Sun Ray
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sun Ray was introduced by Sun Microsystems in September 1999 as a stateless thin-client solution aimed at corporate environments. It consists of a smartcard reader and often comes with a flat panel display. In contrast to a thick client, the Sun Ray is a display device, with applications running on a server elsewhere, and the state of the user's session being independent of the display. This enables another notable feature of the Sun Ray, that it allows for portable sessions, with or without smartcard usage, as a user can go from one Sun Ray to another and continue their work without closing any programs. With a smartcard, all the user has to do is slip in the card, enter their password when prompted, and they will be presented with their session. Without the smartcard, the procedure is almost identical, except the user must specify the username as well as password to get their session. In either case, if a session does not yet exist, a new one will be created the first time they connect.
Sun Ray clients are connected via an Ethernet network to the Sun Ray Server. Sun Ray Server software is available for Sun's Solaris operating system and also for Linux. Rather than using the X Display protocol, Sun developed the separate secure bitmap-based network protocol Appliance Link Protocol (ALP) for the Sun Ray system (which is similar in concept to VNC).
Currently five models are in production, the headless Sun Ray 1g (attachable to displays up to 1920×1200 at 75Hz), the Sun Ray 170, which is integrated into a 17-inch LCD monitor, the Sun Ray 2 (small footprint, low power), the Sun Ray 2FS (dual head, 100BaseFX), and the Sun Ray 270 (integrated 17" LCD, mountable). Three older now EOL systems exist, the Sun Ray 1 (attachable to displays up to 1280×1024 at 85Hz), the Sun Ray 100 (integrated into a CRT monitor) and the Sun Ray 150 (integrated into a 15" LCD monitor).
Sun's OEM partners have also produced wi-fi notebook versions of Sun Ray.
[edit] Models
- NeWT (AKA NetWork Terminal - Original SunLabs Prototype, no display)
- Sun Ray 1 (EOL, no display)
- Sun Ray 100 (EOL, integrated 17" CRT)
- Sun Ray 150 (EOL, integrated 15" LCD)
- Sun Ray 1g (enhanced resolution, no display)
- Sun Ray 170 (integrated 17" LCD)
- Sun Ray 2 (no display)
- Sun Ray 2FS (dual-head, no display)
- Sun Ray 270 (integrated 17" LCD, mountable)
- Comet 12 (Sun Ray 12" notebook produced by General Dynamics)
- Comet 15 (Sun Ray 15" notebook produced by General Dynamics)
- Jasper (Sun Ray 2 notebook produced by TechView)
- Gobi (Sun Ray 2 notebook produced by Accutech)
[edit] External links
- Sun Microsystems
- Sun Ray User Group Wiki
- Sun Microsystems Thin Client and Server Based Computing Group Blog
- Sun Ray User Group
- SunRay-Users Mailing List
- Sun Ray administration
- Aussie SunRay Blog
| Software: | Solaris • StarOffice/OpenOffice.org • Java Desktop System • Java (Java language • JVM • Java API) • JES • Network File System |
| Hardware: | SPARCstation • Sun Ultra series • Sun Enterprise • Sun Blade • Sun Fire • UltraSPARC T1 • SPARC • JavaStation • Sun Ray |
| Education and Recognition: | SCPs |
