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How cool is your Sunray? March 18, 2009

Following some of my previous calculations on power efficiency, carbon footprints and comments about heat/noise differences between Sunrays and PC’s; I mused we could factor in a ‘system’ we all know well – ourselves.

Heating in has become redundant in PC labs, with the computers becoming increasingly powerful and dispersing more and more heat, labs are designed with cooling as a priority.

So, as you might expect, Sunrays are changing the way we are (or should) looking at labs. If we take an average lab with two dozen PC’s, it’s easy to guess what is generating the most heat. But would you have guessed in a Sunray lab, the answer is the users!

In order to keep this as simplified as possible, various assumptions have been made; such that these figures are theoretical within a closed system, people are ‘average’ (including fitness, health and calorie intake), environment is ‘average’ and a whole flurry of other ‘ideal situations’.

Statistical assumptions:
1 watt = 3.413 Btu/h
Average person = 58.2 w/m2 (1 met)


British Thermal Unit (BTU): “A BTU is defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of liquid water by one degree from 60° to 61°Fahrenheit at a constant pressure of one atmosphere.”
Initially we calculation the surface area from our person, I’ll use DuBois’ formula:

BSA = (W 0.425 x H 0.725) x 0.007184

(Weight is in kilograms and the height is in centimetres).
Thus we take our candidate standing at 60Kg and 170cm. Resulting in 1.7m2 surface area of the integumentary system – the skin.
Due to the dynamics of our ‘warmblooded’ organisms, our heat loss is dependant on our metabolic rate. Essentially the ability to generate heat is a result of our muscular activity, which could be considered as a by product of work (force x distance).
So at rest, we can assume our ‘average’ person produces per hour:
58.2 x 1.7 = 99 watts = 338 btu/h.
Each Sunray (including TFT monitor) consumes 41 W.
41 x 3.413 = 140 btu/h

Each PC (including TFT monitor) consumes 105 W.
105 x 3.413 = 358 btu/h

So if you are budgeting for cooling labs, you might consider getting over 2.5 Sunrays to every 1 PC. However, you might need to use this saving in the winter to heat the cold labs! Otherwise, fill the room full of people – the cheapest way to heat a room!

A bright dawn for sunrays November 10, 2008

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

The core of the new sunray release was to ensure the sunray server software were setup in an optimal manner. Moving onto new and powerful servers, with a fresh install configured for performance.
However the key to accessing this functionality is the menu screen. To focus to the latter stages of the project the menu has undergone several stages of development using the Waterfall model for software life cycle.

Obviously this element to the project is where the users will get their first impressions, deciding on their likes and dislikes of the system as a whole, so getting the front end as user friendly as possible was key to the design and planning. Research was conducted on several possibilities and in the end we narrowed it down to two potential languages; Tcl and Java. The menu which had previously been made and used was written in Tcl and with its two buttons, chiefly acted as a floodgate for the sunrays – if the menu were not there; the sunray devices simply cycle continuously waiting for a server or else connect to a terminal server utilising resources when there is no demand. But now we needed more functionality and implemented in such a way that actually reduces the hassle of logging in, rather than adding another stage to the process.

The prototype for the system seemed to perform effectively, although by no means complete it had the core functionality and no major issues arose. The most negative feedback was due to the slightly overwhelming blue and clumsy buttons.

Ideally we needed a simple login menu, without too much information, yet intuitive enough to understand immediately without guidance. Our original two button interface had roughly a dozen variations for connecting to different servers which made updates laborious. There must be facility to input a username and password, select screen resolution and be resistant to any tampering.

Given the adaptability of Java, it seemed like a logical move to create a visually superior model. Using java swing we created a slick and fully functional menu.

The JFrame itself is expandable, allowing for additional options to be displayed without requiring a new window.

However when analysing the memory overhead, the use of a Java menu utilised substantially more memory than the Tcl menu. This overhead unfortunately meant it would not be a feasible option when compared to the lower requirements of Tcl.
Thus we revert back the previous possibility of a Tcl menu, though there were several changes which needed to be made. The visual aspects of the menu were simplified and colours were swapped for a more sensible greyscale.
With the new buttons, a dropdown menu was created to reduce the requirement for extra shell scripts. Now the majority of the menu and its functions will run directly from the original Tcl script.

