Oracle Desktop Virtualization

Friday Spotlight: Oracle OpenWorld Latin America 2015

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 18:20:20 +0000

Happy Friday! Our Spotlight this week is on one of our favorite topics, Oracle OpenWorld!

Oracle OpenWorld Latin America 2015 is quickly approaching and there is a lot of information on Oracle Linux, Oracle virtualization, OpenStack, Docker, and much more for you to enjoy and learn about.

Oracle OpenWorld Latin America 2015
June 23-25, 2015
Transamerica Expo Center
São Paulo, Brazil

The content catalog is open and there you will find four sessions dedicated to Oracle Linux and virtualization, and a huge number of other topics. In addition, there will be demos of our technologies in the DEMOgrounds areas.

If you're attending Oracle OpenWorld Latin America this year, we hope to see you there!

-Chris

May 2015 Oracle Virtualization Newsletter

Tue, 26 May 2015 23:03:38 +0000

We're pleased to announce that the May edition of the Oracle Virtualization Newsletter is now available!

This issue includes information on:

The new Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.2
Updates to Oracle VM VirtualBox, Oracle VM Server for SPARC, and VCA
Customer and partner stories from Epsilon, Secure-24, SanDisk, and more
Oracle OpenWorld Latin America
The webcast we're holding on Thursday of this week on Oracle VM VirtualBox and OpenStack (don't miss it!)
And much more!

You can read the online edition right now, or if you'd like to have the newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, you can sign up here.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.2 now available!

Thu, 30 Apr 2015 13:06:04 +0000

We are pleased to announce general availability of Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.2.

Oracle Secure Global Desktop (SGD) is a secure remote access solution for any cloud-hosted enterprise applications and desktops running on Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris and mainframe servers, from a wide range of popular client devices, including Windows PCs, Macs, Linux PCs, and tablets such as the Apple iPad and Android-based devices. Oracle Secure Global Desktop gives users the ability to work securely from any device and anywhere, while providing administrators the tools they need to control access to applications and desktop environments resident in the data center.

What's New in SGD Release 5.2

Monitoring with Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control - This release delivers plug-ins to enable centralized monitoring of multi-server SGD deployment in Oracle Enterprise Manager. These plug-ins monitor and analyze the health and performance of SGD servers and gateway servers. For SGD servers, the plug-in captures various performance and configuration metrics such as array status, users and applications, data store objects, SGD system process, versions and patches. For gateway servers, various performance and configuration metrics are captured, including connections being serviced, registered SGD servers, versions and patches. Plug-in metrics data can be processed by reporting tools such as Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher.

The image shows a sample SGD array monitoring page (click to view larger image)

Single Sign-On (SSO) integration with Oracle Access Manager - Enables instant access to applications, with a user entering credentials only once. This release integrates Oracle Secure Global Desktop with Oracle Access Manager, enabling the Single Sign-On (SSO) feature of Oracle Access Manager to authenticate users to an SGD server and to remote applications started from the SGD workspace. Single Sign-On enables SGD users to access multiple applications with a single login and greatly simplifies password management.
Role-based administration and enhancements - Provide flexible control over administration. New roles for SGD administrators have been introduced that add different levels of administration privileges and access control to the SGD Administration Console. New commands introduced in this release simplify the process of installing software updates (patches) for an SGD deployment. The Administration Console can now be used, in addition to the command line, to join an SGD server to an array that uses secure intra-array communication.
PulseAudio integration - Prior to this release, the Unix audio solution worked with applications that used OSS on Linux or SADA on Solaris. This release allows audio redirection from applications that use PulseAudio, increasing the range of audio applications supported by SGD. Also, added support for audio input functionality on Unix brings the Unix audio feature set in line with that on Windows and allows applications compatible with OSS, SADA or PulseAudio to use audio input.
Enhanced security and performance/emulations improvements - In addition to new features and expanded server, client and browser support, this release also delivers enhance security and performance, and provide a richer user experience over a range of network conditions.

A Password Manager has been introduced to allow users control over caching of credentials, up to the level permitted by the administrator.
Greater control of autocomplete behavior is available in SGD web applications. 'Sensitive fields' always have autocomplete disabled and autocomplete can be disabled for non-sensitive fields on a per-application basis.
Improved security with HTTP proxies. Proxy server support has been extended to negotiate, digest, and NTLM authentication when connecting to SGD through HTTP proxy servers. This means that clients configured for Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA) can now be used.
Optimizations improve scrolling and responsiveness in X applications, benefiting high latency environments.
Improvements in the handling of RDP have reduced both CPU and bandwidth requirements for transferring data and have improved the user experience by increasing responsiveness and reducing tiling and tearing artefacts.

Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.2 maintains its 'slot-in' simplicity while integrating more closely with Oracle products, technologies and solutions such as Oracle Managed Cloud Services, Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, and, Oracle Access Manager.

For more details refer to Oracle Secure Global Desktop release 5.2 documentation.

Download and try it out to see how Oracle Secure Global Desktop helps solve your organization's cloud applications and desktops needs.

16,000 Boots in Less than 7 Minutes

Thu, 20 Nov 2014 16:30:44 +0000

That's a number the flash folks don't quickly claim. Find out how here.

amitego AG: Partners Showcasing Their Solutions at Oracle Linux and Oracle Virtualization with OpenStack Showcase

Tue, 02 Sep 2014 17:34:18 +0000

Featuring Showcase Partners with proven Infrastructure and Management Solutions for Customers using Oracle Linux, Oracle Virtualization, and Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux.

These partners will be exhibiting their solutions at Oracle OpenWorld’s Oracle Linux and Virtualization with OpenStack Showcase-Booth #611. Make sure you stop by, as you would not want to miss an opportunity to discuss how they can help make your infrastructure more manageable, more secure and more reliable.

amitego is not new to Oracle Infrastructure products, nor to Oracle OpenWorld. Its mission is to make IT a safer place, by addressing secure access by privileged users, and this through its Remote Access Control and Management Solution Suite, VISULOX.

VISULOX is based on the Oracle Secure Global Desktop Software, offering customers a flexible and powerful way to control and document all activities of the privileged users in the IT environment.

Amitego will be demonstrating their VISULOX product and show how easy it is to integrate without any modification to server or client, delivering a complete audit trail about who did what and when in the system. Including demos showing the user activities. Visit amitego at Booth 611, Moscone South, Kiosk: SLX-008.

For more information, visit amitego website.

Friday Spotlight: Oracle Secure Global Desktop and amitego VISULOX

Fri, 22 Aug 2014 19:16:26 +0000

Happy Friday!

Our spotlight this week is a screencast about a fantastic solution that takes the security model of Oracle Secure Global Desktop and adds even more features.

If you work in environments where you need to have a video record of users' interactions with applications, or need to ensure that two users can remotely work on the same session (a worker entering data in a form from one workstation and a manager typing an authorization code from another, for example), amitego VISULOX can do this and a lot more. It's built on top of Oracle Secure Global Desktop, so you get all of the great features there, plus additional unique security related features provided by VISULOX.

Click the thumbnail below to watch the screencast.

We'll see you next week!

-Chris

The August '14 Oracle Virtualization Newsletter is Now Available

Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:00:53 +0000

The August 2014 edition of the Oracle Virtualization Newsletter is now available! You can catch up on what's been going on with Oracle VM, Oracle Secure Global Desktop, and Oracle VM VirtualBox by reading the latest issue. Here are some highlights:

Oracle Announces Oracle VM 3.3 Release
Technology Preview of OpenStack Icehouse with Oracle Linux and Oracle VM Now Available
Getting Started with Oracle VM, Oracle Linux, and OpenStack
Oracle VM Test Drive Workshop on Cisco UCS
Updated Oracle VM Storage Connect Plug-in for Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance Now Available
Controlled Remote Access with Oracle Secure Global Desktop and amitego VISULOX
And much more!

You can read the latest edition online right now or sign up to get it automatically delivered to your inbox.

FRIDAY SPOTLIGHT: Oracle Linux and Virtualization Showcase @ Oracle OpenWorld

Fri, 15 Aug 2014 17:57:53 +0000

Oracle Linux and Virtualization Showcase “aka.Pavilion" at Oracle Openworld will be amazing this year. You can find us in a spacious area in Moscone South (Booth #611), featuring many of our key partners. New this year in the Showcase, you will also find Oracle demopods showcasing Oracle Linux and Oracle Virtualization. In addition, we are also featuring OpenStack. A lot of exciting technologies and solutions in one stop! Oracle Linux and Virtualization partners will be on the floor with their latest integrations and solutions to help you better accelerate your infrastructure investments. Come by the Showcase to network, win some prizes and walk away with:

Insights and real world implementation examples from participating ISV, IHV and SI partners
Deeper knowledge on the latest developments of Oracle Linux and Oracle Virtualization and the Oracle OpenStack integrations
Broader view of how Oracle and Partners are implementing OpenStack

Whether you are modernizing your IT or planning an OpenStack deployment, join us in the Oracle Linux and Virtualization Showcase and our experts will help you visualize your future, simplify your IT life and realize further profitability for your business.

Starting next week here on the Linux and Virtualization blogs, we’ll go into detail about the partners that you can visit in the Oracle Linux and Virtualization Showcase. In the meantime, don't forget to mark Moscone South, Booth: 611 as a place to visit this year.

Hope to see you in our Oracle Linux and Virtualization Showcase!

Announcement: Patch Set Updates (PSUs) for Oracle Secure Global Desktop releases

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 21:52:51 +0000

Oracle has released some important Patch Set Updates (PSUs) for Oracle Secure Global Desktop. Oracle Secure Global Desktop team releases regular updates to make the overall user experience smoother and up-to-date. Patch Set Updates (PSUs) are clusters of recommended stability, security, and/or performance patches that have been certified for an existing maintenance releases.

Following links points to these PSUs for Oracle Secure Global Desktop releases, PSUs are available for download on My Oracle Support (MOS)

My Oracle Support (MOS) Information Center for Oracle Secure Global Desktop is accessed via DOC ID 1519265.2 lists up-to-date information.
Oracle Secure Global Desktop Release Announcement Reference (Doc ID 1597467.1) is an index of the Oracle Secure Global Desktop PSUs announcements

Patch Set Updates for Secure Global Desktop 5.1 (Doc ID 1618744.1)
Patch Set Updates for Secure Global Desktop 5.0 (Doc ID 1606985.1)
Patch Set Updates for Secure Global Desktop 4.71 (Doc ID 1607050.1)
Patch Set Update for Secure Global Desktop Gateway, version 4.71 (Doc ID 1662963.1)
Patch Set Updates for Secure Global Desktop 4.63 (Doc ID 1607706.1)
Patch Set Update for Secure Global Desktop Gateway, version 4.63 (Doc ID 1662906.1)
Java Virtual Machine Updates for Secure Global Desktop (Doc ID 1585558.1)

Friday Spotlight: Writing a Broker for Oracle Secure Global Desktop

Fri, 11 Apr 2014 13:42:55 +0000

We talked about the dynamic launch feature in Oracle Secure Global Desktop earlier and pointed out that the code providing the functionality is implemented in a broker. Here, we'll look at the fundamentals of writing a broker before working through a scenario where a bespoke broker would simplify operations.

Broker Basics

The interfaces and classes you need to write a broker are in the com.tarantella.tta.webservices.vsbim package in the sgd-webservices.jar archive.

IVirtualServerBroker is the key interface and all Secure Global Desktop brokers must implement it. These are the methods where a broker writer would typically add logic.

*void initialise(Map initParams)*	This method is called once when the broker is loaded by the Secure Global Desktop workspace. It gives the broker a map of the key/value pairs configured on the dynamic application server object using the broker. Typical parameters would be the name and port of a source of real or virtual application servers.
*Map getCandidateServers(Map params)*	Secure Global Desktop calls this method to obtain a list of servers available to a particular user. The broker receives a map of parameters, including the identity of the user, and the broker returns a list of candidate servers. The broker writer is free to decide how to populate that list and whether to return one candidate or several. For example, the broker could contact a database to reserve a single server. Alternatively, it could use APIs or web services to contact a VM provider and get a list of available virtual machines.
*ICandidateServer prepareCandidate(String type, ICandidateServer candidate)*	This method is called after getCandidateServers returns a single option or the user has selected one from several. This is the place for any code needed to set-up the chosen server or virtual machine.
void destroy()	This is where the broker would tidy-up, freeing any resources it had used, like sessions and connections.

A Sample Broker

Let's look at a scenario where writing a broker could simplify operations. You are an administrator of a Secure Global Desktop deployment where users periodically need to access a key application. Only a single instance of the application can run on any one server and you have a limited number of licenses. When a user requires access to the application, they submit a service request to reserve one. The traditional, broker-less approach in Secure Global Desktop would be to create an application object, configure it to run on the reserved application server and then assign it to the user who reserved it. Time-consuming if you have to do this repeatedly and on a regular basis.

However, if we can access the reservation database, we can do it dynamically in a broker. The operation now becomes:

Once only, the administrator assigns the application a dynamic application server configured with a custom broker

Then,

User submits a service request and reserves a server
User logs into Secure Global Desktop and clicks the link to launch the application
The broker queries the database, gets the server that the user has reserved and launches the application on it

For the administrator, there is no need to create, modify or destroy objects in the Secure Global Desktop datastore every time a user submits a service request.

Skipping many details, defensive coding and exception handling, the broker code would look something like this:

package com.mycompany.mypackage;

import com.tarantella.tta.webservices.vsbim.*;
import java.sql.*;
import java.util.*;

public class DbBroker implements IVirtualServerBroker {

    static private final String TYPE = "A Description";
    private Connection dbConn;

    public void initialise(Map<String, String> parameters)
            throws VirtualServerBrokerException {
        // Connect to reservation database. End-point and credentials are
        // supplied in the parameters from the dynamic application server
        dbConn = DriverManager.getConnection(params.get("URL"), params.get("USER", params.get("PASS"));
    }

    public Map<String, List<ICandidateServer>> getCandidateServers(
            Map<String, String> parameters)
            throws VirtualServerBrokerAuthException,
                   VirtualServerBrokerException {
        Map<String, List<ICandidateServer>> launchCandidates =
                new HashMap<String, List<ICandidateServer>>();

        // Get the user identity
        String identity = parameters.get(SGD_IDENTITY);

        // Lookup the application server for that user from the database
        Statement statement = dbConn.createStatement();
        String query = createQuery(identity);
        ResultSet results = statement.executeQuery(query);
        // Parse results;
        String appServerName = parseResults(results);

        if (appServerName != null) {
            // Create the assigned server.
            CandidateServer lc = new CandidateServer(appServerName);
            lc.setType(TYPE);

            List<ICandidateServer> lcList = new ArrayList<ICandidateServer>();
            lcList.add(lc);
            launchCandidates.put(TYPE, lcList);
        }

        return launchCandidates;
    }

    public ICandidateServer prepareCandidate(String type,
            ICandidateServer candidate)
            throws VirtualServerBrokerException {
        // Nothing to do
        return candidate;
    }

    public void destroy() {
        // Close the connection to the database
        dbConn.close();
    }

    // And the other methods
    public boolean isAuthenticationRequired() {
        // No user authentication needed
        return false;
    }

    public Scope getScope() {
        // Scope at the application level for all users.
        return Scope.APPLICATION;
    }
}

In summary, dynamic launch and custom brokers can simplify an administrator's life when operating in a dynamic environment. The broker can get its data from any source with a suitable interface: a database, a web server or VM providers with open APIs. Next time, we'll illustrate that with a broker connecting to Virtual Box.

Dynamic Launch in Oracle Secure Global Desktop

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 16:23:25 +0000

In an earlier entry, Oracle Secure Global Desktop and Oracle VDI, we mentioned the dynamic launch feature in Secure Global Desktop and described how we used that feature to connect the two products. Here's a summary of that integration:

Now is a good time to dig a bit deeper into dynamic launch.

Dynamic Launch

There are three parts to it:

Dynamic Applications
Dynamic Application Servers
Brokers

Dynamic Applications

A dynamic application is a type of object in Secure Global Desktop that maps to one or more other applications and offers a user a choice between those applications. Normally, you would map related applications, like a workflow, or alternatives, where you would expect a user to run only one of the applications at any one time. 'My Desktop' is an example of the latter: it is a dynamic application that maps to a Unix desktop and a Windows desktop, the thinking being that most users would run one or the other, but not both simultaneously.

Dynamic Application Servers

A dynamic application server is an object that tells Secure Global Desktop to execute some code to determine where an application should run. It can be assigned to an application object just like other application servers and the code is executed when the application is launched. The code is delivered as a broker.

Brokers

A broker is a Java class that implements a simple interface and is a property of a dynamic application server. Currently, Secure Global Desktop ships with three brokers:

SGD Broker: when this is assigned to an application object, it grabs all the other (real) application servers assigned to the application and presents the user with a choice
User-defined SGD Broker: an extension of the SGD Broker that adds the option for a user to enter a host name
VDI Broker: this is used to provision hosts through VDI

Together, they provide a structured, flexible and extensible system: a single dynamic application in a user's workspace can open up a wealth of choices. Let's consider a scenario where a user needs to run a range of web applications that require different browser types and versions. One solution in Secure Global Desktop would be to create separate items for each type of browser and publish them to the workspace. Alternatively, you could create a dynamic application that maps to the different types of browser and logically group them together. And this can be taken a step further: by assigning a dynamic application server to an application, that browser could be run on a server dynamically provisioned through VDI or whatever hypervisor the broker has been written to handle.

So, three key components make up dynamic launch. Two of them, dynamic applications and dynamic application servers, are part of the Secure Global Desktop infrastructure and plumb the feature into the datastore, workspace and launch process. They belong in the administrator's realm. The third component, the broker, provides extensibility. Secure Global Desktop ships with a broker to deliver VMs provisioned through Oracle VDI, but the open interfaces mean it does not have to stop there. To go further, we must enter the developer's world and write a little code. Next time...

Oracle Secure Global Desktop and Oracle VDI

Fri, 28 Mar 2014 11:33:59 +0000

What is the relationship between these two products? One view is that Secure Global Desktop (despite its name!) provides access to remote applications and VDI does the same for remote, virtual desktops (VMs). A clean distinction, but slightly artificial: to Secure Global Desktop, a remote desktop, virtual or not, is really just a remote application. There is little to differentiate the products when it comes to connectivity to remote desktops - Secure Global Desktop has its native and HTML 5 clients, VDI has Sun Ray and OVDC, but both products connect to remote servers in the same way, typically using RDP.

