Server session or a Virtual Machine (VDI)Desktop virtualization
Desktop virtualization , as a concept, separates a personal computer desktop environment from a physical machine using the client–server model of computing....
.
This setup is flexible and works well in many environments because the intermediate Sun Ray Server layer is transparent to the Windows desktop. At the same time however, this transparency can also become an issue for software that is location dependent. If location dependent information needs to be added it is possible to extend the functionality of the Sun Ray software with additional custom scripts. The Sun Ray Wiki offers a "Follow Me Printing" setup as an example, e.g. a user always gets the nearest printer as default printer when going from room to room or location to location, also inside their Windows session. It is relatively easy for an administrator to extend and add to this functionality as required.