Finally, the only issue left with the menu was the slightly blocky fonts used. We had originally overcome this problem by using images rather than text labels, but this isn’t the ideal solution as changing text becomes an annoyance. Instead by downloading the most recent version of Tcl (and wish), smooth rounded fonts are available and the final result – I think – looks stylish and more importantly works efficiently and effectively.

Catching some ’sunrays’ November 7, 2008

With the new release of the menu, the requirement specification needed functionality in place which would allow administration of the sunray users from the web management interface.

We have several types of user each requiring a custom Windows kiosk session.
Previously to specify where a particular sunray unit should connect, we were setting the individual firmware on each device.
This allowed us to direct units towards specific servers, however since we have consolidated our sunray server cluster, all the units will be connecting to our sunray cluster regardless of which Windows session is required.

Now the administrator only needs to enter a predefined string into the “Other Information” section in the web interface.

The shell script will read what has been entered into this field before loading the Tcl menu

#!/bin/sh
TOKENRIGHTS=`/opt/SUNWut/sbin/utuser -o|grep $SUN_SUNRAY_TOKEN|cut -d ',' -f 5`
export TOKENRIGHTS
/usr/openwin/bin/xsetroot -solid "#36566c"
/usr/local/solaris-sparc/bin/wish8.5 </opt/SUNWutMenu/menu.tcl

“&lt” is a less than symbol (pointing right) “>”.

This value can then easily be validated and matched against a rule set to ensure the user is sent to the right place given their kiosk access within the Tcl script. We import the environment variable and then perform any logical operations on the value we desire.

set SECURE $env(TOKENRIGHTS)
if {$SECURE=="student"} {set HOST $IPAddress1
} elseif {$SECURE=="staff"} {set HOST $IPAddress2
} else {set HOST $IPAddress3}

Sunray lighting the way November 5, 2008

Each PC (including TFT monitor) consumes 105 W.
Each sunray (including TFT monitor) consumes 41 W.
Each sunray server consumes 242 W.

Thus on a bases of 500 sunray DTU’s = 20500 W.
Compared to 500 individual PC’s using a total of 52500 W.

This is a difference of 32000 W; 32kW.

The average workstation is used 37 hours a week, 148 hours a month.

Per month:
PC total consumption – 7770 kW
Sunray total consumption – 3500 kW
Difference – 4270 kW

That is saving 1.84 tonnes of carbon emissions and roughly £500 of electricity saved every month, resulting in a total of 22 tonnes carbon emissions and £6000 a year in electricity savings alone!

Sound impressive? Well it doesn’t stop there. By design every single sunray DTU will automatically shutdown to a standby state in 10 minutes, in this state they run at less than 1W.

Most PC’s will by default display a screensaver on the monitor and continue to run all the normal computer operations (Cpu, fans etc) consuming 85 Watts. This period of inactiveness (we will estimate) is 131 hours a week and roughly 600 hours a month coming to a total of 25kW/h and £2000 a month; 300kW and £24000 a year completely wasted! I should clarify this is on the assumption that every PC in our sample is left on.

Thus with a sunray setup compared to individual PC’s supplying 500 users, regarding electricity alone you can expect a saving between £6000 and £30000 depending on the number of PC’s turned off when not in use.

Therefore combining these figures, on our estimated daily and nightly rate, let us assume 50% of your PC’s are turned off during non-work hours, you’ll save roughly £18000 a year and sleep better at night knowing you help to make the world a greener place.

With this extra saving, why not consider reinvesting your savings in some solar panels, cutting your electricity bills to zero!

So what does this mean for your organisation? Whether you are aiming to achieve a environmentally friendly status, clear you conscience, capitalise on eco-marketing or just save a pile of cash, come away from this post with two gems of advice: Sunrays and thin clients are becoming even more cost effective in our current economy and most importantly, whoever you are, TURN YOUR PC’s OFF!

Shedding some light on your Sunray November 4, 2008

What is new?

• A new streamlined menu; users can now input username and password on initial screen.

• Improved performance of system, meaning everything should run smoother.

• Sessions will now be managed more efficiently. If there is ever a network problem or power cut all sunray users should get their session back and be able to continue without any major disruption.

• Due to the session management, users can effectively “hot desk”, allowing you to access your live session from any sunray!

• The servers have been installed and configured to enhance server and session stability.