Where the products differ is in their scope. Oracle VDI is a comprehensive solution that enables an administrator to create, store, manage and destroy VMs, as well as allowing users to connect to them. Secure Global Desktop is simpler and restricts itself to connectivity to the VMs.

So, do the products work together? A most definite 'yes': use Secure Global Desktop for user connectivity and VDI for management of VMs. In fact, Secure Global Desktop ships with a component specifically for communicating with VDI. You can find full details at http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E41492_01/E41495/html/dynamic-launch.html#broker-vdi-3-3 but we can do a short overview here.

Firstly, a slight digression. There are two main entry points to Secure Global Desktop. The common approach is for users to log in through their browser and go to their Workspace (formerly known as their 'Webtop'). The Workspace presents all the applications that an administrator has published to the user as links and an application can be launched by clicking its link. The second entry point is 'My Desktop'. Here, a user logs in through the browser but, rather than going to the Workspace, a desktop is launched automatically. Quite a good fit for delivering virtual desktops and the approach we will use in our example.

Let us assume it is a clean installation of Secure Global Desktop. The first task is for the Secure Global Desktop administrator to configure 'My Desktop' to talk to VDI. The steps are:

1. 'My Desktop' is a dynamic application object, meaning that it can map to one or more real application objects. Since all the VM providers accessed through VDI emit RDP, we are interested in 'Windows Desktop' and not 'Unix Desktop'. We delete the mapping to 'Unix Desktop', leaving a single mapping to 'Windows Desktop'.

Next, we configure the 'Windows Desktop' application. Traditionally, this would be done by assigning it an application server object that points to a real Windows server. Here, we are going to use a dynamic application server. It is 'dynamic' because it uses code (in this case, the VDI Broker) to define the server or servers, rather than a static setting for DNS name or IP-address. So, next:

2. We create the dynamic application server, set its 'Broker Class' to 'VDI Broker' and configure it with the particulars of our installation. Configuration involves providing the URL for the VDI web services and, if they are secured with a certificate from an untrusted certificate authority, installing the certificate (or chain) into Secure Global Desktop.
3. We assign this dynamic application server to 'Windows Desktop'

That is the administrator's job done. The user scenario is:

- User clicks the 'My Desktop' link in the browser and authenticates.
- The VDI broker code runs and gets a list of VMs available to the user. If there is only one candidate VM, Secure Global Desktop connects the user directly to the virtual desktop. If there are several, the user is given the option to select one before a connection is made.

By using the VDI broker included in Secure Global Desktop, you can deliver virtual desktops to users through Secure Global Desktop and manage the desktops with VDI. For users familiar with Secure Global Desktop, the desktop is just another application and they face no learning curve. And administrators can continue to manage desktops through VDI, or even add desktops from other providers without changing the user experience.

There are references to 'dynamic application server objects' and 'dynamic application objects' in this discussion. These types of objects, along with some open interfaces, form the 'dynamic launch' feature in Secure Global Desktop. This feature is used to extend the product and the VDI Broker is an example of this extensibility - by simply implementing a public interface (see http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E41492_01/E41499/html/com/tarantella/tta/webservices/vsbim/IVirtualServerBroker.html), the VDI Broker plugs into the Secure Global Desktop infrastructure and provides additional functionality.

Dynamic launch will be the topic of a later entry.

Friday Spotlight: Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.1

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 15:23:25 +0000

Happy Friday, everyone! Our Friday Spotlight this week is a blog entry from the Oracle Secure Global Desktop engineering team, with some info on what they've been up to:

Hadn't noticed that this blog has been quiet for a while. Time to catch-up!

So, what's been happening with Oracle Secure Global Desktop recently? The biggest event was the release Oracle Secure Global Desktop version 5.1 in November 2013. This version builds on the tablet support for iPads introduced in version 5.0 and extends it to Android devices. It also supports the use of the tablet client, using HTML 5 technology, in Chrome browsers. The traditional Oracle Secure Global Desktop clients are not being neglected and a Patch Set Update was delivered in February 2014 to support their use in Internet Explorer 11.

Talking of "Patch Set Updates", that's the other big, recent development. In early 2014, we released 'tarantella patch' commands that can be retro-fitted to Long Term Support (LTS) maintenance releases of Oracle Secure Global Desktop and Oracle Secure Global Desktop Gateway to patch existing installations. Using these commands, you can keep current with third-party components, like the JVM, and apply bug fixes to Oracle Secure Global Desktop. It's not an alternative to upgrading to the latest version to get the latest features, but helps alleviate immediate problems until an upgrade can be scheduled.

Finally, the other big change is the relationship between Oracle Secure Global Desktop and Oracle VDI, but that's a big topic that needs an entry to itself...

We'll see you next week with another Friday Spotlight!

The February '14 Oracle Virtualization Newsletter is Out!

Tue, 25 Feb 2014 22:34:01 +0000

The February 2014 Oracle Virtualization Newsletter is now available! It includes content on an updated Oracle VM cost calculator (now including Oracle Linux!), 2014 IT Predictions, community demonstration videos, what's new in Oracle Secure Global Desktop, and much more!

Read the February edition online right now, or subscribe to get future issues delivered straight to your inbox.

-Chris

Friday Spotlight: Amitego's Tools Updated for latest Oracle Secure Global Desktop

Fri, 21 Feb 2014 18:51:49 +0000

Happy Friday, everyone!

Our spotlight this week is on a fantastic tool, VISULOX Helpdesk from Amitego. If you’re a user of Oracle Secure Global Desktop, you have probably heard of Amitego. They provide tools that extend the feature set of Oracle Secure Global Desktop.

Whereas Oracle Secure Global Desktop is primarily designed for secure remote access to applications and desktops for a single user, Amitego provides extra, complementary tools to control and manage secure access for multiple users to the same session. This is really useful in situations such as where a manager needs to approve a transaction, or if two people with trusted information are needed to complete a task, or, perhaps the most common scenario, providing helpdesk services.

Their new tool, VISULOX Helpdesk, is based on the new VISULOX 3 framework and helps solve this last problem. It allows controlled assisting of a user by another user, without opening up the security risks associated with doing this on your desktop PC. You can do things like assign a group of users that a supervisor can assist with, and then the users can request help from the supervisor, and that supervisor can view their session in tandem. And the user still has control, too -- they can even switch off the cooperation view temporarily to enter a password, for example. And, of course, all of the clients and applications supported by Oracle Secure Global Desktop are supported by VISULOX Helpdesk, so you can even use your tablet device to remotely view and participate in a session.

If you need to do any sort of tandem work or helpdesk services and you’re using or looking at using Oracle Secure Global Desktop, you should go have a look at Amitego and read about their various offerings. Their tools have recently been updated to work with the latest Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.1.

Have a great week!

-Chris

FatBloke Sings his Last (at Oracle)

Fat Bloke — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 18:29:36 +0000

It has been a good run, but onwards and upwards, as they say...

After a run which incorporated Tarantella, Sun Microsystems and most recently Oracle, the Fat Bloke is finally signing off from Virtualization and Oracle.

As an industry (or maybe simply industrial ) figure he was always going to be in demand, but how will his departure be received by the multitude (or both) of his fans? And where will they get their regular fix of cool stuff that you can do with VirtualBox and SGD?

Well, we can at least answer that one: future blogs will appear over on the Oracle Virtualization blog .

And for the curious, or maybe plain desperate, look towards the west ( @fatbloke ) on Monday 3rd Feb, 2014.

Thank you and good night,

- FB

Important Patch Set Updates (PSU) for Oracle Secure Global Desktop

Fri, 20 Dec 2013 15:21:14 +0000

Oracle has released some important Patch Set Updates (PSUs) for Oracle Secure Global Desktop which customers should be aware of.

These critical patch clusters are available for immediate download and installation, as described in the following version-specific announcements:

Patch Set Update for Secure Global Desktop 5.0 (Doc ID 1606985.1)
Patch Set Update for Secure Global Desktop 4.71 (Doc ID 1607050.1)
Patch Set Update for Secure Global Desktop 4.63 (Doc ID 1607706.1)

Patch Set Updates are available for all active Long Term Support (LTS) maintenance releases, as enumerated within the Secure Global Desktop Release Announcement Reference (1597467.1). No other versions of SGD are designated to receive a formal PSU. Administrators of earlier releases—(i.e. 4.5, 4.60, 4.61, 4.62, or 4.70)—must move to a designated maintenance release in order to apply these comprehensive solutions.

ACTION REQUIRED: The Oracle Support team would like to stress the importance of the immediate consideration and installation of the December 2013 PSUs, as planned updates to the Java plug-in will adversely impact the user experience of all unpatched versions of Secure Global Desktop prior to Secure Global Desktop 5.10.

These changes will require proactive action on behalf of SGD Administrators to prevent service interruption when the forthcoming updates planned for Java do arrive.

Additional information regarding this particular scenario is described within a dedicated knowledge article:

Users Connecting to Secure Global Desktop are Presented with Dialog, "This application will be blocked in a future Java security update because the JAR file manifest does not contain the Permissions attribute." (Doc ID 1594506.1)

Oracle Virtualization Friday Spotlight - November 1, 2013

Fri, 01 Nov 2013 19:46:22 +0000

Welcome to Friday, we hope you had a good week! It was exciting for us here (especially those with Android tablets!) due to the announcement of Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.1. So, our Friday spotlight is the news release "Oracle Secure Global Desktop Adds Support for Android Tablets".

Have a great week!

-Chris

What's New in SGD 5.1?

Fat Bloke — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 13:20:09 +0000

Oracle announced the latest version of Secure Global Desktop (SGD) this week with 3 major themes:

Support for Android devices;
Support for Desktop Chrome clients;
Support for Oracle Unified Directory.

I'll talk about the new features in a moment, but a bit of context first:

Oracle SGD - what, how and why?

Oracle Secure Global Desktop is Oracle's secure remote access product which allows users on almost any device, to access almost any type application which is hosted in the data center, from almost any location. And it does this by sitting on the edge of the datacenter, between the user and the applications:

This is actually a really smart environment for an increasing number of use cases where:

Users need mobility of location AND device (i.e. work from anywhere);
IT needs to ensure security of applications and data (of course!)
The application requires an end-user environment which can't be guaranteed and IT may not own the client platform (e.g. BYOD, working from home, partners or contractors).

Oracle has a a specific interest in this of course. As the leading supplier of enterprise applications, many of Oracle's customers, and indeed Oracle itself, fit these criteria.

So, as an IT guy rolling out an application to your employees, if one of your apps absolutely needs, say, IE10 with Java 6 update 32, how can you be sure that the user population has this, especially when they're using their own devices? In the SGD model you, the IT guy, can set up, say, a Windows Server running the exact environment required, and then use SGD to publish this app, without needing to worry any further about the device the end user is using.

What's new?

So back to SGD 5.1 and what is new there:

Android devices

Since we introduced our support for iPad tablets in SGD 5.0 we've had a big demand from customers to extend this to Android tablets too, and so we're pleased to announce that 5.1 supports Android 4.x tablets such as Nexus 7 and 10, and the Galaxy Tab.

Here's how it works, with screenshots from my Nexus 7: Simply point your browser to the SGD server URL and login;

The workspace is the list of apps that the admin has deemed ok for you to run. You click on an application to run it (here's Excel and Oracle E-Business Suite):

There's an extended on-screen keyboard (extended because desktop apps need keys that don't appear on a tablet keyboard such as ctrl, WIndow key, etc) and touch gestures can be mapped to desktop events (such as tap and hold to right click)

All in all a pretty nice implementation for Android tablet users.

Desktop Chrome Browsers

SGD has always been designed around using a browser to access your applications. But traditionally, this has involved using Java to deliver the SGD client component. With HTML5 and Javascript engines becoming so powerful, we thought we'd see how well a pure web client could perform with desktop apps. And the answer was, surprisingly well. So with this release we now offer this additional way of working, which can be enabled by a simple bit of configuration. Here's a Linux desktop running in a tab in Chrome.

And if you resize the browser window, the Linux desktop is resized by SGD too. Very cool!

Oracle Unified Directory

As I mentioned above, a lot of Oracle users already benefit from SGD. And a lot of Oracle customers use Oracle Unified Directory as their Enterprise and Carrier grade user directory. So it makes a lot of sense that SGD now supports this LDAP directory for both Authentication and as a means to determine which users get which applications, e.g. publish the engineering app to the guys in the Development group, but give everyone E-Business Suite to let them do their expenses.

Summary

With new devices, and faster 4G networking becoming more prevalent, the pressure for businesses to move to a increasingly mobile enterprise is stronger than ever. SGD is good for users, and even better for IT. By offering the user the ability to work from anywhere, and IT the control and security they need, everyone wins with SGD.

To try this for yourself, download SGD 5.1 (look under Desktop Virtualization Products) from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud or if you're an existing customer, get it from My Oracle Support.

-FB

Shrinking a Linux OEL 6 virtual Box image (vdi) hosted on Windows 7

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 01:06:46 +0000

Recently for a customer demonstration there was a requirement to build a virtual box image with Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c. This meant installing OEL Linux 6 as well as creating an 11gr2 database and Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c on a single virtual box. Storage was sized at 300Gb using dynamically allocated storage for the virtual box and about 10Gb was used for Linux and the initial build.

After copying over all the binaries and performing all the installations the virtual box became in the region of 80Gb used size on the host operating system, however internally it only really needed around 20Gb. This meant 60Gb had been used when copying over all the binaries and although now free was not returned to the host operating system due to the growth of the virtual box storage '.vdi' file. Once the ‘vdi’ storage had grown it is not shrunk automatically afterwards.

Space is always tight on the laptop so it was desirable to shrink the virtual box back to a minimal size and here is the process that was followed.

Install 'zerofree' Linux package into the OEL6 virtual box

The RPM was downloaded and installed from a site similar to below;

http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/12548724/com/zerofree-1.0.1-5.el5.i386.rpm.html

A simple internet search for ’zerofree Linux rpm’ was easy to perform and find the required rpm.

Execute 'zerofree' package on the desired Linux file system

To execute this package the desired file system needs to be mounted read only. The following steps outline this process.

As root: # umount /u01

As root:# mount –o ro –t ext4 /u01

NOTE: The –o is options and the –t is the file system type found in the /etc/fstab.

Next run zerofree against the required storage, this is located by a simple ‘df –h’ command to see the device associated with the mount.

As root:# zerofree –v /dev/sda11

NOTE: This takes a while to run but the ‘-v’ option gives feedback on the process.

What does Zerofree do?

Zerofree’s purpose is to go through the file system and zero out any unused sectors on the volume so that the later stages can shrink the virtual box storage obtaining the free space back.

When zerofree has completed the virtual box can be shutdown as the last stage is performed on the physical host where the virtual box vdi files are located.

Compact the virtual box ‘.vdi’ files

The final stage is to get virtual box to shrink back the storage that has been correctly flagged as free space after executing zerofree.

On the physical host in this case a windows 7 laptop a DOS window was opened.

At the prompt the first step is to put the virtual box binaries onto the PATH.

C:\ >echo %PATH%

The above shows the current value of the PATH environment variable.

C:\ >set PATH=%PATH%;c:\program files\Oracle\Virtual Box;

The above adds onto the existing path the virtual box binary location.

C:\>cd c:\Users\xxxx\OEL6.1

The above changes directory to where the VDI files are located for the required virtual box machine.

C:\Users\xxxxx\OEL6.1>VBoxManage.exe modifyhd zzzzzz.vdi compact

NOTE: The zzzzzz.vdi is the name of the required vdi file to shrink.

Finally the above command is executed to perform the compact operation on the ‘.vdi’ file(s). This also takes a long time to complete but shrinks the VDI file back to a minimum size. In the case of the demonstration virtual box OEM12c this reduced the virtual box to 20Gb from 80Gb which was a great outcome to achieve.

Cloning from a given point in the snapshot tree

Fat Bloke — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 10:05:30 +0000

Although we have just released VirtualBox 4.3, this quick blog entry is about a longer standing ability of VirtualBox when it comes to Snapshots and Cloning, and was prompted by a question posed internally, here in Oracle: "Is there a way I can create a new VM from a point in my snapshot tree?".

Here's the scenario: Let's say you have your favourite work VM which is Oracle Linux based and as you installed different packages, such as database, middleware, and the apps, you took snapshots at each point like this:

But you then need to create a new VM for some other testing or to share with a colleague who will be using the same Linux and Database layers but may want to reconfigure the Middleware tier, and may want to install his own Apps. All you have to do is right click on the snapshot that you're happy with and clone:

Give the VM that you are about to create a name, and if you plan to use it on the same host machine as the original VM, it's a good idea to "Reinitialize the MAC address" so there's no clash on the same network:

Now choose the Clone type. If you plan to use this new VM on the same host as the original, you can use Linked Cloning else choose Full.

At this point you now have a choice about what to do about your snapshot tree. In our example, we're happy with the Linux and Database layers, but we may want to allow our colleague to change the upper tiers, with the option of reverting back to our known-good state, so we'll retain the snapshot data in the new VM from this point on:

The cloning process then chugs along and may take a while if you chose a Full Clone:

Finally, the newly cloned VM is ready with the subset of the Snapshot tree that we wanted to retain:

Pretty powerful, and very useful.

Cheers,

-FB

What's New in VirtualBox 4.3?

Fat Bloke — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 16:39:45 +0000

Great news: Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.3 is available from today!

Let's take a quick look at what's new:

New Platforms

We're at that time of year when vendors are releasing new versions of their platforms, ready to be installed onto new hardware offerings for the upcoming holiday season. So welcome Mac OS X 10.9 ( "Mavericks" ), Microsoft Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2, and all the new Linux distributions too.

And so it is only natural that VirtualBox 4.3 should add support for these new platforms too.

