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Sun VDI Software 3 Early Access Available for Download

"Building on a decade's experience with the VDI concept, Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software 3 allows organizations to deploy a secure desktop environment hosted in the data centre and displayed on a number of client devices, including Windows PCs and Sun Ray thin clients," said Dave Shearer, CEO, Acardia.

Representing the first end-to-end solution from device to hypervisor for VDI, this new early access release includes improved support for Active Directory, as well as supporting VMware Infrastructure 3, Sun xVM virtualization platforms and the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems

Instead of building a new VDI platform to compete with itself and others, Sun software engineers have taken a new approach and built a VDI tier to be plugged into existing virtualization platforms. The VDI tier is designed to work with VMware as well as xVM VirtualBox. It enables new desktop providers to be created to plug in to the same framework.

Writing on his blog, Dennis Maher said “When delivering VDI services there are a number of things you need to consider for the enterprise - among the top items are: where is the back-end storage for the VM's, how will you identify the user and provision the VM on their behalf, which VDI product should you use, what if we need to change mid-stream, what OS experience does the user need, can I change that experience on a per user basis?”

These leading questions have been addressed with the new version of Sun’s Virtual Desktop Interface. “Provisioning for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Solaris, any flavour of Linux… in fact any user environment that will run in xVM VirtualBox is fair game. Support for ActiveDirectory as the identity source (or native LDAP) works out of the box with a click of the mouse,” he said.

In general, Sun VDI Software offers the following features and benefits:

Virtual desktop access: Use existing PCs or Sun Ray virtual display clients to access virtual desktop environments over a wide variety of network connections.
Added flexibility using virtual machines: Use the new Sun Virtual Desktop Connector to manage access to virtual desktop environments hosted on VMware Infrastructure 3.
High security connections: Leverage the built-in VPN client in Sun Ray virtual display clients or SSL encryption for other clients when accessing virtual desktops.
High quality user experience: Use Sun’s high performance protocols to create a high quality desktop user experience for users on the LAN, WAN, or the public Internet.
Simple software licensing: One license allows a user to connect to their virtual desktop from supported client devices, including popular PCs and Sun Ray virtual display clients.
Desktop choice: Supports Microsoft Windows, Solaris OS, and Linux as desktop environments.

Maher said that there is still a little work to be done with the new software, but that by downloading the early version potential users will see where virtualization of the desktop is now headed. Click here to get access to Sun VDI Software 3 Early Access. For additional documentation, please click here.

For more details or to discuss the deployment of a Virtualised Desktop Environment, please call Acardia on 0845 230 1055.

Published: 20 February 2009