• Faster servers have been purchased to increase speed and reliability.

• Fixed the issue where typed characters were delayed slightly before being displayed on the screen.

• Fixed the issue where certain keys were not working properly (eg. print screen button).

What is happening?

Once you enter your credentials and click the login button (or press enter), the system automatically finds one of our servers where you can begin your work.

This choice is not random; instead it is based on the available resources on each server (called “Windows Terminal Servers” – or “TS”) assuming you don’t already have an active session.

If you were already logged in on a different sunray or SRD (Sunray Remote Desktop), you will retrieve all your work you previously had open!

All the processing is done by a controlled, optimised and managed server; providing enhanced speed, security and reliability. This is massively more efficient than the sporadic utilisation of individual PC resources.

What does it look like?

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Why use a Sunray?

• They are silent and produce little heat.

• The sunray takes up very little room on your desk.

• There is almost no way you can accidently damage the sunray (within reason!).

• If your sunray is stolen, your data is safe as there is no data stored locally on the sunray.

• Your sunray will never need to be formatted and reinstalled like a PC.

• If there is a hardware failure with the sunray, you won’t lose any work.

• If there is a hardware failure with the sunray, it can easily be replaced and won’t need you to change any settings.

• There is almost no way you can damage the software applications you use (applications, not the saved files).

• You cannot accidently install programs such as spyware without your knowledge.

• The system saves energy for the university, is ‘greener’ and reduces our carbon footprint – better for the planet.

Tips and Tricks

You can easily see which server you are working on by looking at the symbol on your desktop which normally says “My Computer”, but will now say “ on TS#” (where the # is a number).

If you are experiencing strange behaviour from your sunray (keyboard or mouse issues) try pressing Ctrl – Moon (top right key). This is power cycle your sunray DTU without affecting your current session.

If you are visually impaired (or just like big icons) you can set your DTU to remember your settings. All you need to do is make sure the login menu is being displayed (log out if you are logged in) and select “Preferences” – then choose whichever option you require. High – small icons and clearer resolution; Medium – medium icons and medium resolution; Low – large icons and lower resolution. Once you have made your choice the menu will automatically power cycle itself and change your desired setting. Now log in as per normal.

You will be able to “hot-desk” – allowing for you to log in at one workstation, go elsewhere and log in somewhere else with exactly the same screen as you had before.

What is next?

We are still working closely with Sun Microsystems to:

Develop this system for improved media viewing performance
Enhance the USB functionality.
Advance functionality.
Improve stability.

A ‘Sunray’ of hope November 3, 2008

We are pleased to announce the deployment of our new and improved sunray service.
As the first anniversary of our original sunray installation approaches, I have recently been investigating, developing, improving and fixing our current setup.

With 360 sunray devices connected (and used daily) and another 90 ready to be installed, Sunrays are a common sight at Edge Hill University.

Our sunray infrastructure is based on;
4 x Solaris Sparc – Sun T1000 (8 Core Cpu, 16Gb RAM),
Installed with Solaris and sunray server software (in a failover group).

3 x VM Windows Server 2003 (1 Cpu, 1024 Mb RAM),
Running 2x Load Balancer; 1 primary and 2 secondary.

8 x Windows Server 2003 – Sun Fire x4100 M2 (Dual Core Cpu, 4Gb RAM).
Setup as Windows Terminal Servers.

And a controlled growth planned already!

Previous to this release we were experiencing issues where users were being assigned a new session when they had logged in after being disconnected. This is a real overhead as not only does this put extra strain on our servers, but files may be left open and be locked for future editing. This also has a knock-on effect to support and our helpdesk were having to support unnecessary issues. However with a packaged binary, the method which the sunray servers communicate with 2x is vastly improved.

The sunray system now allows true confidence in handling sessions, allowing for hot-desking and session management over the whole campus.
So, the obvious question is how. Essentially the issue with session handling is the credentials which are passed from the sunray server to the 2x load balancer. Previously the only detail which the system could use to match a session was the pseudo token id. With the newly designed menu, the username itself is passed across to the load balancer to search for an active session.

After the required development planning was conducted, it was eventually decided the menus would be created using tcl script. This language is not difficult to pick up by anyone with some programming knowledge and there are plenty of resources available on the net. Other options were available – and will be mentioned in a later post – but remaining with tcl proved to be the most viable choice.