But sometimes that is easier said than done. For example, some of the new platforms are designed for tablet, or laptop/tablet hybrid platforms and so use a multi-touch interface to navigate around the system. This all means that VirtualBox has to deliver a multi-touch virtual device that the guests can use, which is exactly what we did in 4.3. So if you're looking to check out such a system, such as Windows 8(.1), remember to choose the correct pointing device:

Another similarity about the new platforms is the increased use of desktop "eye-candy", whether it is translucency, fade-in and out effects, or instant zoom. This means that we've had to improve our 3d acceleration support for guests such as Fedora, seen here on a Mac OS X 10.9 host, using a zoomed out view of running apps and a scaled workspace viewer on the right hand side:

(Don't forget to update your Guest Additions to the 4.3 version to get this going.)

We also improved the multi-monitor support especially when you are using multiple virtual monitors with multiple physical displays in full screen mode.

Hypervisor improvements

Another significant, but largely invisible change in 4.3 concerns the hypervisor itself. We have significantly revamped the internals of VirtualBox as a platform for future performance enhancements. Today, this has mainly improved boot times of guests, but we'll be building upon this in forthcoming updates.

Networking Improvements

In the Networking area we've got 3 bits of news:

IPv4 AND IPv6 almost everywhere - Host-only, Internal, Bridged and our new NAT Network mode now all offer IPv6 to guests;
IPv6 in VRDP - You can remotely connect to the consoles of your virtual machines via RDP over IPv6;
New NAT Network mode - yet another way of configuring the network of your vm's...

Our existing NAT mode puts each guest vm on it's own private network. This is nice and easy and has served us very well over the years.

At the same time, many people use our Host-only networking to run multiple vm's on a private network that can talk to each other and also the host.

But what yet another group of people wanted was a private network where the guests could talk to each other but also to the internet too (or at least the network beyond the host). So this is what the new NAT Network mode offers. Diagrammatically, it looks like this:

and the configuration dialog looks like this:

Hopefully you can see that this new NAT Network can be IPv6 or IPv4 and has an optional DHCP service. Also Port Forwarding is available to allow connections into the private network from the outside world.

Other Bells and Whistles

There are lots of other smaller improvements in 4.3 but 2 of my favorites are:

Video Capture

4.3 comes with a built-in video capture facility to record the contents of your guest's screens. The resultant movie is stored in .webm format so can be played back by most movie players or even Google Chrome.

Virtual Webcam

An extremely cool (but only experimental at this stage) feature is the VirtualBox virtual webcam device. This allows the guest to use the webcam of the host so that you can use Skype or Google Hangouts from within your guest. (Look for a separate blog on this feature)

What next?

In the time it has taken you to read this blog you could have downloaded 4.3 from the Oracle or community site to kick the tires yourself.

But there's still time, VirtualBox is only around 100Mb. Or if you were "born not to lead but to read" (apologies to Matt Groening), take a peek at the User Guide.

All in all, another solid release, one that we hope you'll enjoy discovering.

- FB

Microsoft Windows 8 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 22:09:31 +0000

I'm very pleased to announce that Microsoft Windows 8 desktop clients are certified for the Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.10.2, 12.0, 12.1, and 12.2. This certification applies to the following editions:

Windows 8
Windows 8 Enterprise
Windows 8 N edition
Windows 8 Pro N edition
Windows 8 Pro Pack N edition

Internet Explorer 10

Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.10.2 Prerequisites

Oracle Applications 11.5.10.2

Oracle Applications Technology 11i.ATG_PF.H Rollup 6 (RUP 6) (patch 5903765) or later.

Oracle Developer 6i patchset 19 (6.0.8.28.x) (Note 125767.1).

MLR Patch 8888184

Java client plug-in JRE 1.6.0_37 or later 1.6 updates

Java client plug-in JRE 1.7.0_10 or later 1.7 updates

Oracle E-Business Suite R12.0 Prerequisites

Oracle E-Business Suite 12.0.6

Oracle Applications Technology R12.ATG_PF.A.DELTA.6 (patch 7237006) or later.

Oracle Forms Version 10.1.2.3 or later.

Java client plug-in JRE 1.6.0_37 or later 1.6 updates

Java client plug-in JRE 1.7.0_10 or later 1.7 updates

Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 Prerequisites

Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3

Java client plug-in JRE 1.6.0_37 or later 1.6 updates

Java client plug-in JRE 1.7.0_10 or later 1.7 updates

Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 Prerequisites

Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2.2 or higher

Java client plug-in JRE 1.6.0_37 or later 1.6 updates

Java client plug-in JRE 1.7.0_10 or later 1.7 updates

Firefox ESR 17

Oracle E-Business Suite 11i Prerequisites

Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.10.2.

Oracle Developer 6i patchset 19 (6.0.8.28.x) or later (note 125767.1)

Oracle Applications Technology 11i.ATG_PF.H Rollup 6 (RUP 6)(patch 5903765) or later

Applications Framework Patch 7651759

Patch 7567782 which removes the use of the jpi-version parameter and switches Firefox to a non-static versioning model.

Java client plug-in JRE 1.6.0_37 or later 1.6 updates

Java client plug-in JRE 1.7.0_10 or later 1.7 updates

Oracle E-Business Suite R12.0 Prerequisites

Oracle E-Business Suite 12.0.6

Oracle Applications Technology R12.ATG_PF.A.delta.6 (patch 7237006) or later

Applications Framework Patch 7602616

Patch 7567840 which removes the use of the jpi-version parameter and switches Firefox to a non-static versioning model.

Java client plug-in JRE 1.6.0_37 or later 1.6 updates

Java client plug-in JRE 1.7.0_10 or later 1.7 updates

Oracle E-Business Suite R12.1 Prerequisites

Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 or higher

Java client plug-in JRE 1.6.0_37 or later 1.6 updates

Java client plug-in JRE 1.7.0_10 or later 1.7 updates

Oracle JInitiator Not Compatible

Oracle JInitiator was built on top of Java 1.3. Java 1.3 is desupported and is not compatible with Windows 8, Windows Vista, or Windows 7. We have no plans to certify Oracle JInitiator with Windows 8.

Premier Support for Oracle JInitiator 1.1.8 ended in December 2008, and Premier Support for Oracle JInitiator 1.3 ended for EBS customers in July 2009.

Use the Native JRE plug-in

Windows 8 desktop clients are certified only with the native Java Runtime Environment (JRE) with Windows 8.

Our standard policy is that all E-Business Suite customers can apply all JRE updates to end-user desktops from JRE 1.6.0_03 and later updates on the 1.6 codeline, and from JRE 7u10 and later updates on the JRE 7 codeline.

The minimum JRE prerequisites for Windows 8 are higher than in previous releases. These are:

Java client plug-in JRE 1.6.0_37 or later 1.6 updates
Java client plug-in JRE 1.7.0_10 or later 1.7 updates

We test all new JRE 1.6 and JRE 7 releases in parallel with the JRE development process, so all new JRE 1.6 and 7 releases are considered certified with the E-Business Suite on the same day that they're released by our Java team.

You do not need to wait for a certification announcement before applying new JRE 1.6 or JRE 7 releases to your EBS users' desktops. This applies to all certified Windows desktop operating systems, including XP, Vista, 7, and 8.

WebADI and Report Manager Users

Running WebADI and Report Manager through Excel on Windows 8 has additional patch requirements. For further information see Document 1077728.1.

What About Windows Hyper-V?

End-users are able to run Windows XP, Vista, and 7 as client guest operating systems via Windows Hyper-V on a Win8 desktop client.

We have no plans to conduct separate EBS certification efforts for Hyper-V guest client configurations running on Win8 clients. Oracle Support will attempt to reproduce reported issues using non-virtualized WinXP, Vista, or 7 desktop clients. Microsoft Support may to be engaged for any issues that can only be reproduced only in Hyper-V on Windows 8 desktops.

What about other Windows 8 editions?

We do not currently plan to certify the following editions with Oracle E-Business Suite:

Windows RT
Windows 8 tablet-oriented interface (formerly called Metro)

I would not expect the results of our certification to apply to Windows RT.

What About Earlier Versions of IE?

Microsoft only supports IE 10 on Windows 8 desktops. Microsoft does not support earlier versions of IE on Win8, so Oracle is only able to support IE10 on Windows 8 clients for the E-Business Suite.

Pending Win8 Certifications

BiDi (Arabic and Hebrew Languages)

Due to issues with right side truncation, Windows 8 is not currently certified for BiDi (Arabic and Hebrew) languages. A patch fix for this issue is in progress.

MS Projects

Posting information between Oracle Projects and Microsoft Projects will currently error when running on Windows 8. A patch fix for this issue is in progress. For further information see Document 1077728.1 listed below.

Client Server Products

The majority of Client/Server products are either not currently certified or will not be certified on Windows 8. For further information see document 277535.1 listed below.

Oracle's Revenue Recognition rules prohibit us from discussing certification and release dates, but you're welcome to monitor or subscribe to this blog. I'll post updates here as soon as soon as they're available.

References

Deploying Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) for Windows Clients in Oracle E-Business Suite 11i (Note 290807.1)
Recommended Browsers for Oracle E-Business Suite 11i (Note 285218.1)
Recommended Set Up for Client/Server Products with Oracle E-Business Suite 11i & R12 (Note 277535.1)
Using Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 with Oracle E-Business Suite 11i and R12 (Note 1077728.1)
Deploying Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) for Windows Clients in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 393931.1)
Recommended Browsers for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 389422.1)

Related Articles

Airbus and SGD

Fat Bloke — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 13:45:57 +0000

In case you missed this Press Release, I loved this story about how Oracle Secure Global Desktop makes the Airbus business fly

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/2017246

Friday Tips #45

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 20:20:52 +0000

Happy Friday!

Our tip this week is on Oracle Secure Global Desktop, which provides secure remote access to Oracle Applications and other enterprise software. One of the really great things about Secure Global Desktop is that once the administrator has setup an application the first time, providing access to that application to any number of users takes literally seconds.

Check out this great step by step tutorial for publishing an application to an entire group of users in the enterprise directory by the Fat Bloke:

Controlled Application Deployment with Secure Global Desktop

Speaking of Secure Global Desktop, if you're coming to Oracle OpenWorld, don't miss a fantastic session we're doing on the topic of secure application access, featuring Airbus and NHS Lothian. Both of these large organizations use Secure Global Desktop as an access layer for a variety of applications from many different types of devices. It will be a fascinating session and if you're at all interested in remote access, security, application virtualization, or anything similar, you won't want to miss it.

Implementing Secure Access to Oracle Applications and Critical Data [CON9547]

Tuesday, September 24

3:45 PM - 4:45 PM
Westin San Francisco, Concordia

Controlled Application Deployment with Secure Global Desktop

Fat Bloke — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 17:29:18 +0000

SGD is great for users because it allows them secure remote access from almost anywhere and any device.

So from my home Mac or PC, I can bring up a browser, login and run the apps that the sysadmin has published to me on my SGD Workspace:

This means I can get access to my business applications that are running in the data center. And when I have to dash off somewhere, I can continue from my iPad or my friends Windows laptop, rejoining the application session exactly where I left off.

But SGD is great for administrators too, because it delivers complete control over which applications can be accessed by which users. This power works both ways in terms of:

Mass deployment of an application to a large group of users;
Precision deployment of an application to a specific group of users.

Here's how:

Say I have created an application object in SGD which represents my E-Business Suite front-end and I now want to deploy this to all the guys in Sales. In my corporate directory I have a Sales group like this:

Then to assign my E-Business Suite object I use the SGD Administration Console to say that this app is assigned to the Sales Group:

Then next time my Sales team log in they get the E-Business Suite application in the workspace and they can launch it easily:

Now how long did that take?

- FB

237 blog articles

Fri, 06 Sep 2013 03:00:00 +0000

All my blog articles under blogs.oracle.com since August 2005:

