Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software 3.1 is available both as a perpetual license and as a subscription.

Key New Features

• Microsoft Hyper-V is now supported as an additional virtualization platform.

• Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (formerly Microsoft Terminal Services)

• Sun Desktop Access Client

• Adobe Flash Enhancements

• USB Redirection to Windows

• Support for additional virtual desktop operating systems

Chris Kawalek's expanded on those new features in a recent blog entry:

Microsoft Hyper-V support

Previous versions of Sun VDI Software already allowed for heterogeneous virtualization hosts, but we extend this support to include Microsoft Hyper-V in VDI 3.1. This means that you can use Sun built-in, VMware vSphere (or just ESX and vCenter, if that's what you've got), Microsoft Hyper-V, or any combination(!) to host your virtual desktops. This provides amazing flexibility and really reduces concerns around lock-in of any particular vendor. Want to change platforms? Easy, put up the new environment, test it with a group of users, migrate everyone over, and shut off the old one when you're ready (or keep it as a backup).

Remote Desktop Services support

Sun has lots of customers who use both classic server-based computing (SBC) and VDI at the same time. The trouble is that many architecture have you managing the two environments completely separately. But with Sun VDI Software 3.1, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 can be desktop providers. This means you can choose to assign any combination of VDI and SBC desktops to each of your users and manage the assignments from one management interface.

Sun Desktop Access Client

Sun VDI Software has leveraged both Sun Secure Global Desktop Software and the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection client to provide access from Windows PCs. With version 3.1, Sun added the Sun Desktop Access Client into the mix (no, Sun hasn't dropped SGD or RDC support!). The Sun Desktop Access Client is a purpose-built piece of software that installs on Windows PCs and allows direct access to Sun VDI Software without any further server configuration or setup. It also leverages the exact same protocol as our award winning Sun Ray clients. It's simple, high performance, and allows you to seamlessly shift your virtual desktop session between a Sun Ray client and a PC.

Enhanced Adobe Flash media support

For a virtual desktop to be truly useful, it needs to approach the capabilities of a full desktop PC. A traditional stumbling block for any sort of remote access technology is high performance video and animation. With this release, Adobe Flash content is accelerated for both Sun Ray clients and Sun Desktop Access Client enabled PCs.

USB direction for Windows XP

If you're using a Sun Ray client and Windows XP as your virtual desktop operating system, you can now plug many USB devices into your Sun Ray client and they show up automatically in your Windows XP session.

More

Sun VDI Software makes use of ZFS to provide superior data integrity for business continuity and exceptional data throughput in an economical storage footprint with simplified management design. Sun VDI Software 3.1 leverages Sun's award winning technologies - Sun VirtualBox, Solaris, and Open Storage - to deliver breakthrough performance, game changing economics and flexibility to the datacenter.

Virtualization Platforms

Sun VDI Software 3.1 supports the following virtualization platforms:

• Microsoft Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 (R2)
• Microsoft Remote Desktop Services Windows Server 2003 & Windows

Server 2008 (R2)

• Sun VirtualBox for VDI 3.1
• VMware VirtualCenter 4/2.5
• VMware ESX server 4(i), ESX 3.5, ESX 3(i)

Virtual Desktop Guest Systems:

• Windows 7
• Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows XP SP2 and higher
• Windows 2000 SP4 (only on Sun VirtualBox)
• OpenSolaris 2009.06 (only on Sun VirtualBox)
• Ubuntu 8.10/9.04 (only on Sun VirtualBox)
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (only on Sun VirtualBox)

Installation Operating Systems

Sun VDI Core is designed to run on Solaris 10 5/09 Operating System on x86 or SPARC.

Installation Hardware

For Sun VDI Core:

• A server based on UltraSPARC or x86 processors (2 or more CPUs recommended)
• Disk space: 1 GB
• Memory: 75 MB per user, 2GB or more total

For the virtualization platform:

• Microsoft Hyper-V
• Sun VirtualBox for VDI 3.1
• VMware Storage Hardware

  For Sun VirtualBox for VDI 3.1 or Microsoft Hyper-V:

• OpenSolaris 2009.06
• Solaris 10 5/09
• Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems

For VMware:

• Supported storage devices as defined by VMware.

More Information

Think Thin blog -- Please Welcome Sun VDI Software 3.1

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Documentation

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