Our new menu has moved away from two simple buttons to including a full login window. Originally our users need to select the login button before being presented with a further login which allowed the entry of their credentials.

But now our menu allows users to enter their details immediately without the extra delay.

As with all developed systems, this has been designed with the users specifically in mind. We have aimed to minimise any issues which may annoy or frustrate users.

I will go into the design requirements, specifications, choices and coding in a later post.

The important factor about this release is the back-end of the whole system, the menu is merely a conduit to enable the functionality to work as we would like.
Fixing the majority of issues raised by users and ourselves, the new system really should demonstrate PC’s are a thing of the past!

Sunrays have so many bonuses over a PC, but as with anything else in this world, there is rarely a ‘one-size-fits-all’ answer. Sunrays offer a fantastic workstation; fast processing, efficient, power saving, support saving, quiet, cool and flexible. However before investing in such a system, you should ensure your infrastructure will facilitate the transformation of business rules; it is often a case of “yes you can’t do that anymore – but you don’t need to either”.

How fast is my sunray? July 30, 2008

Channel 5’s Gadget Show have been running a campaign to get internet service provides to be more honest about how fast your broadband connection really is, they often use terms like “up to 8MB” where you pay for 8Mb broadband but in some cases you my be lucky to achieve download speeds above 2Mb and then your upload speed is usually less than half you download speed.

While it’s true that the actual upload and download speeds you can achieve varies based on a number of factors including, in the case of an ADSL connection, how close you are to the telephone exchange but also how many internet connected devices are sharing the available bandwidth both at your local exchange and in the home, these days there can often be several internet connected device in the average home.

In a corporate environment the number of network attached devices is even more significant as everyone shares a finite amount of network bandwidth for not only browsing internet but also local network traffic, file and print sharing, VOIP, web services, the list goes on.

With this in mind I thought it would be interesting to see what the Gadget Show’s broadband speed test made of Edge Hill University’s JANET connection from one of our new Sunray terminals on an average day.

After a number of tests throughout the day I managed to achieve around 15mb – 16mb download and even as much as 17mb upload speed which seems to me to be a pretty respectable score considering we have several thousand network attached devices form desktop PCs and thin client terminals to VOIP telephones and multiple servers supporting various services.

Each Sunray user will be connected to one of eight Windows Server 2003 terminal servers which are actually doing all the work, each server has a 1GB Ethernet connection direct to the core of the network, two Alcatel OmniSwitch 9700 located in separate machine rooms with 10Gb redundant fibre links between buildings.

An analogy for those less familiar with this terminology is that it’s like every workstation on our main campus having there own 16mb broadband connection only with twice the upload speed you would normally get at home.

There are a number of broadband speed test websites you can try often giving different results however two examples are listed below, the Gadget Show speed test which was used for this test and speedtest.net which achieved significantly higher results to London and the Washington DC, between 40 – 60 Mb. And of course you will never transfer data faster the network at the other end is able to. Why not try your home broadband connection for your self.

http://gadgetshow.five.tv/jsp/speed_test.htm

http://www.speedtest.net/

Sustainable IT in Universities and Colleges June 21, 2008

Sustainable IT is a subject that is going to be more and more important for all Higher Education institutions.

I must admit I didn’t realise how important Sustainable IT was until I attended an energy efficiency workshop at Cardiff University. The workshop is part of a series of events, all of which are part of the Managing environmentally sustainable ICT project by JISC and Sust-IT

All of the presentations were really interesting, Cardiff University also arranged a tour of their brand new server room and High-performance computing (HPC) cluster. It was really good workshop and I’m already signed up for the next event about New Ways of Working

Apparently the use of natural gas in power stations is decreasing and the use of coal is on the increase. When one of the panel described computers as being ‘Coal Powered’ it certainly made me look differently at IT. I’m now planning a complete review of our server rooms and an investigation into exactly how much electricity we use, and where the inefficiencies are. The panel also made the point that going green is not only good for the environment, there are also huge cost savings that can be made by adopting greener practices. As students become more and more interested in the green credentials of an institution the electricity usage, efficiency and carbon footprint of an institution will become a factor that students begin to consider when selecting an institution.