237 blog articles _{Sep 2013}
Frozen tag cloud _{Sep 2013}
Big Pixel Data - Oracle Tokyo Zoom _{Aug 2013}
A metro map for Fusion Applications _{Apr 2013}
News about Oracle VDI 3.5 _{Apr 2013}
How to Create a Desktop Pool? _{Jan 2013}
How to Create a Desktop Provider? _{Jan 2013}
How to Create a Company? _{Jan 2013}
Mobile Wall St. _{Dec 2012}
SPARC at 25: Past, Present and Future _{Nov 2012}
Trust _{Nov 2012}
London Nov-8: Desktop Virtualisation Seminar _{Nov 2012}
Sun Ray Rocket Science _{Aug 2012}
Even More Storage Options in VDI 3.4.1 _{Jun 2012}
Database for Cynics _{May 2012}
Interaction Design with Wireframes _{May 2012}
More Storage Options for VDI 3.4 _{May 2012}
VDiPad _{Apr 2012}
Oracle Cloud Conference, Hamburg 8.5.2012 _{Apr 2012}
blogs.oracle.com design patch _{Mar 2012}
Interaction 12 - Critique _{Mar 2012}
Typing. Clicking. Dancing. _{Feb 2012}
Desktop Mobility in Hospitals with Oracle VDI /video _{Feb 2012}
Interaction 12 in Dublin - Highlights of Day 3 _{Feb 2012}
Interaction 12 in Dublin - Highlights of Day 2 _{Feb 2012}
Interaction 12 in Dublin - Highlights of Day 1 _{Feb 2012}
Shit Interaction Designers Say _{Feb 2012}
Tips'n'Tricks for WebCenter #3: How to display custom page titles in Spaces _{Jan 2012}
Tips'n'Tricks for WebCenter #2: How to create an Admin menu in Spaces and save a lot of time _{Jan 2012}
Tips'n'Tricks for WebCenter #1: How to apply custom resources in Spaces _{Jan 2012}
Merry XMas and a Happy 2012! _{Dec 2011}
One Year Oracle SocialChat - The Movie _{Nov 2011}
Frank Ludolph's Last Working Day _{Nov 2011}
Hans Rosling at TED _{Oct 2011}
200 Countries x 200 Years _{Oct 2011}
Blog Aggregation for Desktop Virtualization _{Oct 2011}
Oracle VDI at OOW 2011 _{Sep 2011}
Design for Conversations & Conversations for Design _{Sep 2011}
All Oracle UX Blogs _{Aug 2011}
Farewell Loriot _{Aug 2011}
Oracle VDI 3.3 Overview _{Aug 2011}
Sutherland's Closing Remarks at HyperKult _{Aug 2011}
Surface and Subface _{Aug 2011}
Back to Childhood in UI Design _{Jul 2011}
The Art of Engineering and The Engineering of Art _{Jul 2011}
Oracle VDI Seminar - June-30 _{Jun 2011}
SGD White Paper _{May 2011}
TEDxHamburg Live Feed _{May 2011}
Oracle VDI in 3 Minutes _{May 2011}
Space Ship Earth 2011 _{May 2011}
blog moving times _{Apr 2011}
Oracle: Hardware Software Complete in 1953 _{Apr 2011}
Interaction Design with Wireframes _{Apr 2011}
A guide to closing down a project _{Feb 2011}
Oracle VDI 3.2.2 _{Jan 2011}
free VDI charts _{Jan 2011}
Sun Founders Panel 2006 _{Dec 2010}
Sutherland on Leadership _{Dec 2010}
SocialChat: Efficiency of E20 _{Dec 2010}
ALWAYS ON Desktop Virtualization _{Nov 2010}
12,000 Desktops at JavaOne _{Nov 2010}
SocialChat on Sharing Best Practices _{Oct 2010}
Globe of Visitors _{Oct 2010}
SocialChat about the Next Big Thing _{Oct 2010}
Oracle VDI UX Story - Wireframes _{Oct 2010}
What's a PC anyway? _{Oct 2010}
SocialChat on Getting Things Done _{Oct 2010}
SocialChat on Infoglut _{Oct 2010}
IT Twenty Twenty _{Oct 2010}
Desktop Virtualization Webcasts from OOW _{Oct 2010}
Oracle VDI 3.2 Overview _{Sep 2010}
Blog Usability Top 7 _{Sep 2010}
100 and counting _{Aug 2010}
Oracle'izing the VDI Blogs _{Aug 2010}
SocialChat on Apple _{Aug 2010}
SocialChat on Video Conferencing _{Aug 2010}
Oracle VDI 3.2 - Features and Screenshots _{Aug 2010}
SocialChat: Don't stop making waves _{Aug 2010}
SocialChat: Giving Back to the Community _{Aug 2010}
SocialChat on Learning in Meetings _{Aug 2010}
iPAD's Natural User Interface _{Jul 2010}
Last day for Sun Microsystems GmbH _{Jun 2010}
SirValUse Celebration Snippets _{Jun 2010}
10 years SirValUse - Happy Birthday! _{Jun 2010}
Wim on Virtualization _{May 2010}
New Home for Oracle VDI _{Apr 2010}
Renaissance Slide Sorter Comments _{Apr 2010}
Unboxing Sun Ray 3 Plus _{Apr 2010}
Desktop Virtualisierung mit Sun VDI 3.1 _{Apr 2010}
Blog Relaunch _{Mar 2010}
Social Messaging Slides from CeBIT _{Mar 2010}
Social Messaging Talk at CeBIT _{Feb 2010}
Welcome Oracle _{Jan 2010}
My last presentation at Sun _{Jan 2010}
Ivan Sutherland on Leadership _{Jan 2010}
Learning French with Sun VDI _{Jan 2010}
Learning Danish with Sun Ray _{Jan 2010}
VDI workshop in Nieuwegein _{Jan 2010}
Happy New Year 2010 _{Jan 2010}
On Creating Slides _{Dec 2009}
Best VDI Ever _{Nov 2009}
How to store the Big Bang _{Nov 2009}
Social Enterprise Tools. Beipiel Sun. _{Nov 2009}
Nov-19 _{Nov 2009}
PDF and ODF links on your blog _{Nov 2009}
Q&A on VDI and MySQL Cluster _{Nov 2009}
Zürich next week: Swiss Intranet Summit 09 _{Nov 2009}
Designing for a Sustainable World - World Usabiltiy Day, Nov-12 _{Nov 2009}
How to export a desktop from VDI 3 _{Nov 2009}
Virtualisation Roadshow in the UK _{Nov 2009}
Project Wonderland at EDUCAUSE 09 _{Nov 2009}
VDI Roadshow in Dublin, Nov-26, 2009 _{Nov 2009}
Sun VDI at EDUCAUSE 09 _{Nov 2009}
Sun VDI 3.1 Architecture and New Features _{Oct 2009}
VDI 3.1 is Early-Access _{Sep 2009}
Virtualization for MySQL on VMware _{Sep 2009}
Silpion & 13. Stock Sommerparty _{Sep 2009}
Sun Ray and VMware View 3.1.1 _2009-08-31
New Set of Sun Ray Status Icons _2009-08-25
Virtualizing the VDI Core? _2009-08-23
World Usability Day Hamburg 2009 - CfP _2009-07-16
Rising Sun _2009-07-15
featuring twittermeme _2009-06-19
ISC09 Student Party on June-20 /Hamburg _2009-06-18
Before and behind the curtain of JavaOne _2009-06-09
20k desktops at JavaOne _2009-06-01
sweet microblogging _2009-05-25
VDI 3 - Why you need 3 VDI hosts and what you can do about that? _2009-05-21
IA Konferenz 2009 _2009-05-20
Sun VDI 3 UX Story - Power of the Web _2009-05-06
Planet of Sun and Oracle User Experience Design _2009-04-22
Sun VDI 3 UX Story - User Research _2009-04-08
Sun VDI 3 UX Story - Concept Workshops _2009-04-06
Localized documentation for Sun Ray Connector for VMware View Manager 1.1 _2009-04-03
Sun VDI 3 Press Release _2009-03-25
Sun VDI 3 launches today! _2009-03-25
Sun Ray Connector for VMware View Manager 1.1 Update _2009-03-11
desktop virtualization wiki relaunch _2009-03-06
VDI 3 at CeBIT hall 6, booth E36 _2009-03-02
Götz on StarOffice 9 _{Mar 2009}
Keyboard layout problems with Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM _2009-02-23
wikis.sun.com tips & tricks _2009-02-23
Sun VDI 3 is in Early Access _2009-02-09
VirtualCenter unable to decrypt passwords _2009-02-02
Improving OOo's Slide Sorter Mode _{Feb 2009}
Sun & VMware Desktop Training _2009-01-30
VDI at next09? _2009-01-16
Sun VDI: How to use virtual machines with multiple network adapters _2009-01-07
Sun Ray and VMware View _2009-01-07
Hamburg World Usability Day 2008 - Webcasts _2009-01-06
Roller Archive Menu _{Jan 2009}
Tag Cloud on GullFOSS _{Dec 2008}
Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM slides _2008-12-15
mother of all demos _2008-12-08
Build your own Thumper _2008-12-03
Troubleshooting Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM _2008-12-02
My Roller Tag Cloud _2008-11-28
Sun Ray Connector: SSL connection to VDM _2008-11-25
Setting up SSL and Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM _2008-11-13
Inspiration for Today and Tomorrow _2008-10-23
Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM released _2008-10-14
From Sketchpad to ILoveSketch _2008-10-09
Desktop Virtualization on Xing _2008-10-06
User Experience Forum on Xing _2008-10-06
Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM certified _2008-09-17
Virtual Clouds over Las Vegas _2008-09-14
Bill Verplank sketches metaphors _2008-09-04
End of Early Access - Sun Ray Connector for VMware _2008-08-27
Early Access: Sun Ray Connector for VMware Virtual Desktop Manager _2008-08-12
Sun Virtual Desktop Connector - Insides on Recycling Part 2 _2008-07-20
Sun Virtual Desktop Connector - Insides on Recycling Part 3 _2008-07-20
Sun Virtual Desktop Connector - Insides on Recycling _2008-07-20
lost in wiki space _2008-07-07
Evolution of the Desktop _2008-06-17
Virtual Desktop Webcast _2008-06-16
Woodstock _2008-06-16
What's a Desktop PC anyway? _2008-06-09
Virtual-T-Box _2008-06-05
Virtualization Glossary _2008-05-06
Five User Experience Principles _2008-04-25
Virtualization News Feed _2008-04-21
Acetylcholinesterase - Second Season _2008-04-18
Acetylcholinesterase - End of Signal _2007-12-31
quite quiet _{Dec 2007}
ooo ux project? and general confusion _{Dec 2007}
Community Experience at OOo - Developers are Users Too _{Nov 2007}
Produkt-Management ist... _2007-10-22
Usability Verbände, Verteiler und Netzwerke. _2007-10-02
The Meaning is the Message _2007-09-28
OOoCon 2007 in Barcelona _{Sep 2007}
Visualization Methods _2007-09-10
Inhouse und Open Source Projekte – Usability verankern und Synergien nutzen _2007-09-03
Der Schwabe Darth Vader entdeckt das Virale Marketing _2007-08-29
Dick Hardt 3.0 on Identity 2.0 _2007-08-27
quality of written text depends on the tool _2007-07-27
podcasts for reboot9 _2007-06-04
It is the user's itch that need to be scratched _2007-05-25
A duel at reboot9 _2007-05-14
Taxonomien und Folksonomien - Tagging als neues HCI-Element _2007-05-10
Dueling Interaction Models of Personal-Computing and Web-Computing _2007-03-01
22.März: Weizenbaum. Rebel at Work. /Filmpremiere Hamburg _2007-02-25
McLuhan was an Information Architect _{Feb 2007}
User Experience Cyberspace Has 7 Dimensions, maybe 8 _{Feb 2007}
User Experience Cyberspace Is 4-dimensional _{Feb 2007}
New OOo UX Project Proposed _{Jan 2007}
Bruce Sterling at UbiComp 2006 /webcast _2006-11-12
FSOSS 2006 webcasts _2006-11-10
Highway 101 _2006-11-09
User Experience Roundtable Hamburg: EuroGEL 2006 _2006-11-08
OOo Mac Port: IRC'ing till midnight _{Oct 2008}
Douglas Adams' Hyperland (BBC 1990) _2006-10-08
Communication Channels _2006-10-6
Taxonomien und Folksonomien – Tagging als neues HCI-Element _2006-09-13
Usability im Unternehmen _2006-09-13
Doug does HyperScope _2006-08-26
TED Talks and TechTalks _2006-08-21
Kai Krause über seine Freundschaft zu Douglas Adams _2006-07-20
Rebel At Work: Film Portrait on Weizenbaum _2006-07-04
Gabriele Fischer, mp3 _2006-06-07
Dick Hardt at ETech 06 _2006-06-05
Weinberger: From Control to Conversation _2006-04-16
Eye Tracking at User Experience Roundtable Hamburg _2006-04-14
dropping knowledge _2006-04-09
GEL 2005 _2006-03-13
slide photos of reboot7 _2006-03-04
Dick Hardt on Identity 2.0 _2006-02-28
User Experience Newsletter #13: Versioning _2006-02-03
Ester Dyson on Choice and Happyness _2006-02-02
Requirements-Engineering im Spannungsfeld von Individual- und Produktsoftware _2006-01-15
User Experience Newsletter #12: Intuition Quiz _2005-11-30
User Experience und Requirements-Engineering für Software-Projekte _2005-10-31
Ivan Sutherland on "Research and Fun" _2005-10-18
Ars Electronica / Mensch und Computer 2005 _2005-09-14
60 Jahre nach Memex: Über die Unvereinbarkeit von Desktop- und Web-Paradigma _2005-08-31
reboot 7 _2005-06-30
Vienna waits for you - OpenOffice.org at CHI 2004 _{Apr 2004}
UX at OOoCon 2003 _{Mar 2003}

Oracle Virtualization at Oracle OpenWorld 2013, Part 2

Wed, 21 Aug 2013 17:38:37 +0000

If you're attending Oracle OpenWorld 2013 (and we hope you are!), the Schedule Builder tool is now available for you. Schedule Builder lets you register for the sessions you want to attend during the show. If you're interested in Oracle Virtualization, there are a number of sessions, hands on labs, and product demos that will be interesting to you. I covered several of the sessions in part 1 of this series, and in this one I'm going to cover a few more sessions. In the 3rd part of this series, I'll cover the Hands On Labs and demo stations that you can visit.

What's New with Oracle VM Server for x86 and SPARC: A Technical Deep Dive (CON9544)
Oracle VM Server virtualization solutions provide users the best combination of price, performance, certification, and advanced features tailored for ease of deployment and management. Spanning both x86 and SPARC architectures, it's designed to support a diverse set of OS workloads such as Linux, Solaris, and Windows to meet the wide ranging demands of modern IT environments. Join us to get the latest technology updates on Oracle VM Server.

High Availability and Infrastructure Best Practices with Oracle VM (CON11258)
This session will provide practical details and best practices on building and scaling an Oracle VM environment for High Availability for Database and infrastructure best practices. From information gathering and planning to analyzing needs of your environment, you will learn to plan for growth in infrastructure components to accommodate failover, DR, HA and migration. This session will also cover the methods to reduce downtime during events like system upgrades and migration and troubleshooting during system outages.

And in the Develop track:

What's New in Oracle VM VirtualBox (CON9550)
Oracle VM VirtualBox is the world's most popular cross-platform virtualization software, with nearly 100 million downloads. Optimized to run on desktop systems, Oracle VM VirtualBox is an ideal choice for development and testing, and can help ease cross-platform headaches by allowing you to run multiple platforms on your laptop or PC. In this session Oracle experts will cover the latest advancements in Oracle VM VirtualBox, including information on features such as VM Groups, guest automation, resource controls, and more.

One of my favorite features for attendees of Oracle OpenWorld is the "Focus On" documents that group together similar content as kind of a quick reference guide. This year, Focus On documents are done with a cool dynamic web page, so any changes that happen in the next few weeks (for example, when the Hands On Labs signups open up in the next week or so, or if a session gets oversubscribed and is moved to a bigger room), the Focus On page will automatically update. So, please go here to have a look at the most up to date Focus on Virtualization, and then bookmark it for future reference:

Focus on Virtualization

This year's show is shaping up to be a big one! Most of the folks that post on this blog will be there along with a large number of folks from the Oracle virtualization team, and we're very excited to meet you in person!

-Chris

UPDATE: Sun Ray and VDI Last Order Dates

Sat, 17 Aug 2013 00:50:05 +0000

For important updates and clarifications on Sun Ray and VDI Last Order Dates, please click here to view the updated blog.

The August 2013 Virtualization Newsletter is Here!

Mon, 12 Aug 2013 21:29:09 +0000

The August 2013 edition of the Oracle Virtualization Newsletter is here! In this issue:

Find out about the latest Engineered System, being unveiled tomorrow, August 13, at 10am PT.
A summary of Oracle Virtualization content you can see at Oracle OpenWorld 2013.
Two new white papers: Why Use Oracle VM for Oracle Databases, and Deployment Considerations for Oracle Secure Global Desktop.
The new release of Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder 12c.
And more!

-Chris

Announcing End of Life for Oracle VDI, Sun Ray Hardware and Software

Tue, 06 Aug 2013 09:22:18 +0000

On 1st of August Oracle announced the EOL for Oracle VDI, Sun Ray Hardware and Software.

Read the full announcement on Oracle's Virtualization Blog:

Sun Ray Hardware Last Order Dates & Extension of Premier Support for Desktop Virtualization Software

UPDATED! Sun Ray Hardware Last Order Dates & Extension of Premier Support for Desktop Virtualization Software

Thu, 01 Aug 2013 23:55:56 +0000

For the latest updates on Sun Ray Client hardware and Peripheral Kit last order dates, and information about Sun Ray Software and Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure licensing and support, read the Sun Ray Hardware Last Order Dates and Extension of Premier Support for Desktop Virtualization Software document on OTN. We recommend to regularly check this document as it is frequently updated with the latest availability status of Sun Ray Clients and Peripheral Kits.

Please note that availability of the Sun Ray Clients and Peripheral Kits cannot be absolutely guaranteed up to the latest published last order dates due to the inherent unpredictability of demand, and we strongly recommend placing last time buy orders as early as possible to maximize Oracle's ability to fulfill orders.

Important Information about Oracle Desktop Virtualization Products

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 17:45:22 +0000

In an effort to more tightly align Oracle's future desktop virtualization portfolio investments with Oracle Corporation's overall core business strategy, we have ended new feature development for Oracle Sun Ray Software (SRS), Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software (VDI), Oracle Virtual Desktop Client (OVDC) Software, and Oracle Sun Ray Client hardware (3, 3i, and 3 Plus).

Customer support and the renewal of support contracts for these products will continue uninterrupted. Customers can continue to purchase new licenses. Exact time-frames for a last order date for Oracle Sun Ray client devices will be announced shortly. [UPDATE: This information is now available here.]

Going forward, Oracle's desktop portfolio investments will be focused on continued development and new enhancements to both Oracle Secure Global Desktop and Oracle VM VirtualBox software.

3D Acceleration with Ubuntu guests

Fat Bloke — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 18:09:22 +0000

There's a trend with some desktop Linux distributions to use more and more "eye-candy" which puts a greater strain on GPU functions offered by hypervisors.

VirtualBox offers 3D acceleration by intercepting OpenGL requests made by the guest vm, and passing then down to the host's OpenGL library to be executed directly by the host.

To Configure a VM to use VirtualBox 3D acceleration:

Make sure you install the Guest Additions into the Linux guest (Host+D);
Enable 3D acceleration in the VM settings;

Then simply crank up your linux guest.

But on some platforms, and in some circumstances, the wrong renderers may be used by the guest OS which results in s l o o w w w performance of the guest.

To check that you're using VirtualBox 3D acceleration on Ubuntu 12/13 type the following command:

/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

If you see something like this:

... i.e. the OpenGL Renderer is NOT Chromium, then you are NOT using the VirtualBox OpenGL drivers. This can occur because of a race condition in the guest OS boot process. One workaround is to force the guest to load video drivers earlier in the boot sequence by running the following command:

sudo bash -c 'echo vboxvideo >> /etc/modules'

Once you do this, and then you reboot the guest you should re-rerun:

/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

Which hopefully will result in the Chromium renderers being seen to be used:

And a consequence is that your Linux guest will be faster and smoother.

Hope this helps.

- FB

Friday Tips #35

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 18:19:49 +0000

It's a holiday weekend here in the US, so here is a quick Friday Tip entry for you. And it doesn't require any reading! These are two great introductory videos on our virtualization portfolio, and they're both under 4 minutes long, perfect for a quick afternoon break:

Oracle VM Templates and Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder

Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

Have a great weekend, and we'll see you next week!

-Chris

Using VirtualBox to test drive Windows Blue

Fat Bloke — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 13:32:19 +0000

[Update: From VirtualBox 4.2.16 there's a Windows 8.1 and Windows 2012 OS type which automatically sets this property and makes this blog redundant]

Oracle VM VirtualBox is great for trying out the latest and greatest technologies and platforms. So when Microsoft recently announced the Developer Preview for Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1, it was with eager anticipation that FatBloke ran to the TechNet Evaluation Center to download the isos.

Once downloaded, a new VM in VirtualBox Manager was created that used Windows 2012 (64-bit) OS type and all the defaults were selected.

And on starting the VM, and pointing to the iso file to install from, the excitement rose as we saw a cool new splashscreen image:

But suddenly our hopes are dashed....

It would seem that this platform requires an instruction (CMPXCHG16B) that VirtualBox doesn't offer "out-of-the-box".

Fear not, for the VirtualBox team knew that this day would finally arrive and have prepared an "in case of emergency" switch as follows:

Power off the vm;

At the command line type:

VBoxManage setextradata [vmname] VBoxInternal/CPUM/CMPXCHG16B 1

Start the VM and install Windows Server 2012 R2

This will be enabled by default in a future release, but geeks can't wait, hence this blog.

Enjoy!

-FB

June 2013 Virtualization Newsletter is Here!

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 16:33:43 +0000

The June Edition of the Oracle Virtualization Newsletter is now available! In this issue, you'll learn about:

Announcing Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.0
Dell Announces New Infrastructure Offering with Oracle Linux, Oracle VM, and Oracle Enterprise Manager, Optimized to Run on Dell x86 Systems
Oracle VM Continues to Expand Partner Ecosystem with Cisco and NetApp
Get Ready for Oracle OpenWorld 2013

And much more!

Head on over and read the newsletter. You can also subscribe and have it automatically appear in your inbox each time a new edition is released!

-Chris

Friday Tips #32

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:51:25 +0000

Happy Friday! Our tip this week is about Oracle Secure Global Desktop and directory services.

Question:
What versions of Active Directory and LDAP does Oracle Secure Global Desktop support?

Answer from the Deployment Considerations for Oracle Secure Global Desktop white paper:
Active Directory authentication and LDAP authentication are supported on the following versions of Active Directory:

Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 R2
Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008 R2
Supported LDAP Directories

Oracle Secure Global Desktop supports version 3 of the standard LDAP protocol. You can use LDAP authentication with any LDAP version 3-compliant directory server. However, Oracle Secure Global Desktop only supports the following directory servers:

Oracle Directory Server Enterprise Edition version 11gR1
Microsoft Active Directory on Windows Server 2003, 2003 R2, 2008, and 2008 R2
Oracle Internet Directory 11gR1 (all 11.1.1.x.0 releases)

Other directory servers might work, but are not supported.

For more detail, have a read through the User Authentication section of the documentation.

See you next week!

-Chris

Oracle Secure Global Desktop Survey

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:07:07 +0000

To help us design Oracle Secure Global Desktop better, we would like to collect feedback from our customers about their deployments with Oracle Secure Global Desktop via a short, simple 11 question survey. This survey is for those customers and partners who have deployed Oracle Secure Global Desktop in production environments and can be specific about the product features and/or product dependencies they find important and useful.

We appreciate a few minutes of your time filling this survey out. Here is the link to the survey.

Friday Tips #31

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 19:12:41 +0000

Happy Friday, everyone!

Our tip this week answers a question that comes up often.

Question:
When deploying Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, how many users can a single server support?

Answer from information in the Oracle's Single Server Solution for VDI white paper:
As part of a single server solution (meaning, the hypervisor, storage, and management pieces are all on one machine and no other systems are necessary), Oracle tested two different configurations and came up with a guideline for how many users these systems can support. Please remember, this is just a guideline and not a guarantee or assurance of performance.

Configuration #1 (this is called the "base configuration" in the paper):

Sun Server X3-2L based on Intel Xeon E5 2660 processors
128 GB 1600 MHz RAM (expandable to 512 GB)
16 x 600G SAS-2 10K RPM disks
Based on a customized “Large” configuration on the Oracle store
Targeted at 90-95 users per system

Configuration #2 (this is called the "performance configuration" in the paper):

Sun Server X3-2L based on Intel Xeon E5 2690 processors
256 GB 1600 MHz RAM (expandable to 512 GB)
26 x 600G SAS-2 10K RPM disks
Offered as “Large” configuration on the Oracle store
Targeted at 180-190 users per system

If you'd like to get some more detail on this, head on over to the Oracle's Single Server Solution for VDI white paper for a lot more info.

