Hi all,
We are considering Sunray for our company and I would like to hear some
horror stories if anyone cares to share. Also, I would like to know if
we *have* to have ldap infrastructure in place or we can just use NIS.
Thanks for your input.
Vahid.

Vahid Moghaddasi wrote:
> Hi all,
> We are considering Sunray for our company and I would like to hear some
> horror stories if anyone cares to share. Also, I would like to know if
> we *have* to have ldap infrastructure in place or we can just use NIS.
> Thanks for your input.
> Vahid.
> 

take a look at
http://www.filibeto.org/mailman/listinfo/sunray-users

"jdh13" <jdh13@free.fr> wrote in message 
news:437c04f8$0$19907$626a54ce@news.free.fr...
> Vahid Moghaddasi wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> We are considering Sunray for our company and I would like to hear some
>> horror stories if anyone cares to share. Also, I would like to know if
>> we *have* to have ldap infrastructure in place or we can just use NIS.
>> Thanks for your input.
>> Vahid.
>>
>
> take a look at
> http://www.filibeto.org/mailman/listinfo/sunray-users


Another useful resource...
http://www.sun-rays.org/

Not sure the issue of ldap vs. nis. None of those are needed, nor
does it matter which is used, with respect to being a name-service backend.

Did anything somehow indicate to you otherwise ?

The SRSS software DOES install a local and private LDAP for its own
internal datastore, but thats a completely separate things.

As for horror stories, check elsewhere as others indicated. I haven't
had any horror stories, aside from inconvenient administrative architectural
decisions that went into the product. Supposedly thats a non-issue for
Sun's target market, which is anyone willing to design/configure their
network so that sunrays sit at the center of the universe. Not a
problem for small shops, or people that buy-in wholesale. For large
pre-existing installed desktop bases in large corporate entities...well...
reasonable people can disagree whether this has ever been approached
with seriousness on the architectural side...




Vahid  Moghaddasi <moghaddasi@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> We are considering Sunray for our company and I would like to hear some
> horror stories if anyone cares to share. Also, I would like to know if
> we *have* to have ldap infrastructure in place or we can just use NIS.
> Thanks for your input.
> Vahid.

HI,

Vahid Moghaddasi wrote:
> Hi all,
> We are considering Sunray for our company and I would like to hear some
> horror stories if anyone cares to share. Also, I would like to know if
> we *have* to have ldap infrastructure in place or we can just use NIS.
> Thanks for your input.
> Vahid.
> 
We are NIS but as said here it's up to you what nameservice you use.

I installed(or tried) to use SRSS 1.0 in 2001 and that was not that 
great, today SRSS 3.1 is working fine we(small shop < 15) are using S9 
on a Blade 2500(dual silver) and will move to S10 next year.

What I miss is that Xvideo is not available on SRSS, this should be a 
priority at Sun I think, since today there is alot of multimedia around 
and to not have the best possible performance is a shame.

/michael

Vahid  Moghaddasi <moghaddasi@gmail.com> wrote:
> We are considering Sunray for our company and I would like to hear some
> horror stories if anyone cares to share. 

No horror story here - just a few things that showed up after moving
a few users from workstations to SunRays:

When moving from a Blade 1500 to a SunRay 1g with a V240 as the
SunRay server, I have seen no real speed penalty in everyday work.
People which moved from Blade 100s to the same SunRay server
were impressed by the enhanced speed of application startup.

The USB ports on the SunRay clients are USB 1.1 only, and even
for that they seem to be pretty slow. While it's easy to use
USB memory sticks on the SunRay, I've had multiple complaints
that it is painfully slooow.

In a SunRay-only office, there's no way to access data CDs. I've
kept one workstation in my office just for that. It would be nice
if there was a fan-less NAS device which could share CDs/DVDs
via Ethernet, or if there was a USB 2.0 SunRay supporting local
access to CD/DVD drives.

NSCM (non-smartcard mobility) is great - when users have a problem
on their desktop, they can pull their sessions into my office to
help them.

Setting up SunRays behind a firewall (e.g. at home) is quite 
complicated (or impossible without a VPN) as it is now.

With workstations, it was easy to tell one user to log out over
night so I could re-install (or install patches on) one machine.
With SunRays, I have to ask all SunRays users to log out instead.

An all-in-one SunRay client with a larger screen (>= 19") would
be nice. As of now there's only the SunRay 170 (17").

hth, mp.
-- 
Systems Administrator | Institute of Scientific Computing | Univ. of Vienna

HI,

Martin Paul wrote:
> Vahid  Moghaddasi <moghaddasi@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>We are considering Sunray for our company and I would like to hear some
>>horror stories if anyone cares to share. 
> 
> 
> No horror story here - just a few things that showed up after moving
> a few users from workstations to SunRays:
> 
> When moving from a Blade 1500 to a SunRay 1g with a V240 as the
> SunRay server, I have seen no real speed penalty in everyday work.
> People which moved from Blade 100s to the same SunRay server
> were impressed by the enhanced speed of application startup.
> 
> The USB ports on the SunRay clients are USB 1.1 only, and even
> for that they seem to be pretty slow. While it's easy to use
> USB memory sticks on the SunRay, I've had multiple complaints
> that it is painfully slooow.
Yes they are slow, but if only used for memorysticks no big deal of that.