The rising cost of electricity means that we all have to start taking notice of the electricity we use, if we don’t then energy bills will spiral out of control and cuts in other areas will have to be made to enable institutions to pay their bills. This might sound like doom mongering, but the panel explained that in the private sector decisions to cut staffing and other resources are already being made because of the high cost of electricity.

The British Computer Societey are working on an EU Code of Conduct for server rooms / data centres. Institutions will be able to sign up to the code of conduct when a final version of the document comes out later on this year. I will be looking into this Code of Conduct, and if possible I would like to get Edge Hill signed up to the document. Institutions signing up to the code will be given some EU marketing materials to display withing the institution. Signing up for this EU recognised Code of Conduct would further enhance the green credentials of the institution.

Core Services: One year on June 18, 2008

The Core Services team was formed in June 2007, which makes the team one year old! It doesn’t seem like a year since my first blog post.

The past year has been really interesting and challenging, and in all honesty I’ve enjoyed working on all the different projects. The team has come together quite nicely and we now have a wide range of skills available within the team. This summer will see our most ambitious plans to date, I just hope we can keep up the momentum we have built up over the past year. In the next few months we will be looking at virtualising more services and reducing the amount of physical servers in use. We will also be looking at improving the SunRay thin client service and reducing the running and support costs of the Core IT Services. We will also be rolling out more SunRay devices to some key areas of the institution, one of the bigger projects for the summer will be to implement a new institutional data backup system.

Looking over the previous blog posts I realised that I haven’t been at an external event or conference for some time. I thought it was about time I attended a conference as so far this year the rest of the team have been having all the fun!

The blog entries show that members of the team have attended Infosec 2008, a Salford Software Technical Update Event , and I’m sure there have been more events that haven’t been blogged !

I’m visiting Cardiff University on the 19th June for a ‘Sustainable IT in Universities and Colleges’ workshop. The workshop will explore issues around energy efficient configuration, cooling and power supply in computer server rooms, I’ll be looking for ideas or changes that will make our computer room more efficient. I’ll try and blog something about my thoughts and ideas tomorrow evening.

Virtually Virtual March 13, 2008

“In a world of dreams, we are but Gods limited by imagination”.

As technology evolves, concepts change and users adapt. We find ourselves challenging our systems to do more and more with less and less. In an effort to minimise overheads and maximise efficiency, we are presented with complex problems and demands to ensure availability, improve quality and reduce our carbon footprint. Parallel to all these demands; costs, implementation time frames and learning curves are expected to be nominal.

To set up a conventional system there are many costs involved, including (but not limited to): research, strategic planning, environmental preparation, physical setup requirements, hardware costs, setup of hardware, installation of software, staff costs, time, maintenance and not forgetting replacement costs.
This cycle of expenditure is conducted every time a new server is purchased and partially replicated for systems which are reused.

Obviously as companies develop, using these same old techniques of purchasing numerous, bigger, faster and more powerful servers is going to snowball exponentially and eventually reach an unmanageable, unsustainable terminal limit of growth.
It is at this point we must realise, it is not that the services that should control the necessity for resources, but rather the inevitable obligation to consider how the services are governed themselves. In short, focus on how and why we run our services.

From this seemingly simple concept, it is all too easy to get lost in the inexorable complexity of modern networks and common practises. The essence of the requirement is obvious; we need to consolidate and share resources, allowing for the inescapable fact that no computer is perfect and systems will fail.

When considering the solution, one may be reminded of the renowned William Gibson and his literature, but that future fiction is here and now.

Thus we arrive at the proposition of a virtual environment, mimicking all the behavioural characteristics of a standard network, but existing theoretically, in a world constrained by the same rules of our physical networking reality.

After all, we must remember that computers are fundamentally just a network of circuits and components themselves, so why can’t we have a host which imitates a larger network internally.
VMware offers us exactly that. VMware, Inc. is a publicly-listed company, founded in California (1998), with revenue of US$1.33 billion and more than employees 5,000 in 2007.

VMware virtualisation is becoming rapidly accepted and it does not take long to understand why. In a world driven by hundreds of factors, requirements and demands it simplifies to equate into efficiency and cost. As everyone knows, to make money, a service must be provided and an investment must be made. Thus there is a drive to resolve the problem with the most cost effective method available.

This technology has grown from typically being used in a development environment; allowing for testing without persistent changes. The modern approach of a virtual infrastructure allows us to deploying dozens of virtual machines on a single host, allowing mass redundancy of servers which are only active during certain periods of the day and systems which do not require the full power of a dedicated server.