We'll see you next week!

-Chris

Oracle VM Template Now Available for Sun Ray Software 5.4

Fri, 24 May 2013 02:36:36 +0000

Oracle VM Templates provide an easy, fast, and cost effective approach to deploying a fully configured software stack by offering pre-installed and pre-configured software images. The Oracle VM Template for the latest release of Sun Ray Software version 5.4 is now available for Oracle Linux 6.3 (64-bit).

The Oracle VM Template for Sun Ray Software is a fully pre-installed, pre-configured virtual machine that can be downloaded onto an installed Oracle VM server. It allows you to quickly create and manage a Sun Ray environment.

The requirements are as follows:

The Oracle VM template for Sun Ray Software 5.4 is intended to be installed on Oracle VM 3.0 server or later
The OS for the Sun Ray Software 5.4 template is Oracle Linux 6.3 (64-bit)
15GB free space on Oracle VM Server storage repository and 2GB free memory size on an Oracle VM server will be required

For more information on Sun Ray Software, please visit OTN.

Purchase support at the Oracle Store

Oracle Software Delivery Cloud Instructions:

Visit http://edelivery.oracle.com/oraclevm.
Complete your registration information (Name, Company Name, Email Address and Country) and click on the download agreement.
Select "Oracle VM Templates" from the "Select a Product Pack" pull-down menu.
Select "x86 64-bit" from the "Platform" pull-down menu.
Click "Go" and then select from the list of Oracle VM Templates.
Download and unzip the files and read the readme for installation instructions.

For large downloads, or for functionality such as download resuming, the use of a download manager is highly recommended.

Reduce IT Help Desk calls when using Oracle VDI

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:24:18 +0000

Enjoying beach life in the Caribbean or hiking in the rolling hills of Tuscany. Blue skies, great temperatures, wine, fine food and spending some quality time with family and friends. All the great things you can do in the upcoming holiday season.

Is this an introduction for a Travel Blog or a serious article about Desktop Virtualization ? It is the latter, but it has to do with the former: the problem of the forgotten password after returning from the holidays.

What is the problem ?

After a relaxing holiday you turn on your Sun Ray or launch your OVDC application to connect to your virtual desktop in the data center. But then it happens, your holiday was so relaxed that you forgot your password and you are forced to pick-up the phone and call the IT Help Desk to ask the SysAdmin to reset your password.

With the introduction of complex password requirements, this is not an unusual scenario. IT staff is often burdened with resolving these calls, resulting in an increased administrative load for the IT department. At the same moment, the end user loses valuable work time because he is locked out of the network temporarily and unable to work.

With an average of 5% of the users who forgot their passwords after the holidays and an average cost of US $25 per help desk call, this can cost an organisation with 10.000 users around US $12.500 per two or three days when the holidays are over.

How can we solve this ?

Password expiration, forgotten passwords or other user access privileges are addressed by Identity Management systems. There are several solutions on the market and also Oracle has a nice solution which is called the Oracle Identity Manager.

Explaining Identity Management is outside the scope of this article, so I skip that. But with a recently added and less known feature of the Oracle VDI broker (the Helper Function for the Desktop Login Screen) I explain how users are able to connect very easily to any web-based Help Desk system to do a Password Reset for example.

How is it implemented ?

You can add an item to the More Options menu in the Oracle VDI Desktop Login screen to run temporarily an alternative kiosk session. In our Forgotten Password example this might be a kiosk web-browser connecting to the Identity Management system. The picture on the left shows the added entry in the More Options menu.

The Helper Function feature is very easy to implement. First you configure the helper application in the Sun Ray kiosk interface. In my Forgotten Password example I use a Firefox web-browser. I provide kiosk scripts at the bottom of this article (helpdesk.sh and helpdesk.conf) which I store in the helpdesk directory. And the second step is to configure the Oracle VDI broker to add the kiosk session as Helper Function in the Desktop Login screen. On all of your Oracle VDI broker servers you should do the following configuration steps:

Configure the name of a directory in the /etc/opt/SUNWkio/sessions directory, in my example helpdesk:

     # /opt/SUNWvda/sbin/vda settings-setprops -p client.kiosk.type=helpdesk

Configure the label that displays in the More Options menu:

     # /opt/SUNWvda/sbin/vda settings-setprops -p client.kiosk.label="Help Desk"

Configure any optional kiosk session arguments and settings that should be used when starting the kiosk session. For my kiosk web-browser it is the URL to the Identity Manager server:

     # /opt/SUNWvda/sbin/vda settings-setprops -p client.kiosk.settings=http://server.url/

In the following video I demonstrate the Forgotten Password use-case scenario. In my demonstration I used the Oracle Identity Manager server (very kindly provided to me by my Oracle colleague Rene Klomp) to reset the password. When the new password is entered in the Identity Manager system, it is automatically synchronized with the Active Directory server that is used by the Oracle VDI broker for user authentication.

Help Desk Kiosk scripts

Here are the kiosk scripts that I used on my Oracle VDI Solaris server. Beware that you have to setup the correct Firefox prototype settings to store in the /etc/opt/SUNWkio/prototypes/default directory. I leave that as exercise for the reader .

# more /etc/opt/SUNWkio/sessions/helpdesk.conf 
KIOSK_SESSION_EXEC=$KIOSK_SESSION_DIR/helpdesk.sh
KIOSK_SESSION_LABEL="Helpdesk Kiosk Mode"

# more /etc/opt/SUNWkio/sessions/helpdesk/helpdesk.sh
#!/bin/sh

FF_EXEC=/usr/bin/firefox
if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
    zenity --error --text="No server specified\nConsult your System Administrator"
else
    URL="$1"
fi

exec /usr/bin/metacity &
if [ -x "${FF_EXEC}" ] ; then
    $FF_EXEC -P Kiosk $URL
else
    zenity --error --text="The Firefox Web-browser is not installed\nConsult your System Administrator"
fi

Friday Tips #26

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:09:50 +0000

Happy Friday! With the exciting release of Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.0 this week, we though we'd do something a little different with our Friday tip.

Since access via iPad with HTML5 is a big part of this release, a question that has come up a few times is what performance is like over cellular connections. So, we recorded some video of an iPad using an iPhone 5 on LTE as a mobile hotspot, connecting back to an Oracle Secure Global Desktop server. You can see the real world cellular performance in the video below:

See you next week!

-Chris

Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.0 Certified with E-Business Suite 12!

Thu, 02 May 2013 21:02:00 +0000

We are please to announce that Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.0 is now certified for use with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 virtual environments acting as desktop clients connecting to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 environments. 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Server are certified. These combinations may also be used in conjunction with Oracle VM, if required.

Oracle E-Business Suite customers and partners may now use Oracle Secure Global Desktop as an access layer for Oracle Applications, knowing that Oracle certifies this particular scenario. For more details, please refer to this Oracle E-Business Suite technology blog or My Oracle Support (Note 1491211.1)

Secure Global Desktop 5 Certified with E-Business Suite 12

Thu, 02 May 2013 18:45:36 +0000

Oracle Secure Global Desktop provides secure access to centralized applications—Microsoft Windows, UNIX, mainframe, and midrange—from a variety of clients including Windows PCs, Oracle Solaris workstations, Linux PCs, and thin clients. Secure Global Desktop 4.6 was certified with the E-Business Suite last year.

Secure Global Desktop 5 is now certified with E-Business Suite 12.

Secure Global Desktop 5 is certified for use with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 virtualized environments acting as desktop clients connecting to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 environments. 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Server are certified. These combinations may also be used in conjunction with Oracle VM, if required.

Requirements

Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)

Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit) is certified with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 running:
Internet Explorer 8 (32-bit and 64-bit) or Internet Explorer 9 (32-bit and 64-bit)
JRE Plug-in 1.6.0_32 (32-bit and 64-bit) or higher or JRE Plug-in 1.7.0_17 (32-bit and 64-bit) or higher

Windows Server 2008 (32-bit)

Windows Server 2008 (32-bit) is certified with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 running:

Internet Explorer 8 (32-bit) or Internet Explorer 9 (32-bit)

JRE Plug-in 1.6.0_32 (32-bit) or higher or JRE Plug-in 1.7.0_17 (32-bit) or higher

Windows Server 2003 R2 (64-bit)

Windows Server 2003 R2 (64-bit) is certified with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 running:

Internet Explorer 8 (32-bit and 64-bit)

JRE Plug-in 1.6.0_32 (32-bit and 64-bit) or higher or JRE Plug-in 1.7.0_17 (32-bit and 64-bit) or higher

Windows Server 2003 R2 (32-bit)

Windows Server 2003 (32-bit) is certified with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 running:
Internet Explorer 8 (32-bit)
JRE Plug-in 1.6.0_32 (32-bit) or higher or JRE Plug-in 1.7.0_17 (32-bit) or higher

References

Oracle Secure Global Desktop with E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 (Note 1491211.1)

Related Articles

Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.0

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:21:33 +0000

We just released version 5.0 of Oracle Secure Global Desktop (for those that don't know what it is, formerly known as Tarantella...). It's a great product that I have been using every for a long time now. I have it installed at home on my servers so that I can get access to my home network from anywhere...without vpn.

Anyway, a few nice things that I personally like in the new release :

(1) html5 client support. In particular, at this time the ipad. So now, I can use my ipad to log into SGD and connect to my apps without having to download and install a client. It just works with the built-in Safari browser. We will expand this over time, right now it's ipad only.

(2) the tta rpm will automatically pull in all dependencies on Oracle Linux 6. So all you need to do is download the tta (sgd) rpm from oracle.com and type yum install tta-5.00-907.i386.rpm. When Oracle Linux is configured to connect to ULN or just go to http://public-yum.oracle.com it will grab all the required OS rpms. This makes it super easy to install and get going.

To download the software, go to http://edelivery.oracle.com, go to the Oracle Desktop Virtualization Products product pack and click on Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.0 Media Pack.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.0 Supports iPad Using HTML5!

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:33:08 +0000

Today, we are pleased to announce support for what has been one of Oracle Secure Global Desktop's most widely anticipated features - support for iPad via Oracle Secure Global Desktop version 5.0! Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.0 provides anywhere access to cloud-hosted and on-premise enterprise applications and desktops (workspaces) from Apple iPad and iPad mini tablets, without the need for a VPN client. In addition, since we leverage HTML5 to provide browser-based access inside Apple iPad and iPad mini tablets, users need not download, maintain, configure and update specific client applications from the App Store.

This new release delivers significant enhancements which provide simple mobile access, enhanced security, full user productivity, security enhancements, session mobility, improved performance and expanded server, client and browser support.

Simple Mobile Access: Users can login to the Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.0 sessions and access all of their applications and data using the built-in mobile Safari web browser on iPad and iPad mini, without the need to establish a cumbersome VPN connection. Support for HTML5 enables a rich, browser-based user interface that provides simple, intuitive gestures and navigation, as well as extended keyboard capabilities, without the need for downloading or maintaining separate client applications.

Full user productivity: For maximum productivity, copy and paste to and from applications, printing, and automatic session resizing (of the specific application or desktop running in the cloud), when rotating the iPad is supported.

Security enhancements: Oracle Secure Global Desktop Gateway uses multi-factor authentication methods to access applications, increasing security when accessing cloud-hosted applications, regardless of location. With the included Oracle Secure Global Desktop Gateway, users can securely access their workspaces from PCs, laptops, or tablets both inside and outside the corporate firewall.

Extended session mobility: Extends the session pause and resume feature to the iPad, allowing users to pick up their workspace right where they left off, even when moving from one client device to another.

Improved performance: Delivers reliable performance and responsiveness for cloud-based applications and desktop sessions, even at cellular network speeds.

Expanded server, client, and browser support: Oracle Secure Global Desktop 5.0 adds support for servers running Oracle Solaris 11.1 and Oracle Linux 6.4, and clients running Windows 8 (desktop mode) and Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Browsers supported now include Internet Explorer 10, Chrome, and Firefox ESR.

Oracle's press announcement regarding this release can be found here.

For more information, you can also view the videos below (click to go to the video page and play):

Friday Tips #25

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 21:16:22 +0000

Happy Friday, everyone! Our tip this week is on a basic task that is done frequently with Oracle Secure Global Desktop. In the video below, watch Mohan Prabhala, Product Management Director, Desktop Virtualization, as he describes the steps to publish an application:

Thanks Mohan!

We'll see you all next week with another tip.

-Chris

Connect Oracle VDI with Oracle Enterprise Manager

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 20:14:17 +0000

Oracle is a datacenter company that can provide a complete integrated stack of hardware and software. The integrated stack gives a lot of benefits for Oracle's customers: engineered solutions, pre-tested, faster rollouts, one support contract and one-stop-shop. But due to its open architecture an Oracle solution is also flexible for customers who prefers to integrate with components from other vendors.

Oracle VDI is a perfect example of this strategy, it includes all necessary Oracle software to deploy a secure, server-hosted full VDI desktop over the network. At the same time the Oracle VDI product integrates with Desktop Virtualisation products from other vendors such as VMware or Citrix. It may even run the different vendor solutions in one, combined Oracle VDI deployment. No vendor lock-in !

Since Oracle VDI 3.5 there is another typical Oracle component integrated in the Oracle Desktop Virtualisation stack: Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12cR2. The main objective of the integration is to make systems monitoring easier for the Administrator. With the Enterprise Manager Plug-in for Oracle VDI, the entire installation can be monitored from a central management console.

For a customer demonstration, to demo the capabilities of the plug-in, I installed and configured my own OEM 12c server and connected it to my Oracle VDI 3.5 demo system. I would like to share my very positive experiences of the installation and configuration.

Basic installation

I installed OEM 12c on a bare-metal Oracle Linux server with 8GB of RAM. For the basic setup I used this excellent article from the Oracle-Base website:

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 Installation on Oracle Linux 5.8 and 6.3

This is a how-to guide to install all the components before you can start working with the Oracle VDI plug-in. The installation steps that I used for my server are:

I was impressed by these how-to guides, it made my installation much more simpler and after a few hours I had a running OEM 12c server.

Oracle VDI plug-in Installation

The Oracle VDI plug-in is a software component that you have to import and deploy on the OEM 12c server. There is no need to touch your running Oracle VDI production servers to install additional agents. In the below figure you see the architecture diagram from the Oracle VDI documentation.

The Management Agent in the OEM 12c server establishes a secure connection to the Oracle VDI center agent. This is the component that controls your Oracle VDI hosts to provide a reliable and highly available service.

I followed the steps in chapter two from the Oracle VDI Plug-in User's Guide (PDF) to import, deploy and configure the connection to my Oracle VDI demo server:

Importing and Deploying the Plug-in; this is done through the OEM 12c Management Console (browser GUI);
Configuring Oracle VDI Targets; these are the VDI specific targets for monitoring your Oracle VDI servers;
Provide Oracle VDI Center properties; here you provide your Oracle VDI server address and credentials for your Oracle VDI Administrator account.

Oracle VDI is using a delegated administration mechanism where you can setup multiple users as Administrator with different privileges. For OEM 12c it is recommended to setup a dedicated Administrator account with only company monitor and provider monitor privileges.

Start Monitoring Oracle VDI Targets

After you have deployed and configured the Oracle VDI plug-in for OEM 12c you need to give the system some time to collect all the data from your Oracle VDI Center. The default collection interval is 15 minutes, but after 24 hours you have a full picture. Future configuration changes in your Oracle VDI Center are picked-up automatically with an default interval of 24 hours.

To use the OEM 12c Management console you connect with the web-browser to the following address: http://<your-OEM12c-server:7803>/em. After you logged on as OEM 12c Administrator, you can navigate to the Oracle VDI Targets as shown in the diagram below.

OEM 12c is collecting metrics with an interval of 15 minutes for most of the targets and an interval of 5 minutes for critical data. The data is visualized in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Console for recently collected data as well as for historical data. This allows you to identify possible bottlenecks and take pro-active or corrective actions.

OEM 12c is also used to report on critical events that require attention of the Administrator. For all of the metrics thresholds can be defined which triggers events when the threshold is crossed.

Summary

Enterprise-scale deployments need Enterprise-scale tools, right? This is a phrase from Fatbloke's Blog article "What's new in Oracle VDI 3.5". True!

But at the same time, I had a lot of fun installing, configuring and testing the integration in my tiny demo server installation. So, when you are running a smaller Oracle VDI deployment with just a few servers (for 250 VMs for example) I'm sure you will be very happy with OEM 12c and the Oracle VDI plug-in to monitor your environment.

Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Unified Directory

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:32:45 +0000

Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure offers a complete solution for managing and providing access to virtualized desktop environments hosted in the datacenter. Oracle Virtual Desktop Instrastructure enables organizations to simplify administration, reduce operating costs, increase the utilization of existing IT assets, and boost security by moving from a tradtional desktop environment to a virtual desktop architecture.

Typically, you configure Oracle VDI to use the information held in a corporate user directory, like Oracle Unified Directory Server.

You can use the OUD setup or the ODSM to create a suffix holding users, eg, ou=People,dc=oscr,dc=uk,dc=oracle,dc=com using existing schema.
Then create a few user entries with the fields User Name, First Name, Last Name, User ID and User Password. So for my account it is

User Name : Sylvain Duloutre
First Name : Sylvain
Last Name : Duloutre
User ID : sduloutr
User Password : ****

To install Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, follow the install guide, then connect to the VDI Web UI using your preferred browser. Here is a screenshot showing the setup of the VDI server :

Next are 2 screenshots showing the LDAP settings and how they map to VDI:

As you can see there isn't actually a lot of configuration to do. You can now login to VDI from a Sunray or from the Oracle Virtual Desktop Client using the login name and password stored in OUD.

Thanks to Rob for VDI snapshots and testing.

Friday Tips #23

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:06:14 +0000

Happy Friday, everyone! We had a great week at Collaborate 13, thank you to everyone who stopped by the booth. We also blogged about "Oracle VM and Oracle Linux pre-validated, pre-tested with FlexPod", released version 4.2.12 of Oracle VM VirtualBox and version 4.63 of Oracle Secure Global Desktop. Lots of great stuff going on!

