Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) delivers access to a highly secure, resilient and available virtual desktop environment on a wide variety of client devices, from traditional PCs to Sun Ray virtual display clients. An early access version of VDI 3 was recently released with support for VMware Infrastructure 3, Sun xVM virtualization, and the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems.

If you're interested in learning more about the Sun VDI 3, then you need to take a look at a blog series by Dirk Grobler, who explores multiple facets of the open source virtualization software, including its architecture, client access, desktop broker, directory integration, xVM VirtualBox, open storage access, and VMware.

General Architecture

Grobler begins his exploration into VDI 3 with a look at the general architecture. In this initial blog post, a diagram of the architecture is hosted and a general summary presented.

Client Access

The remote protocol ALP is now built into the solution so each Sun VDI 3 installation will have this out-of-the-box ability. Grobler also points out that Sun VDI 3 mimics Terminal Services (RDP server) by exporting standard RDP to external RDP clients such as Windows Remote Connection or Sun Secure Global Desktop (SGD). RDP traffic also can be redirected to an external Sun Ray Server. Grobler explains how and the advantages of RDP redirection.

Desktop Broker

Listed as one monolithic block which is installed on top of Solaris 10, the desktop broker combines Sun Ray Software (SRSS/SRWC) and the Virtual Desktop Connector (VDC) for only one installation and configuration process. Other highlights are that the desktop broker manages its own Sun VDI 3 data repository and the administration UI has been reworked to keep up with the new features. The command line interface also has been updated.

Directory Integration

Active Directory and Sun's LDAP directory are supported. Sun VDI 3 is identical to Sun's Secure Global Desktop (SGD) in its understanding of what a user and a user group is. It also does offer a custom query mechanism for LDAP similar to the one found in SGD.

xVM VirtualBox

Completely stateless, VirtualBox is captured and stored by the Sun VDI 3 Broker, including the access information to the VirtualBox hosts, the storage hosts, the configuration of the virtual desktops, the access information to the virtual disks, etc. Grobler details how the system will work when it is initially started, what the sysadmin will need to do, the RDP server of VirtualBox, and cloning desktops.

Open Storage Access

ZFS and iSCSI are central to storage in Sun VDI 3. Grobler explains that the virtualized approach to storage is much more affordable than the traditional one, plus there are advantages in desktop deployment time and capacity planning.

VMware Virtual Infrastructure

Find out how VDI 3 connects against VMware VI3, and how performance and scalability of the system has been improved. [...read more...]

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