The infrastructure is deployed across several high performance machines which are clustered together in a synchronous group. Within this cluster they pool and share the available resources which enable maximum efficiency of system CPU and memory utilisation. This clustering technique also means that we can assure high availability of these services; imagine a process is running on a particular box and this host has a power failure or hardware fault. Each virtual machine previously running on that host can be restarted immediately (even automatically) on a different host within the cluster and maintain the same state as before the glitch.

Even more excitingly, assuming one of the hosts in the cluster requires some downtime, we are able to migrate (VMotion) the virtual machines without any interruption to service between the host machines. This maintenance mode allows for minimal downtime and continued service.

Having all these services running centrally also provides fantastic management and control opportunities, allowing remote control across the whole system, automatic events, dynamic resource scheduling and the ability to create a virtual machine (a server) from a template in a matter of minutes.

This might all sound fantastic in theory, but you may be wondering how and if it is possible to convert your existing system into this world of fantasy. Most standard operating systems are supported in this virtual environment, including Microsoft Windows, Linux and Solaris to name a few. VMware converter allows a physical machine to be copied (while running) onto the virtual environment giving us an identical copy of the physical machine and with a few minor setting changes, we can begin running the services almost immediately.
The process of moving the physical servers to a virtual environment is known as ‘virtualisation’.

With all of these benefits, it is not difficult to see where the future of hosted services is leading. Virtualisation provides manageable, reliable, efficient and effective systems which are cheaper to run both long and short term. Due to fewer physical servers, we need less energy to power them and with a reduction of heat generation, these systems really are good for our planet!

“The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.” – William Gibson

Edge Hill University’s open access Sunray implementation – Part 1 March 11, 2008

Student open access Sunray terminal project

We have recently completed our initial roll out of some 150 Sunray terminals for support and academic staff within our new £14m Faculty of Health building on the Edge Hill University Ormskirk campus.

The specification for the FOH also included initially around 25 Sunrays terminal for student open access use located in a number of learning pods located around the building.

As the requirements for staff and students are different, including different software and printing facilities this requires the Sunray terminals to provide different working environments based on the location of the terminal.

So how do Sunrays work then?

A Sunray is a “thin client” terminal, this means there is no hard disk, memory or operating system within the unit itself so both noise and power consumption are significantly reduced compared to a desktop PC. Another feature of the Sunray terminal is that because files are not stored on the device it is highly secure, if your Sunray breaks or is stolen your data is safe.

When you connect a Sunray to your network it will make a DHCP request to try to acquire an IP address and the IP address of a DNS server.

It will then use DNS to resolve the IP address of a Sunray server by looking for two default DNS names, “sunray-servers” and “sunray-config-servers”. If it is able to resolve this it will open a session based on the configuration of that Sunray server.

In most cases if no smart card is present the default action would be to enter “kiosk mode” possibly to provide restricted web browsing or as in the case of our staff implementation, a menu allowing the user to select their screen resolution or open a Windows Terminal Server connection.

It was decided based on the popularity of our PC based cyber café style “Touchdown” stations around campus that it would be desirable to provide further functionality and choice, giving the user the option of light weight web browser for quick authenticated access to the internet, or a full network login including word processing and printing facilities. It was also identified that it would be desirable that if the terminal is not in use it could deliver information to the students.

So what will the students see?

On start up the student Sunray terminal presents a dynamically updated and centrally managed information screen that could display news, exam timetables or any other information that can be delivered via the internet. Users can then press a button which will launch a menu giving the user authentication options including a full Edge Hill University student desktop, an Internet Explorer only session or the option to change the screen resolution. Once the user closes the Internet Explorer window or logs off there university desktop session the terminal will revert to the information display.

Edge Hill University’s open access Sunray implementation – Part 2 March 10, 2008

So how does it all work then?

The whole system is based on multiple Unix shell scripts. The Sunray kiosk mode (which in our case is set open a “Generic X Session” launches a shell script called “kiosk.sh” which firstly launches Mozilla Firefox from the Sunray server the terminal has connected to with a Firefox kiosk mode add in called r-kiosk making Firefox open full screen mode.