Speaking of Oracle Secure Global Desktop, our Friday Tip this week is on that very product. In this video tip, Mohan Prabhala covers how to disable or enable copy functionality in applications to increase security:

We'll see you next week!

-Chris

News about Oracle VDI 3.5

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:07:00 +0000

Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 3.5 has been released recently. Apart from many new features in VDI itself, it also contains a plugin for Enterprise Manager 12c to monitor the status of the VDI installation.

Here is a list of blog articles that cover the new release:

New Oracle VDI and Oracle Sun Ray Software releases by Wim Coekaerts
What's New in Oracle VDI 3.5? by Andy Hall
Brand new VDI and Sun Ray Software releases! by Chris Kawalek
Announcement new releases of Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and more…
Oracle Desktop Virtualisation Information and Documentation Links by Daniel Cifuentes

Man spricht deutsch…

Umfangreiches neues Oracle VDI 3.5 und Sun Ray 5.4 Release von Rolf-Per Thulin
Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure und Sun Ray Software mit Plugin für Enterprise Manager 12c von der DOAG
Neue Versionen von Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure und Sun Ray Software, Ulrich Roederer, SearchDataCenter.de

Or finally, see all articles tagged with #vdi

ANNOUNCEMENT: Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.63 now available!

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 20:14:20 +0000

We are pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle Secure Global Desktop version 4.63. This version includes several bug fixes and also updates to components of the Oracle Secure Global Desktop web server. Specifically, the Oracle Secure Global Desktop web server now supports Apache HTTP Server 2.2.24, OpenSSL 1.0.0.k, mod_jk 1.2.37, Tomcat 6.0.36 and JDK 1.6.0_43.

For information on downloading Oracle Secure Global Desktop version 4.63, please visit here.

Friday Tips #22

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 21:23:24 +0000

Happy Friday, everyone! Today's tip on the really cool Location Awareness feature of Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure:

Question:
How can I tell if location awareness is working?

Answer from "Using Location Awareness with Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure":
Use the command prompt to check the clientname environment variable. Simply login to the virtual desktop from the first Sun Ray Client, start a Windows command prompt, and type:

echo %clientname%

Close the command prompt window, login to the same virtual desktop from a second device and repeat the process. If everything is functioning properly, the clientname environment variable will change.

We'll see you next week with another tip!

-Chris

Oracle Desktop Virtualisation Information and Documentation Links

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:55:00 +0000

One of the most common requests people like me get is for "information" and "documentation" (and aren't they the same?) - so here goes a list of the most important and regularly referenced ones, kept up to date:

PRODUCT INFORMATION AND DOCUMENTATION LINKS

OVDI :: Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure :: Overview :: Documentation :: Downloads

SRS :: Sun Ray SW, HW and OVDC :: Overview :: Documentation :: Downloads

SGD :: Oracle Secure Global Desktop :: Overview :: Documentation :: Downloads

The above all drill down into important pages, of which the below I refer a lot of people to very often:

DOWNLOADS IN GENERAL (links above too)

They are all here: edelivery.oracle.com, the "Oracle Software Delivery Cloud ". Just select "Oracle Desktop Virtualization Products" and your product of choice, VDI, SRS or SGD. The Oracle Virtual Desktop Client (OVDC) can also be downloaded from there, just pick a Sun Ray distro to download and you will be presented with the OVDC as a choice too. The OVDC for iPad is available through the Apple App Store.

WHITEPAPERS

FORUMS

We have a dedicated Forum "Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Sun Ray Clients" - Feel free to join!

Note: Down under, we "Virtualise the Data Centre". I hear that elsewhere, they "Virtualize the Data Center".

Friday Tips #21

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 21:41:38 +0000

We hope you're having a great Friday! Here is our Friday tip:

Question:
Can I run VDI with just a single server?

Answer by Chris Kawalek, Senior Principal Product Director, Oracle Desktop Virtualization Marketing:
Absolutely! Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure allows you to deploy on a single server for everything you need for a VDI deployment: brokering, running VMs, and storage. Properly outfitted, this single server should be able to support up to 180-190 users. You can read exactly how to do this, what kind of server it requires and more in this new white paper:

Oracle's Single Server Solution for VDI

Another great thing about this solution is that it easily scales. If you add a second server, you can use its own internal storage for HA. And you can add external storage and more servers if you want to scale even higher. And at no point do you have to install a different product or do a massive reconfiguration to grow from a small pilot or departmental deployment to an enterprise one.

We'll see you all next week!

-Chris

Oracle VDI 3.5 Installation notes for Solaris 11.1

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:21:22 +0000

Oracle released Oracle VDI 3.5 last week. You may have seen the announcements on the Oracle website, Blogs or social media. In this article I want to share my installation notes of Oracle VDI 3.5 software on the newly supported Solaris 11.1 platform.

For me, this was also my first Solaris 11 server installation experience and I was happy to find out that installing Solaris 11.1 and Oracle VDI 3.5 was a rather easy activity. On my lab server I used the Solaris 11.1 text-based installation, this is the image for server deployments and during the initial configuration I configured the server with static IP-address, my lab DNS server and DNS domain.

During installation I created the initial user account with username vdiadmin. As you may know you can't login as the super-user root in Solaris 11 and for all the remaining system commands with root-privileges you can use the sudo command (or just change to the root-role with the su command).

Solaris Package Repository

After the basic Solaris 11.1 installation you need to configure the Solaris Support repository. By default only the Release repository is configured. This is important, because Oracle VDI needs more Solaris packages then installed in the standard configuration, the Oracle VDI installer will download the packages automatically from the repository.

Run the below pkg command in Solaris to check the repository, initially it shows you the Release repository:

    # pkg publisher 
    PUBLISHER   TYPE   STATUS   URI 
    solaris     origin online   http://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/release/

I used the information from the Solaris documentation to configure the online Solaris Support repository. If your server is not connected to the Internet, then you should configure your own, local repository by using the Solaris 11.1 Repository Image.

To configure the Solaris Support repository, obtain key and certificate files from https://pkg-register.oracle.com/. Login with your MOS credentials and follow the steps for Solaris 11 support. After you have finished the steps you can verify the changed repository and run a pkg update to install the latest Oracle Solaris 11 Support Repository Update (SRU) and reboot:

    # pkg publisher
    PUBLISHER   TYPE    STATUS  URI 
    solaris     origin  online  https://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/support
    # sudo pkg update 
    # sudo init 6

Oracle VDI Installation Process

If you download the Oracle VDI 3.5 software package, you should pay attention to download the correct installation zip-file. There is now a difference between Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 installation zip-files.

After unpacking the VDI 3.5 installation zip-files, I decided to run vda-install and vda-config separately:

    # sudo ./vda-install -i

The installer starts to check the required libraries and packages in Solaris 11.1. In my case (text-based Solaris 11.1 installation) it needed to download about 600 MB of data from the Solaris 11 repository. After the download and installation of the packages, the Oracle VDI installer automatically continues with the basic Oracle VDI installation.

Depending on your network connection, downloading 600 MB of Solaris packages takes some time. You may monitor the process by viewing the installation log file (in a separate Terminal window) for information about the progress of downloading and installing the packages.

    # tail -f  /var/sadm/install/logs/vda-install.timestamp.log

I decided to do a reboot when vda-install was finished because of all the newly installed packages. I'm not sure if this is really necessary. After the reboot I continued with the vda-config command to start the configuration of my single-node Oracle VDI server. In the configuration settings I used my initial user vdiadmin as VDI Administrator:

# sudo /opt/SUNWvda/sbin/vda-config ... Review the settings for a new Oracle VDI Center: Name: VDI Center Administrator Password: ******** VDI Administrator (super-user): vdiadmin DNS name of this host: ovdi-host20.ovdi.local Maximum number of sessions on this host: 100 User ID range start: 150000 Database: Embedded Oracle VDI Do you want to create the Oracle VDI Center now? Enter 'c' to customize the settings. ([y]/c):

Virtual Box Installation Process

Because of the changes in Solaris 11 for the root-role, I decided to configure the Virtual Box processes under non-root privileges: you can use your standard user ('vdiadmin' in my case).

Because of the non-root priviliges, you are also forced to configure a non-privileged TCP port for the Virtual Box web-service. I used the TCP port that was suggested by the installer:

# sudo ./vb-install Oracle VM VirtualBox Installation for Solaris Unpacking Oracle VM VirtualBox package. Select an existing user for VirtualBox: vdiadmin Enter the password for user 'vdiadmin': ######### Specify the VirtualBox SSL port [18083]: 18083 Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2.10 Installation + Installing Oracle VM VirtualBox Core ...etc etc....

Connect to the Oracle VDI Manager

If you connect with Firefox to the Oracle VDI Manager for the first time, you got the following error message on the secure port of the VDI Manager:

This error is mentioned in the Oracle VDI 3.5 Release Notes. Oracle Solaris 11 uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) version 1.1, which Firefox does not support yet. The workaround is to connect and authenticate with TLS 1.0 disabled in Firefox preferences:

Advanced -> Encryption, unchecked Use TLS 1.0.

Some Closing Remarks

NTP services: works exactly the same as with Solaris 10, just make sure /etc/inet/ntp.conf has the right server settings before you start configuring Oracle VDI.
Kerberos: also works the same as Solaris 10. I used copied my /etc/krb/krb5.conf configuration file from Solaris 10 without any changes.
I also did another Solaris 11.1 installation where I used the Oracle Solaris 11.1 Live Media for x86, that also worked fine. I only had some difficulties changing IP-address from DHCP to static. Just read the documentation or Google to use the right procedure.

Friday Tips #20

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:09:09 +0000

We hope you've had a good week and happy Friday! It's time for our 20th Friday tip. This one is about installing Oracle VM VirtualBox for use with Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure:

Question:
How do I install VirtualBox to use it with Oracle Virtual Dekstop Infrastructure?

Answer by the Oracle documentation team:
Unzip the VirtualBox software archive, change working directory to the extracted directory, and install the software with the vb-install script, as follows:

# unzip vbox_4.2.zip
# cd vbox_4.2
# ./vb-install

VirtualBox consists of two components, a Base Pack and an Extension Pack. The VirtualBox software archive contains only the Extension Pack. However, the vb-install script downloads the VirtualBox Base Pack, and then installs both the Base Pack and the Extension Pack. If the Base Pack download fails, you must manually download it from here. Make sure you download the release that is bundled and supported with the release of Oracle VDI. Copy the Base Pack to the same directory as the vb-install script, and then run the script again.

The vb-install script prompts you for a user name, a password, and a port number to use for SSL connections.

The user name and password is for the user that runs VirtualBox on the host. On Oracle Linux platforms and Oracle Solaris platforms where root is a user, the root user is used by default. It is best to use the root user on these platforms. On Oracle Solaris platforms where root is a role, you must provide the credentials for a different user.

If the VirtualBox user is root, the SSL port is port 443 by default. Otherwise, port 18083 is used by default. If another process is using the default port, the vb-install script suggests another available port. If you plan to install Oracle Secure Global Desktop software on this host as well and port 443 is selected, choose a different port.

Make a note of the user name and port, you need these later.

After a few minutes, the installation is complete.

The answer to this question is from the Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Getting Started Guide for Release 3.5. There's lot of great information in there, so have a read through it if you want to get a good sense for how to plan your install.

We'll see you next week!

-Chris

Announcement new releases of Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and more ....

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:55:34 +0000

Recently several, announcements regarding Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure solutions have been made.

Oracle VDI 3.5 -, Sun Ray 5.4 - and Oracle Virtual Desktop Client 3.2 are now released.
Lot of work has been done to enhance the different products, not only new features, also the combination of Oracle hardware (VDI in a Box) should be interesting for our customers.

Oracle VDI 3.5 Overview

New Platforms: Solaris 11.1 and Oracle Linux 6.3
Oracle VDI in a Box for Enterprise Computing.
It was improved the availability for a server with internal
local storage. Customer starts very easy with a small Oracle
x86 X3-2L M3 server and scaled by adding more servers without
external storage.
New White Paper: Oracle Single Server VDI Solution (now available)
Certified by the VDI development for the Oracle hardware.
Very economical and low risk for the customer.

Oracle Sun Ray Server Overview

New Platforms: Solaris 11.1 and Oracle Linux 6.3
Remote Desktops
Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 desktop mode
New Security Feature - IPsec Support
Why? All Sun Ray ALP data (TCP and UDP) can now transmitted encrypted
without to open all needed ports in a firwall system. Also applies to the
USB redirection ports. Firewall only has to pass through the IPsec (IP/ESP)
data stream. Is only possible with new Sun Ray firmware 11.1.1
Multimedia Extensions for Windows 7/2008
No longer using the multimedia support from the Remote Display Protocol 7
(RDP 7.x) from Windows 7, but Oracle has developed his own expansion. HD
videos for MPEG-2, H.264 and VC-1 formats. Relieves the desktop virtual
machine and will be decoded in the Sun Ray client or OVDC.
PC SmartCard Framework Service under Linux
You know it from from Solaris, has been ported to Linux. Good
for a two-factor auth., PIN login and identity/signature services.
Dynamic Session Resizing on Tablets
Was developed for iPad and Android, the screen automatically
can be used vertically. More under OVDC 3.2.
Oracle VDI Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Integration
now a Sun Ray environment can be monitored and managed.
Here you have the possibility via My Oracle Support to perform
a Sun Ray Software self update with the Enterprise Manager.
HID Single TouchScreen Display Support
example: Planar PT1710MX -, PT2285PW - and 3M M2167PW
touchscreens . You need the Sun Ray firmware 11.1.1

Oracle Virtual Desktop Client 3.2 Overview

We see the market expansion of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
concepts in companies. They need a high security, which our solution
can offer. Most new features are developed for a easier desktop usabilty
on tablets.

New platforms: Windows 8, Ubuntu 12.04, OL 6.3 ....
Windows 8 desktop mode only

USB Redirection on Windows OS
you know it from the Sun Ray thin clients. Now it is possible to
use USB devices on PCs and laptops with OVDC 3.2

Dynamic Session Resize
prerequisite SRS 5.4 or VDI 3.5

Android Tablets

Android OS 4.x
external keyboard and mouse support
different to iPad, which doesn't know a mouse
extended keyboard function keys
good for Windows usabiliy
copy and paste of text
clipboard up to 10MB
new gesture controls
display rotation

iPad Tablets

iOS 5.1 and iOS 6.x

iPad 1 - 4 and iPad Mini

copy and Paste of text

clipboard up to 10MB

display rotation

higher resolutions
usability: change the iPad resolution settings and immediately
you have larger desktop icons on the tablet by the Dynamic
Session Resize feature.

external bluetooth keyboard

extended keykoard
split keyboard

new gesture controls
Windows connector toolbar
disconnect side bar
on-screeen keyboard

easy tap and go connectivity

Source for more information:

Press Release
Oracle Introduces Comprehensive Management for Desktop Virtualization

Virtualization VDI 3.5 Blogs
https://blogs.oracle.com/fatbloke/entry/what_s_new_in_oracle1
https://blogs.oracle.com/wim/entry/new_oracle_vdi_and_oracle

White Paper
Oracle's Single Server Solution for VDI

Twitter
@ORCL_Virtualize

Facebook
http://facebook.com/OracleVirtualization

DownLoad for VDI/SRS/OVDC Testing
https://edelivery.oracle.com/

Documentations
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/sunrayproducts/docs/index.html
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/virtualdesktop/docs/index.html

Datasheets
http://www.oracle.com/us/virtual-desktop-infrastructure-ds-067844.pdf
http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/sun-ray-software-ds-065317.pdf

OPN Guided Learning Path
Oracle VDI: Implementation Series

Brand new VDI and Sun Ray Software releases!

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:21:36 +0000

We announced big updates to Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Sun Ray Software this morning! The marquis feature in these releases is integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, which provides a complete monitoring view for your servers, storage, apps, and now, desktop virtualization. In addition, there are features for high availability for smaller deployments, updates to "Personal Hard Drives", a new "Application Hard Drive" type, and much more. Read more here:

Press release: Oracle Introduces Comprehensive Management for Desktop Virtualization

And over at the Fat Bloke blog, there is a great post going into a lot of detail about what's new in Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 3.5.

Download Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 3.5 or Sun Ray Software 5.4.

-Chris

new Oracle VDI and Oracle Sun Ray Software releases!

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:12:25 +0000

A good Monday morning for Desktop Virtualization at Oracle.

We just released a few new products :

Oracle VDI 3.5

support for Ubuntu 12 and Windows 8 VMs complete single server installation and the ability to just add nodes to scale includes the latest version of Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2.10 install on top of Solaris 11 and/or Oracle Linux 6 support added hd 720p video playback on the Sun Ray thin clients with Windows Media Player

Oracle Sun Ray Software 5.4

install on top of Solaris 11 and/or Oracle Linux 6 support added new firmware update for the Oracle Sun Ray thin clients hd 720p video playback on the Sun Ray thin clients with Windows Media Player support IPsec from thin client to server with aes256 introducing vastly improved smart card support when using a Linux host

plugin for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c for VDI and SRS

The press release is here

Release notes for VDI are here

Release notes for SRS are here

What's New in Oracle VDI 3.5?

Fat Bloke — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:46:09 +0000

Oracle has just released Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure version 3.5, a major new release which introduces some great new features, but also allows a VDI deployment that can start with a single server, yet scale to the Enterprise. Here's a quick review of some of these features:

Single Server to the Enterprise

For too long, the notion of VDI, or server-hosted virtual desktops, has been held back by the perceived high entry cost of the hardware needed to support it. It is assumed that virtualization requires both x86 servers and specialized ( i.e. "expensive" ) shared storage on which to hold the virtual machines. But Oracle's VDI solution challenges this with the option of using the local storage of the x86 server itself. This means that it is possible to build a single server solution using commodity hardware which can host hundreds of desktops. (If you want to build this yourself check out the excellent Getting Started Guide on this VDI documentation site.)

And the architecture is powerful enough such that, to expand capacity you can simply add more servers, or, as your deployment grows, plug-in shared storage devices too.

So it's easy to get started, and easy to grow, but can it scale to the Enterprise, because Enterprise-scale deployments need Enterprise-scale tools, right?

Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is such a tool. Now with support for Oracle VDI, Enterprise Manager can monitor your virtual desktop fleet and associated infrastructure, providing an instantaneous dashboard of the health of the system, pre-defined alerts should things start to go wrong, and an historical record of how things changed allowing rapid diagnosis of any issues as soon as they occur.

Smarter Virtual Desktop Management

In VDI, Virtual Drives are just files managed by the server(s). Previous versions of Oracle VDI used this knowledge to streamline how a virtual hard drive can be cloned from a master template (using Linked Clones) and how to separate System Hard Drives (i.e. C: ) from User Data in Personal Hard Drives, which are just another file on the server, but which can be plugged into newly minted virtual desktops, preserving user data across invocations and updates of the System Disk.

Version 3.5 introduces a few new smart use cases involving Virtual Hard Drives:

Personal Hard Drives

Many organizations use Roaming Profiles allowing users to move between PCs with their data following them. In a virtualized environment, this approach is useful, but expensive on system resources because virtual desktops have a shorter lifecycle meaning that downloading the Profile happens frequently. So Oracle VDI allows profiles to be imported into a Personal Hard Drive which is then mapped into a newly created and provisioned Virtual Desktop without the hit on the network or the storage.

Similarly, Personal Hard Drives can be exported to a shared location as part of a backup regime.

Application Hard Drives

In a virtual desktop world how do you install new applications for users? Many sysadmins will install new applications in a new revision of the System Template, but others are using Application Virtualization technology such as Microsoft's App-V. With this, an App-V client is installed on the desktop and applications are streamed from a central server when required. But this results in slow startup times unless the App-V client has the application already in a local cache. And in a large virtual desktop deployment, the 9 o'clock problem is made worse by this approach because newly manufactured vm's will have an empty cache.

Oracle VDI 3.5 solves this with the notion of an Application Hard Drive - a virtual disk specifically assigned to hold an App-V cache, which is shared amongst many users and pre-populated with applications. This means applications startup faster and the load on the network and storage is greatly reduced.

Richer User Experience

So far, we've talked about features which will appeal to the System Administrator or Solution Architect, but what is there in 3.5 for the End-User?

End users typically access Oracle VDI from an existing device (e.g. PC, iPad, etc) running the OVDC (Oracle Virtual Desktop Client) or from the excellent Sun Ray Clients, which are specifically designed to access your server-hosted virtual desktop securely and easily. And one of the cool things about VDI is that you can move from device to device and access the exact-same desktop session, right down to the last keystroke. Well, with 3.5 it gets even smoother jumping between devices even if the resolution of the displays is radically different, and the orientation changes. You can even resize the OVDC window and the server-hosted desktop changes resolution too, making it a very natural experience.

Oracle VDI was already pretty good at remoting even the richest desktop media types, using special codecs for displaying YouTube videos, for example. But in 3.5 it gets even better. Windows Media applications (Player and IE plugins) get accelerated by intercepting the high level codec and using built-in assists on the client to display media on to the screen. This eases the load on the server which otherwise would be spending time decoding and encoding video.

New Platforms

Oracle VDI 3.5 supports the latest Windows desktop platform, Windows 8. But did you know that Oracle VDI also support Linux and Solaris desktops too, including the latest Ubuntu platform. This means that however broad your user base, Oracle VDI can deliver the desktop platform they need. And as for the VDI deployment platform itself, 3.5 runs on Solaris 10 or 11 and on Oracle Linux 5.8 and 6.3 too. See the Release Notes for more details.

Anything else?

There are many, many other new features we've not had the space to cover here but as it is now easy to set up a single, self-contained VDI deployment on a single server, you can find these out for yourself. Here are a few useful links to help you on your journey:

Enjoy,

-FB

What You're Watching: Top Ten OTN Videos

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:14:45 +0000

What are you watching?

Here are the Top 10 most popular videos on the Oracle Technology Network YouTube Channel for the past 30 days.

Interview: Dr. Frank Munz "Oracle WebLogic Server 12c: Distintive Recipes"
Dr. Frank Munz, the author of "Oracle WebLogic Server 12c: Distinctive Recipes," talks about his new book, the companion series of videos, and upcoming speaking engagements.
APEX 4.2 Mobile App Development
Marc Sewtz, from the core Oracle Application Express Development Team, demos the new features he built into APEX4.2 to support Mobile App Development.
Lucas Jellema: SOA, Events, BPM, and Oracle ADF
Oracle ACE Director Lucas Jellema, CTO for AMIS Systems, talks about his latest OTN article, and about SOA, BPM, Oracle ADF, and his participation in the OTN Yathra Tour in India.
APEX 4.2 New Features
David Peake, PM for Oracle Application Express, shares a quick overview of features in APEX 4.2.
Dimitri Gielis on APEX 4.2 and Responsive Web Design
Oracle Ace Director Dimitri Gielis talks about cool new features in Oracle Application Express 4.2.
Greg Marsden: Hugepages = Huge Performance on Linux
Greg Marsden of Oracle's Linux Kernel Engineering Team addresses some common customer performance questions and talks about making the most of Oracle Linux 6 and Transparent HugePages.
Oracle ACEs Like ...
A video montage created by OTN DBA/Database Developer Community Manager Todd Trichler featuring members of the Oracle ACE Program.
Wim Coekaerts: Fun with SunRay
Wim Coekaerts, SVP of Linux and Virtualization Engineering at Oracle talks about some of the new SunRay Hardware he gets to play with.
Arup Nanda: Engineered Systems
Oracle ACE Director Arup Nanda discusses Oracle Exadata, engineered systems, and the changing role of the database administrator.
Are You Future Proof? - Evolving Skills for Architects and Developers
Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra (AT&T), Basheer Khan (Innowave Technology), and Ronald van Luttikhuizen (Vennster) share their thoughts on the evolution in the skills needed for success as a software architect or developer.

Final Day of HIMSS13

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 22:10:39 +0000

We're just getting ready to wrap up the booth at HIMSS13. Like a lot of Oracle shows, every single demo of Oracle Applications was done using Oracle desktop virtualization. I sat down with Adam Workman, Principal Consultant with Oracle, to talk about the booth deployment. Adam and team were responsible for designing and implementing the demo infrastucture for the booth.

Why is Oracle using desktop virtualization instead of laptops at the demo pods?

One of the philosophies we have at Oracle is we have the entire stack to run the infrastructure. So we like to show our customers that we can do that, and that's why we bring the infrastructure to the show.

The other reason why we do it, quite frankly, is because it makes our lives a lot easier. It allows us to bring in an infrastructure that can support dozens of applications without needing to configure individual laptops. We don't have to worry about all the infrastructure and administration to bring in dedicated PCs, which makes things much easier.

What is the server backend required to support the show?

Interestingly enough, we can actually run the show on a single Oracle Sun Server X3-2. But we want to provide an enterprise solution, so we bring a second server to make sure everything will stay up if we had a hardware fault, etc., This year, since we want to give people a real world visualization of what it would take to bring this into their organizations, we brought a real rack and hardware that would be similar to a customer deployment, and it lets you run over 500 desktops. That's more capacity than we need for this show, but it's more typical of a real deployment.

This is your 3rd year doing this show, were there any different challenges this year versus previous years?

The move to a "real world deployment" actually made the show even easier. In years past, we would ship the hardware, set it up onsite, get it all ready for the demo people to use. By moving to a larger real world infrastructure, it changed our setup a little and allowed us to rack and stack all the servers prior to the show and made our setup a lot easier.

Do the customers even know they are seeing a "virtual" desktop when they are looking at Oracle Healthcare applications on the booth?

From a performance standpoint, they have no idea that they're not looking at a notebook or a hidden PC. The reason the customer knows is that the demo staff point out the Oracle Sun Ray Clients on the desks and show the customers the servers that are running in the booth.

Is the end user experience is the same as it would be if you were using laptops?

It's the same or better, and from a demo staff perspective, they actually prefer when we do this. They used to have to bring laptops or preconfigure a laptop before the show, keep track of it, maintain it, and so on. With desktop virtualization, they can just show up and know that things are going to work.

Were there any Oracle Applications that weren't compatible or didn't work with the booth setup?

There are no applications that we we're demonstrating here that were incompatible or didn't work. Oracle's browser based applications are certified to work with Oracle desktop virtualization and everything we've had here has worked great.

Have you had any downtime?

We've had no downtime whatsoever, the system just hums along and runs.

How long did it take you to do the set up before the show?

It takes approximately one work week - 40 hours - to build the infrastructure. There were three of us, so it happened very rapidly, over the span of a couple of days. We had one person who physically racked and stacked the servers. We then made sure all the servers and the storage array had the latest firmware on them, and from there, things go really fast. We just install the operating system, install Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, which takes maybe 15 minutes, and from there, we just load the official Oracle golden template that comes from our global IT operations.

And how will teardown go?

The teardown is actually ridiculously fast. We just have to walk around and power off the Sun Ray Clients, we give the servers the shutdown command, and unplug them, and that's it. So, literally, 15 minutes and we'll be done. And the convenience going to the whole setup is that it literally rolls back into a crate and goes back to Oracle.

How easy is it to reuse this setup for anther show?

We designed the the servers, storage, and rack as a reusable component, so it's just a refresh between the shows if an update comes out. You always have to update the Windows golden image before it goes out for security reasons, but it's very easy to get it ready for the next show.

Was there anything healthcare specific you had to do for the booth deployment?

There's aren't settings in the software that I would say are specifically for healthcare, but there any many features we take advantage of with healthcare. One of the features we talk about a lot is caregiver mobility. And one of our newer features related to that is location awareness. So, as a doctor or nurse moves inside a facility, the applications need to know where the person updating the record physically is and we've added a flexible software feature so that the EMR and applications know that they've changed locations. So we're showing that today.

-Chris

Upgrading Linux Guests

Fat Bloke — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:53:38 +0000

Just last week Oracle released Oracle Linux 6.4 and so it was time that Fat Bloke updated his Oracle Linux guests.

So after a simple and quick:

 yum update

I was in a position to reboot into my freshly updated 6.4 vm. But after rebooting I found myself looking at a stuck screen that looked a little like this:

The reason for getting stuck like this was because the installed VirtualBox Guest Additions were configured for an older X11 server, and the new update had a newer version.

So here's how to fix this:

At this screen, type Ctrl-Alt-F2 to get to another virtual display;
login, and as root type:

/etc/init.d/vboxadd-x11 setup

like this:

reboot
et, voila!

Hope this helps,

-FB

HIMSS 2013, Day 1

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:13:46 +0000

We just wrapped up day one of HIMSS13 in New Orleans. HIMSS is always a really important event for us because so many healthcare organizations leverage Oracle technologies. And desktop virtualization lends itself perfectly to healthcare, especially with "caregiver mobility." This simply means that doctors and nurses can move from place to place and retain secure access to patient data. In our case, it also means desktop mobility between PCs, iPad and Android tablets, and in-room mounted thin clients.

We're here with some really amazing folks from the Oracle Healthcare team and the Oracle desktop virtualization team, and we're going to get some videos up for you over the next few days shot live on the show floor.

And if you're here, please stop by and say "hi" to us! As usual, the entire Oracle booth is being hosted with Oracle desktop virtualization, and we'll go into more detail on that in our next post.

-Chris

Friday Tips #17

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:26:43 +0000

Happy Friday, everyone! We're busy getting ready for HIMSS13 in New Orleans (we'll be posting during the show next week, so please stay tuned for that), but that won't stop us from doing our Friday tip. This week's question focuses on Oracle Secure Global Desktop:

Question:
How do I setup an LDAP server using the command line option within Oracle Secure Global Desktop?

Answer by Mohan Prabhala, Product Management Director, Oracle:
The ‘–login-ldap-url’ command line option was removed since Oracle Secure Global Desktop version 4.6. So using the ‘–login-ldap-url’ option when running the ‘tarantella config edit’ command will not work. You must use a service object which is a group of directory services configuration settings used for SGD authentication mechanisms. So the commands below should be the way to make this work:

tarantella config edit --login-thirdparty 1 
tarantella config edit --login-ldap-thirdparty-profile 1 
tarantella config edit --login-ldap 1 
tarantella service new --name generated --type ldap --url "ldap://<server hostname>"

It is important to note that authentication mechanisms such as LDAP are used by Oracle Secure Global Desktop to login into the webtop. By default, Oracle Secure Global Desktop does not query LDAP during the launch of an application (once in the webtop). It is possible to pass through LDAP credentials to authenticate applications at launch time using the Authentication Configuration Tool (authconfig).

Oracle Solaris Remote Lab Uses Oracle Secure Global Desktop!

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:16:17 +0000

Oracle Solaris Remote Lab (part of Oracle's Exastack Remote Labs) provides independent software vendors access to Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 environments (SPARC and x86) for validating their applications. The lab provides a simple and straight forward cloud interface for configuring an application test environment. It extensively leverages Oracle technologies, meets Oracle's stringent security requirements and is available to Oracle Partner Network members at the gold level and above. The Oracle Solaris Remote Lab leverages Oracle Secure Global Desktop to address many requirements.

Oracle Secure Global Desktop (coupled with Oracle Secure Global Desktop's Secure Gateway) provides access to Solaris desktops and terminal sessions from a variety of client devices and from anywhere in the world, allowing excellent performance even over high-latency WAN links.

Oracle Secure Global Desktop (using the Client Drive Mapping or CDM feature) provides the ability to transfer files from user's local computers to the secure storage assigned to them within the Oracle Solaris Remote Lab

Oracle Secure Global Desktop is used to secure each independent software vendor's data and desktop access. The lab implements a separate Oracle Secure Global Desktop server per partner which is isolated on a separate VLAN, allowing for a multi-tenant setup.

Oracle Secure Global Desktop's web services API allows for seamless integration of functionality within Oracle Solaris Remote Labs' portal, resulting in a coherent user experience for independent software vendors.

Oracle Secure Global Desktop's Secure Gateway allows independent software vendors access to their resources using only a single point of entry into the network.The role of this gateway is to direct each user's network traffic to the correct VLAN and, thus, to the correct VMs.

OTN Video: What You're Watching

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 18:18:49 +0000

As of this moment there are 49 videos on the Oracle Technology Network YouTube Channel, featuring conversations with the people who build Oracle technologies and the people who use those technologies. Here's the current list of the Top 10 most popular OTN videos.

Dr. Frank Munz: Distinctive Recipes for Oracle WebLogic Server 12c
Dr. Frank Munz, the author of Oracle WebLogic Server 12c: Distinctive Recipes, talks about his new book, the companion series of videos, and upcoming speaking engagements.
Marc Sewtz: Oracle APEX 4.2 Mobile App Development
Marc Sewtz from the core Oracle Application Express Development talks about new features built into APEX4.2 to support Mobile App Development and demonstrates an iPhone app built with the technology.
David Peake: Oracle APEX 4.2 New Features
David Peake, PM for Oracle Application Express, offers a quick overview of some of the upcoming features in the new release, tells you where you can try it out for free.
Dimitri Gielis: Oracle Apex 4.2 and Responsive Web Design
Oracle Ace Director Dimitri Gielis, one of the winners of the Oracle Social Network Developer Challenge at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 in San Francsicso, talks about new features in Oracle Application Express 4.2.
Wim Coekearts: SunRay Hardware
Wim Coekaerts, SVP of Linux and Virtualization Engineering at Oracle, talks about some of the new SunRay Hardware he gets to play with.
Arup Nanda: Engineered Systems
Oracle ACE Director Arup Nanda, winner of the 2012 Oracle Magazine Technologist of the Year award in the Enterprise Architect category, discusses Oracle Exadata, engineered systems, and the changing role of the database administrator.
Panel Discussion: Are You Future Proof? - Evolving Skills for Architects and Developers
Oracle ACE Directors Ron Batra (AT&T), Basheer Khan (Innowave Technology), and Ronald van Luttikhuizen (Vennster) discuss the evolution in the skills needed for success as a software architect or developer.
Greg Marsden: Hugepages = Huge Performance on Linux
Greg Marsden of Oracle's Linux Kernel Engineering Team talks about some common customer performance questions and making the most of Oracle Linux 6 and Transparent HugePages.
Oracle ACEs Like...
This video montage created by OTN's Todd Trichler begins with a conversation with Vikki Lira and Lilian Buziak, the people behing the ORacle ACE program, and then introduces several members of that program.
Alex Gorbachev: Social Software Engineering
Oracle ACE Director and Pythian CTO Alex Gorbachev talks his role as the organizer of the Oracle OpenWorld Blogger Meet-up and about the role of social media at Pythian.

Friday Tips #14

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 18:42:47 +0000

Our tip this week will help you experiment with the settings for the Sun Ray Operating Software (SROS).

Question:
I want to setup SROS (Sun Ray Operating Software) and play with the server based .parms files and the DTU GUI. What are the quick steps to get that done?

Answer by John Renko, Consulting Developer, Oracle Desktop Virtualization:
Good news, SROS isn't too different from the "old" ways of managing the operating software on Sun Ray DTUs.

1) Download the latest SROS package from My Oracle Support (support.oracle.com)

2) Unpack the package and install it on your Sun Ray server:

pkgadd -d . SUNWutdfw

3) Prepare a sample "srconfig" file with some common settings:

bash-3.2# cat /srconfig
compress=1
fastload=1
fulldup=1
lossless=0
poweroff=120
select=random
servers=myhouse.domain.com,myhouse2.domain.com

4) Deploy the SROS, with GUI enabled, so you can play with the DTU settings:

/opt/SUNWut/sbin/utfwadm -AaV -i /srconfig -G force

You should now see SROS images in /tftpboot along with .parms files, merged with your /srconfig settings and a SunRay.enableGUI object.

Airbus Deploys Oracle Secure Global Desktop

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:21:02 +0000

Airbus, a world leader in the civil air transport market, employs approximately 52,000 people at sixteen sites in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain. The company relies on partnerships with major companies around the world and has a network of 1,500 suppliers in 30 countries.

Airbus uses Oracle Secure Global Desktop to provide a dispersed workforce of aircraft designers, structural engineers, and other essential, ground-based staff with secure, real-time access to test results during flight trials. Technical teams no longer need to travel to the company’s center in Toulouse, and experts have the ability to start to evaluate results immediately. Using Oracle Secure Global Desktop has helped Airbus accelerate compliance with global aviation regulations, complete tests required by potential customers more quickly, and reduce time to market for new aircraft.