I really like them, brings the best of VT100/"mainframe" hosting and 
adds graphics, perfect.


/michael

Michael Laajanen <michael_laajanen@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Martin Paul wrote:
>> The USB ports on the SunRay clients are USB 1.1 only, and even
>> for that they seem to be pretty slow. While it's easy to use
>> USB memory sticks on the SunRay, I've had multiple complaints
>> that it is painfully slooow.
>
> Yes they are slow, but if only used for memorysticks no big deal of that.

I've made some quick tests now:

  % cd /tmp/SUNWut/mnt/martin/unnamed/

  % ptime mkfile 10m tt
  real     1:36.684

  % ptime cp tt /tmp
  real       54.633

  % ptime cp /tmp/tt .
  real       48.032

This shows about 100-200 kB/sec, which is far from the 12 MBit/s that
USB 1.1 should provide. It's so slow that copying just a few photos
etc. is a real PITA.

Is it faster for other Sun Ray users ? Maybe I just have a problem
in my local setup ? It's SRSS 3.0 on a Sun V240 with Solaris 9 4/04
with all R/S patches installed.

mp.
-- 
Systems Administrator | Institute of Scientific Computing | Univ. of Vienna

HI,

Martin Paul wrote:
> Michael Laajanen <michael_laajanen@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>>Martin Paul wrote:
>>
>>>The USB ports on the SunRay clients are USB 1.1 only, and even
>>>for that they seem to be pretty slow. While it's easy to use
>>>USB memory sticks on the SunRay, I've had multiple complaints
>>>that it is painfully slooow.
>>
>>Yes they are slow, but if only used for memorysticks no big deal of that.
> 
> 
> I've made some quick tests now:
> 
>   % cd /tmp/SUNWut/mnt/martin/unnamed/
> 
>   % ptime mkfile 10m tt
>   real     1:36.684

$ ptime mkfile 10m tt

real     2:44.056
user        0.004
sys         0.120


So my install(3.1) is even slower, but I still not that uphappy about it 
but that ofcourse depends if you do this often, I don't.

More annoying is that the keyboard and mouse losses data, so if I write 
abcdefg during a copy it wil be abcefg jusas Iwrite ow:)

That is bad!

But most people I meet like the Sunrays, silence I think is the best and 
to be able to move from a office to the other then to the lab.

Only know I Sweden a WS is better since they when it's getting cold you 
can have the feets on the WS under the table :)




/michael

Michael Laajanen wrote:

> More annoying is that the keyboard and mouse losses data, so if I write 
> abcdefg during a copy it wil be abcefg jusas Iwrite ow:)
> 
> That is bad!

I agree, that is bad, but it is not generic. By that I mean that it
is not a trait inherent to SunRay's. Being a SunRay user for 4 years
now, I have seen bugs come and go that had this kind of effect, but
that is just what they are, bugs. If you are losing data like that,
you need to diagnose the problem and/or call Sun Support.

-- 
blu

"Having them stolen may become our distribution model..."
Nicolas Negroponte on the Hundred Dollar Laptop.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Utterback - OP/N1 RPE, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Ph:877-259-7345, Em:brian.utterback-at-ess-you-enn-dot-kom

Greate information, thank you all. We will deploy over 300 Sunray by
early next year and wanted to know pitfalls.
Thanks again,
Vahid.

Michael Laajanen <michael_laajanen@yahoo.com> wrote:
> More annoying is that the keyboard and mouse losses data, so if I write 
> abcdefg during a copy it wil be abcefg jusas Iwrite ow:)

> That is bad!

In 5 years of using sunrays I nor my users have complained of such things.
I certainly have never witnessed it.

It sounds like you have an extremely lossy network. Fixing that will
probably solve alot more things (including non-sunray related) than
lost text.

HI,

Chris Barrera wrote:
> Michael Laajanen <michael_laajanen@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>>More annoying is that the keyboard and mouse losses data, so if I write 
>>abcdefg during a copy it wil be abcefg jusas Iwrite ow:)
<snip>

> 
> In 5 years of using sunrays I nor my users have complained of such things.
> I certainly have never witnessed it.
> 
> It sounds like you have an extremely lossy network. Fixing that will
> probably solve alot more things (including non-sunray related) than
> lost text.
This does as I wrote only happend during a USB memory stick copy, am I 
the only one with this problem?

/michael