When launching Firefox we also open a simple locally stored html document. This html document contains an iframe which opens page stored on a web server, this is where you store your centrally managed content, and a java button which will simply exit the browser.

In the event that a user presses the “Edge Hill University Login” button the browser will exit and the next command in the script is executed, in this case a shell script to launch a menu adapted from our staff Sunray implementation using “wish8.3” called “menu.sh”.

If the user selects “University Network Login” from the menu a script is executed that will open an RDP connection to a Windows 2003 Terminal server allowing the user to login to the Edge Hill University computer network using the full Novell client. This gives users access to their home and shared folders and a range of desktop applications. When the user logs off the “menu.sh” process is terminated returning the user to the original “kiosk.sh” process,.

If the user selects “Browse The Internet” a script is executed that will open an RDP connection to a different Windows 2003 Terminal server, this time the user authenticates using LDAP rather than the full Novell client but launches only Microsoft Internet Explorer. When the users closes the browser the “menu.sh” process is terminated returning the user to the original “kiosk.sh” process.

The “System Preference” option allows the user to set their desired screen resolution, but how this is achieved on the Sunray system a subject for another blog.

The physical setup

This student Sunray implementation, currently in an evaluation phase is fully virtualised on a cluster of VMWare ESX Servers, there will initially be two Sunray Servers running on Solaris 10, two student terminal servers running on windows server 2003 standard with the full Novell Client and two Windows 2003 terminal servers using the pGina client with the LDAPauth plug in to provide light weight authentication against our eDirectory tree for the browser only delivery.

The pGina / LDAPauth based terminal servers double as application servers for our Sun Secure Global Desktop implementation which is also within a trail phase, which again is a subject for another blog.

How do you run two separate Sunray environments?

There are a number of ways to achieve this, some more complex than others. In this case I took a fairly simple approach. The student Sunrays terminal firmware is updated with the gui version which should available when you install your Sunray server software. This allows them to be configured to connect to a specific Sunray server rather than the default as used by our staff implementation.

This allows us to provide a completely different selection of services for our students from out staff whilst the Sunray terminals themselves are connected to the same psychical network and use the same DHCP and DNS servers.

How do I update the firmware on a specified Sunray terminal?

To update a sunray terminal with the “gui” firmware login as root on one of you default sunray servers and enter:

/opt/SUNWut/sbin/utfwadm -A -e mac_addr_of_sunray -f /opt/SUNWut/lib/firmware_gui

Next time that Sunray terminal is rebooted it will be updated with the gui firmware. Once this firmware update process is complete you can press “stop” + “m”, this will give you access t the Sunray’s configuration menu where you can specify a different Sunray server.

How do I setup Mozilla Firefox to display my content?

To launch Mozilla Firefox from a shell script while opening a local html document is a simple command however, when you do this from a Sunray session you will most likely need to address number of issues. The first is that Firefox will always ask you if it should be the default browser, by default the close browser java button in your html document will not work and your r-kiosk addin needs installed for the Sunray kiosk sessions.

To resolve these issues I did the following:

* Login to you sunray server as root.

* Open Mozilla Firefox.

* Enter “about:config” in the address bar and change the following settings:

dom.allow_scripts_to_close_windows true
browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser false

Install your r-kiosk or any other required Firefox plugins and set any requited preferences and exit Firefox. All your preferences are now set for root, not your Sunray kiosk users so you need to copy them so they are part of the default profile for your kiosk sessions.

The Sunray kiosk sessions seemed to be generated, at least in our implementation, based on “/etc/opt/SUNWkio/prototypes/generic-session”, an educated guess at the time, so copying roots Firefox preferences there seemed like a good bet, and low and behold it works.

Copy root’s Firefox preferences to the kiosk users:
cp -R /.mozilla /etc/opt/SUNWkio/prototypes/generic-session

To launch Firefox form a script opening a local html document:
/usr/bin/firefox -url file:///opt/SUNWutMenu/info.html

And finally to undo all restrictions you have just applied to root’s browser sessions launch Firefox on safe mode and disable them:

/usr/lib/firefox -safe-mode

I don’t have the option “Generic X Session” for my kiosk mode?

It should be noted that when configuring “kiosk” mode within the Sunray administration interface the session type “Generic X Session” dose not appear to be available by default, in this case I copied the session type from our staff implementation.

