unixwiz

I got called the other night by our operations group because the keyboard and mouse would not work on their 3 head group of Sun Ray 150’s. So I went in and killed their session and had them restart it, did not work. So I went looking in the log files and saw this:

Well that could not be good. So I ended up going in to the office. Tried unplugging the Sun Ray and plugging it back in. This is when I saw the 9 D error icon. Nice little icon with a picture of a USB connector and a yellow triangle. So I unplugged it and disconnected the keyboard and mouse and then plugged it back in. Still got the same error. The funny thing about the error is, it is listed as this in the docs:

This is an over current condition on the USB bus, i.e., the total number of devices draws too much current . Consider using a powered hub.

So now I ended up swaping it out with one that was in my office and rebuilding the multi-head group, and they were all set. The interesting thing about it is that the status LED stayed green, instead of turning amber. So the next morning I tried it on a different server (the original server it was attached to is running SRSS 2.0 still) that was running SRSS 3.1, this time nothing showed up in the log files, but the Sun Ray still showed the USB 9 icon and the keyboard and mouse did not work. So I ended up calling it in for replacement. It is nice that the Sun Ray’s have a long warrenty period. This one was bought 2 or 3 years ago.

In an unrelated note, I have to go in early to get a power backplane replaced in one of our V890’s because we have went through three power supplies in the PS0 slot in under a month. The bad part about this is the 890 has 11 zones on it and 1TB of disk, so we are going to have some services out while Sun replaces the backplane and power supply. Hopefully this will fix it though.

I received a “big” envelope in the mail the other day, it was from Axel. (No Justin, not Axel Rose but the company Axel www.axel.com). In it they were talking about their new Ultra-Think Client techonology which is now available. What is interesting is their little info sheet that accompanied it. What follows is a copy of what they had on the sheet:

ULTRA-THIN CLIENT TECHNOLOGY is now available!!!

AXEL Inc has developed a unique technical approach, geared toward providing the following benefits:

• Optimized Electronics
• No Opertaing System
• No Local Administration necessary
• Embedded native client for RDP and ICA
• Emulation for 5250, 3270, UNIX
• Multiple Independent Sessions
• 100% Virus immunity

…Regardless of the size of your organization, type of host, servers, or application if reliability, security and cost of ownership are your primary concerns, the ultra-thin client technology is the right answer.

Consider the following: (applicable to PC’s and OS-based thin clients)
Anti virus license - Cost per PC or PC based thin client - $30.00 / year -
Usual warranty coverage for PC’s - 3 years
Up to 70% of standard PC’s (and thin clients based on this architecture) resources are dedicated to the operating system
Extensive usage of network bandwidth capacity.
Up grade license required for various application sold - per PC or user.
Multiple support sources needed from various vendors depending on the nature of the problem

And then consider, with Axel’s Ultra Thin-Client Technology…

No need for Anti-Virus license
5 years warranty
Resources fully dedicated to applications
Low Bandwidth usage thanks to smart display management
Upgrades unnecessary
Support from one source

Now I have never used one of the Axel Terminal’s, but I have used nearly every type of Sun Ray from Sun Microsystems. What I find funny about this ad is that what they are talking about is nothing new. Sun has been doing it for years. What is intresting is that it says there is no operating system in the thin client. But if it supports all those emulations it must have some sort of OS in them wouldn’t it? I like how it says that it supports “Multiple Independent Sessions”, but from looking at the specs it doesn’t look like it supports the hot desking like the Sun Ray’s do. I really like Sun’s hot desking feature when I can go between my house, office and off-site data center and still have access to the same desktop in all three places. My sessions also stays where it was when the network goes out (like tonight for some reason we were having hit and miss getting to the sun ray server at the office, but our sessions were always in the state that they were when the network went out.

Doing a quick search on google it also looks like the price of these terminals may be more than Sun’s Sun Ray thin clients. Sorry Axel, nice flyer, but I will stick with Sun Ray’s.