The kiosk session types and session type configuration files however are located at /etc/opt/SUNWkio/prototypes and /etc/opt/SUNWkio/sessions. You can create a new kiosk session type by copying and re-naming an existing session type and editing the corresponding configuration files. If you require assistance with configuring the kiosk session types you should contact your Sunray support provider.

Our “Generic X Session” configuration file “generic.conf” looks like this:

KIOSK_SESSION_EXEC=$KIOSK_SESSION_DIR/generic-session
KIOSK_SESSION_LABEL=”Generic X Session”
KIOSK_SESSION_DESCRIPTION=”Provides a blank X session for running a Kiosk script.”
KIOSK_SESSION_ARGS=”/path/to/kiosk-app”
KIOSK_SESSION_PROTOTYPE=generic-session

That all sounds cool but what about a look at the scripts?

Some of the scripts I’m using at the time of writing this blog are Available on the downloads page (see the tabs at the top of the page), if they provide some inspiration for anyone then you are welcome however you do use them at you own risk.

Do we all need PCs? June 20, 2007

I spent Tuesday at the Esteem ‘Higher Education Strategy Forum’ in Edinburgh.

One the agenda were some really interesting topics such as Sustainable Computing and Becoming an Eco-University. One of the presentations that really fired my imagination was a presentation from SUN Microsystems about their Sun Ray 2 Desktop devices. The Sun Ray is basically a dumb terminal, it doesn’t have a hard drive or cpu. All the computing work is done by a back end server. There is actually no software installed onto the Sun Ray 2 device.
The user inserts a card into the device which connects the Sun Ray 2 to the back end server. The user is the presented with their desktop. One of the impressive things about the Sun Rays is that if a user needs to swap desks, they simply pull out the card (without logging off or shutting down any applications) and insert this into another Sun Ray. When the card is inserted into the second Sun Ray they are presented with the same applications they were using on the previous Sun Ray.

The Sun Ray never needs upgrading, doesn’t have any parts that would need replacing and because it doesn’t have any software installed it means that it can be deployed quickly. The salesman I was talking to claims a Sun Ray can be out of the box and installed in under a minute. The power used by the Sun Ray is only 4watts, from a Green Computing and Energy saving point of view this is superb.

This brings me to my point, Do we need PCs ? Do we all really use our dual processor, quad cores and 80GB hard drives? The answer is almost certainly NO. The PCs that we are currently deploying to desktops are more powerful than some of the servers currently in use on the network. We roll out new PCs to keep up with new releases of Windows and we increase the memory in the PCs to deal with the more resource hungry applications. Sun Rays would put an end to this, they would never need upgrading, there is very little that can fail and they are future proof as all the work is done by the back end server. IT Services are planning a visit to the SUN Offices later on this month, and there is an excellent chance that you might even see some of these Sun Ray devices on a desktop near you soon.

Going Green – How hard can it be? June 9, 2007

We are all obliged to look after our planet and to minimise our impact on the environment. There are a number of campaigns and environmental groups telling us that we should reduce our CO2 emissions by taking public transport, reducing car usage, lowering our heating thermostats and installing energy efficient light bulbs. We are also obliged to recycle as much waste as we can.

The life blood of the service my team provides is electricity. We’ve got racks and racks of electricity consuming hardware that sucks in electricity on one side and throws out waste heat on the other. This waste heat then has to be cooled by electricity guzzling air conditioning units. All that electricity usage has an effect on CO2 emissions and there will be a carbon footprint associated with it. Sounds bad doesn’t it, but I’m not done yet. Most desks at Edge Hill have a Personal Computer on them and then we have the numerous open access areas filled with PCs. Each of these PCs comprises of base unit and a monitor both of which use electricity all day. Some of these PCs will be left on at weekends and in many cases overnight.

The good news is that Core Services is going to start to look at using more energy efficient servers, server virtualisation and recycling old servers. This will all help to reduce our carbon footprint and CO2 emissions.

The best news about going green is that it most people at Edge Hill can make a difference without any effort. According to the Carbon Trust, one PC left on all day will cost about £37 a year. But if switched off at night and at weekends, this drops to nearer £10 a year and saves an equivalent amount of energy to making 34,900 cups of coffee. We do need to start some where, and as it turns out it is not hard to start going green. To start you should simply;

Turn off your computer when it’s not being used !

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