"Oracle Secure Global Desktop enables us to deliver real-time flight test data direct from the cockpit to any number of designers, engineers, component manufacturers, and other authorized users, regardless of location or client device." – Ghislain Banville, IT Architect, Flight Test Data Equipment, Airbus

Oracle Virtual Desktop Client updated!

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:27:17 +0000

You might have seen that Oracle announced updates to the Oracle Virtual Desktop Client for mobile platforms and desktop PCs today. The Oracle Virtual Desktop Client is an important piece of the Oracle desktop virtualization portfolio because it allows on the go access to your virtual desktop from many different devices, over WiFi and wired connections, 3G/4G/LTE for your mobile devices, pretty much anything that a modern client device would use. You can seamlessly and instantly move your desktop between any supported device–start on your laptop at home, pick up on a tablet on the train to work, continue on a Sun Ray Client at work, for example. And starting today, there are two new platforms that can enjoy this instant desktop access!

- This is first release to include support for Android. This opens up remote access to Oracle desktop virtualization deployments to a whole new group of users.

- The Windows Oracle Virtual Desktop Client now supports Windows 8. Just to be clear, the support in this release is *not* for gesture based Windows 8 tablets, but for Windows 8 desktops PCs.

- New gestures are available on the mobile client, and these are consistent across iPad and Android, which makes moving between devices easier.

- Expanded USB support in the desktop client, allowing you to use more of your USB devices.

This is a very exciting release, especially for Android and Windows 8 users! You can read the news release here, or download from here.

-Chris

Using VirtualBox Host-only Networking to run servers in your lap

Fat Bloke — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 19:56:08 +0000

Since the initial blog about VirtualBox and Networking, there have been lots of people asking how to run multiple server vm's on their laptops, allowing the host to also connect to these servers too. As it happens, I recently needed just such a configuration myself so thought I'd share how I did it...

On my Oracle Linux laptop, I wanted to set up a private network within my host on which I would run:

A Oracle Linux server running Oracle VDI which includes a MySQL database, Apache webserver, and other stuff;
A Windows Server 2012 providing DNS, DHCP and Active Directory;
I also wanted my Linux laptop to be able to reach these guest machines on the private network, too.

Note that this had to be isolated to within my host machine because I was setting up a new Active Directory Domain (example.com) and we didn't want the Windows Server dishing out DHCP addresses to everyone in the office. But we did want the Linux Server to be able to talk with the Windows Server for directory services and name services.

So logically this looked like:

Creating the Windows Server VM

I used the VirtualBox Manager to create a vm of OS type "Windows 2012 (64-bit)" but before running it for the first time, I modified the Network configuration of the guest to use the VirtualBox Host-only Ethernet Adaptor:

I planned to use this Windows server to deliver DHCP addresses for the private host-only network, so I disabled the built-in DHCP server via the Preferences...Network dialog in the VirtualBox Manager (all this can be done form the command line too BTW). Like this:

And in the interests of full disclosure, here are my private adapter settings too:

I then installed Windows Server 2012 giving it a static IP address of 192.168.245.110 and name ad.example.com.

After initial install I added extra roles to make the server be an Active Directory Domain Controller, DNS Server and DHCP Server:

Creating the Linux Server

The Linux server is an Oracle Linux (6.3) server. Again, I set the newly created vm to use a Host-only network (as above), and installed Oracle Linux, giving it a static IP address: 192.168.245.111 - vdi1.example.com, and set DNS to point to the AD server ad.example.com.

This all worked swimmingly, and both machines could see each other and use each other's services:

N.B. the servers running in these vm's are full blown instances so watch out for security settings and the like which block connections between them and the host.

The Host as a member of example.com

The great thing about host-only networks is that the host itself sits on this network and so can partake in the fun.

The host sees this network just as another NIC:

$ ifconfig vboxnet0
vboxnet0  Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 0A:00:27:00:00:00  
          inet addr:192.168.245.1  Bcast:192.168.245.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::800:27ff:fe00:0/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2425 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:643528 (628.4 KiB)

Note that the IP address the host uses is configured when you set up the host-only network above.

Using Multiple NICs

I wanted to update the Windows and Linux guests using Software Update, but to do that I needed access to the Internet, which my host only adaptor did not provide for me. One way of doing this is to temporarily switch from Host-only to NAT networking, do the update, then switch back again. And VirtualBox lets you do this while the VM is running which is very cool.

But for my Linux VM I wanted something a bit more permanent. So I created a second Bridged virtual network adaptor so that my Linux VM had an address on my host's network as well as the example.com host-only network. To do this you do have to shutdown the guest OS, and then reconfigure the VM like this:

The guest simply then sees this as another interface:

$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:27:31:23:9F  
          inet addr:hidden  Bcast:hidden  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: hidden Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:563846 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:360395 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:347709416 (331.6 MiB)  TX bytes:260792184 (248.7 MiB)
eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:27:4D:34:8B  
          inet addr:192.168.245.111  Bcast:192.168.245.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::a00:27ff:fe4d:348b/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:468955 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:387661 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:354834569 (338.3 MiB)  TX bytes:104217032 (99.3 MiB)

Things to watch out for

Firewalls

Server Operating Systems typically come as "secure by default" so watch out for firewalls blocking connections. As your host-only network is private anyway you could simply turn the firewall off, e.g. on Linux:

/etc/init.d/iptables stop

Nameserver woes

One issue that had me scratching my head for some time was that after I added a second interface to my VDI server, my name resolution stopped working. Eventually I figured it out: Linux has a feature called NetworkManager which detects new networks and reconfigures the system to use them. One of the results of this "reconfiguration" is an overwrite of the /etc/resolv.conf file which points to the nameservers. In my case this meant that the VDI server was no longer using the AD server for DNS. Linux experts could probably tell me how to elegantly fix this, but I found 2 solutions myself:

Disable the Network Manager, so it will not restart at next boot. (sledgehammer)

chkconfig NetworkManager off

Use entries in /etc/hosts and ensure that /etc/nsswitch.conf has the line:

hosts: files dns

Conclusion

I now have a very cool setup on my laptop which enables to play around with Oracle VDI, MySQL, Apache, Active Directory, and all the other services that Linux and Windows Servers offer, all without disturbing anyone else on the network.

Hope this is useful to someone out there.

- FB

Friday Tips #11

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:18:51 +0000

Earlier this week, Oracle hosted a really cool event, the Virtual SysAdmin Day. If you missed it and happen to be in EMEA (or willing to stay up late in other parts of the world!), you can join the next one we're having on January 29th. You can learn all about Oracle Solaris, Oracle VM, and Oracle Linux straight from the experts here at Oracle.

During the event, one of the audience members tweeted a question about Oracle storage. We asked if we could use the question for our Friday tips series and he graciously agreed. Storage has a huge impact on the performance and cost of virtualization (both server and desktop) deployments, so we thought a short definition of Oracle optimized storage and the Oracle's Sun ZFS Storage Appliance would be in order.

Question:
What exactly is this ZFS Storage Appliance? Is it just a simulator or actual usable production appliance?

Answer by Christopher J. Martin, Principal Product Manager, Oracle Optimized Solutions:
The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance is Oracle’s preferred NAS storage system with unified storage capability for enterprise tier 1 environments that also simultaneously provides superior Block SAN features and performance. It offers a rich set of enterprise-class data services such as snapshots, clones and replication(local and remote) as well as industry-leading performance, and Oracle Hybrid Columnar Compression- a feature for Oracle Databases. These systems also feature a comprehensive and intuitive user interface and storage analytics environment that is unmatched in the industry in terms of its ease of use and simplicity. This dramatically reduces management time and complexity, reducing operating expenses. The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance offers compelling economics along with extreme performance and efficiency for enterprise storage.

Thanks Chris!

We also covered storage briefly back in our second entry in this series where we had a question on linked clones.

Thanks for reading today. We'll be covering more storage topics in future tips as well as anything else you want to ask regarding Oracle virtualization. Just use #AskOracleVirtualization on Twitter and we'll try to get your question answered.

-Chris

How to Create a Desktop Pool?

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 10:00:00 +0000

A Desktop Provider provides virtual machines (called desktops in Oracle VDI) to... pools of desktops. This video shows how to create and populate a new desktop pool with 6 desktops. In real life you will have several hundreds of desktops, or even grow a pool up to the 4 digit range.

In the second part of the video, John will show how to assign a user or user group from the company to the new pool. Voilà, you are done, and your employees can access a desktop from a Sun Ray, from another desktop with the Oracle Virtual Desktop Client (OVDC), or from an iPad.

Friday Tips #10

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 20:52:35 +0000

Happy Friday, everyone, hope you've had a good week! We're very excited to to have reached double digits in our Friday tips series, and we hope you're finding them useful. Remember, you can get your questions answered by posting on Twitter with the #askoraclevirtualization hash tag. We're also very happy to receive questions via DM to the Oracle Virtualization Twitter account on the Oracle Virtualization Facebook page.

Today's tip is the last in our video series (for now) on Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure administration. Once again, this video is courtesy of John Pither, Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle Desktop Virtualization. In this video, John covers setting up a "Company", an important concept for multi-tenant or departmental deployments.

&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;

We'll see you next week!

-Chris

How to Create a Desktop Provider?

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 10:00:00 +0000

By now (in the sense of yesterday’s post) Oracle VDI has access to the users of your company. Today you can see a demo, how to set up a desktop provider to access a hypervisor such as Oracle VM VirtualBox, Microsoft Hyper-V, or VMware vCenter as the main point of contact for VMware Infrastructure. Internally we call this the double looping wizard because you can collect as many hypervisor hosts as desired, and in a second loop, add as many storage servers as needed.

How to Create a Company?

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:33:06 +0000

Well, this is not a tutorial on how to create a startup and become rich and famous. In the video John Pither demonstrates the steps to create a Company in Oracle VDI, in order to have access to the users in a user directory. This is necessary to define later on, which user will have access to which remote desktops managed by Oracle VDI.

Hear us talk about BYOD!

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 20:35:59 +0000

Recently, I had the pleasure of spending some time on the phone with John Renko, consulting developer in the desktop virtualization group here at Oracle. You might know him from his fantastic answers to many of our Friday Tips questions.

While BYOD has become a pretty common idea over the last couple of years, John has been conducting his job using BYOD principles for many years. And given his job developing desktop virtualization technologies, he's an expert in the space. You can hear John and I talk about how BYOD works, what sorts of things are ideal for it, some things that aren't a perfect fit, and more in this podcast:

John Renko and Chris Kawalek Discuss Bringing Your Own Device for Enterprise Application Access

My thanks for John for taking the time to speak with me!

-Chris

Friday Tips #9

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 20:24:46 +0000

We hope you're enjoying these video tips! Here is another from John Pither, Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle Desktop Virtualization. This one describes the admin interface and roles in Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure:

As always, you can submit questions for our Friday tips on Twitter using the #askoraclevirtualization hashtag.

-Chris

Friday Tips #8

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:15:25 +0000

For our final tip of 2012, we have another video from John Pither, Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle Desktop Virtualization. Watch below to learn how to create desktop providers in Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure:

Remember, you can submit questions for our Friday tips on Twitter using the #askoraclevirtualization hashtag. We'll see you next week!

-Chris

Friday Tips #7, Part 2

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 20:34:23 +0000

Our desktop tip today is in the form of a video done by John Pither, Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle Desktop Virtualization. It covers how desktop pools work and how to create them in Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure:

Oracle Secure Global Desktop - Business Continuity During Snowstorm!

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 22:24:53 +0000

Capgemini, one of the world's largest management consulting, outsourcing and professional services companies, is an Oracle Secure Global Desktop customer and uses it to provide secure, remote access to 1) corporate applications centralized in the datacenter and 2) desktops hosted on Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

Earlier this month, one of Capgemini's government customers in Holland were advised to avoid traveling to work, due to a heavy snowstorm. This resulted in a lot of employees working from home. Thankfully due to their deployment of the Oracle Secure Global Desktop gateway, employees were able to easily access their corporate applications and desktops from home and anywhere outside of their office. Capgemini reports that during the days of the snowstorm, a record number of users leveraged Oracle Secure Global Desktop (servers and gateway). Despite this record usage, Oracle Secure Global Desktop remained perfectly stable and allowed users to seamlessly access their applications and desktops.

This is a great example of how Oracle Secure Global Desktop allows employee productivity and business continuity even during severe weather conditions such as snowstorms. We are delighted to have enabled business continuity for Capgemini's customers, and look forward to our continued relationship with Capgemini.

This blog has been approved for posting by Capgemini.

Friday Tips #6, Part 1

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 21:25:57 +0000

We have a two parter this week, with this post focusing on desktop virtualization and the next one on server virtualization.

Question:
Why would I use the Oracle Secure Global Desktop Secure Gateway?

Answer by Rick Butland, Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle Desktop Virtualization:
Well, for the benefit of those who might not be familiar with client connections in Oracle Secure Global Desktop (SGD), let me back up and briefly explain. An SGD client connects to an SGD server using two distinct protocols, which, by default, require two distinct TCP ports. The first is the HTTP protocol, used by the web browser to connect to the SGD webserver on TCP port 80, or if secure connections are enabled (SSL/TLS), then TCP port 443, commonly identified as the "HTTPS" port, that is, "SSL encrypted HTTP." The second protocol from the client to the server is the Adaptive Internet Protocol, or AIP, which is used for displaying applications, transferring drive mapping data, print jobs, and so on. By default, AIP uses the TCP port 3104, or port 5307 when SSL is enabled.

When SGD clients need to access SGD over a firewall, the ports that AIP requires are typically "closed"; and most administrators are reluctant, to put it mildly, to change their firewall configurations to allow AIP traffic on 3144/5307.

To avoid this problem, SGD introduced "Firewall Forwarding", a technique where, in effect, both http and AIP traffic are "multiplexed" onto a single "well-known" TCP port, that is port 443, the https port. This is also known as single-port firewall traversal. This technique takes advantage of the fact that, as a "well-known service", port 443 is usually "open", allowing (encrypted) traffic to pass. At the target SGD server, the two protocols are de-multiplexed and routed appropriately.

The Secure Gateway was developed in response to requirements from customers for SGD to support multi-stage DMZ's, and to avoid exposing SGD servers and the information they contain directly to connections from the Internet. The Secure Gateway acts as a reverse-proxy in the first-tier of the DMZ, accepting, authenticating, and terminating incoming client connections, and then re-encrypting the connections, and proxying them, routing them on to SGD servers, deeper in the network. The client no longer needs to know the name/IP address of the SGD servers in their network, they connect to the gateway, only. The gateway takes care of those internal network details.

The Secure Gateway supports the same "single-port firewall" capability as does "Firewall Forwarding", but offers the additional advantage of load-balancing incoming client connections amongst SGD array members, which could be cumbersome without a forward-deployed secure gateway. Load-balancing weights and policies can be monitored and tuned using the "Balancer Manager" application, and Apache mod_proxy_balancer directives.

Going forward, our architects recommend the use of the Secure Gateway over "Firewall Forwarding" for single-port firewall traversal, due to its architectural advantages, its greater flexibility and enhanced features.

Finally, it should be noted that the Secure Gateway is not separately priced; any licensed SGD customer may use the Secure Gateway component at no additional cost.

For more information, see the "Secure Gateway Administrator's Guide".

Growing your VirtualBox Virtual Disk

Fat Bloke — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 17:10:11 +0000

Don't you just hate it when this happens:

Fortunately, if you're running inside VirtualBox, you can resize your virtual disk and magically make your guest have a bigger disk very easily. There are 2 steps to doing this...

1. Resize the virtual disk

Use the VBoxManage command line tool to extend the size of the Virtual Disk, specifying the path to the disk and the size in MB:

VBoxManage modifyhd <uuid>|<filename> [--resize <megabytes>|--resizebyte <bytes>]

If you booted up your guest at this point, the extra space is seen as an unformatted area on the disk, like this:

So we now need to tell the guest about the extra space available.

2. Extend the guest's partition to use the extra space

How you do this step depends on your guest OS type and the tools you have available.

Linux guests often include the excellent gparted partition editor, whereas Windows 7 and 8 provide the Computer Management tool which can resize partitions.

Unfortunately, with Windows XP the Computer Management tool couldn't do this. But I do have a couple of other options:

Most Linux installable .isos include the aforementioned gparted tool, so I could simply attach, say, an Ubuntu install iso as a Virtual CD/DVD in my Windows XP vm and boot off that. (NB don't install Ubuntu, just run it from the CD). Then use gparted to extend the Windows XP partition, before finally rebooting.

But I took another route and plugged my resized virtual disk to a Windows Server 2012 vm I had lying around. Then I used the Computer Management tool in Windows Server 2012 to extend the partition of the Windows XP disk, before shutting down, unplugging the disk and reattaching to my Windows XP vm. (Note that if your vm's use different disk controllers, Windows will check the disks on booting, don't worry).

When I finally boot up my Windows XP guest I see the available disk space and all is well.

At least until the next time

- FB

Upgrading Oracle Enterprise Manager: 12c to 12c Release 2

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 18:22:34 +0000

1 - Download the OEM 12c R2. It can be downloaded here:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/grid-control/downloads/index.html

Note: it is a set of three huge zips.

2 - Unzip the archives

3 - Create a directory (as the oem-owner user) where the upgraded Middleware should be installed. For instance:

$ mkdir /u01/app/oracle/Middleware12cR2

4 - Back up OMS (Middleware home and inventory), Management Repository and Software Library.

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/doc.121/e24473/ha_backup_recover.htm#EMADM10740

5 - Ensure that the Management tables don't have snapshots:

SQL> select master , log_table from all_mview_logs where log_owner='<EM_REPOS_USER>

If there are snapshots drop them:

SQL> Drop snapshot log on <master>

6 - Copy emkey from existing OMS:

$ <OMS_HOME>/bin/emctl config emkey -copy_to_repos [-sysman_pwd <sysman_pwd>]

To verify whether the emkey is copied, run the following command:

$ <OMS_HOME>/bin/emctl status emkey

If the emkey is copied, then you will see the following message:

The EMKey is configured properly, but is not secure.
Secure the EMKey by running "emctl config emkey -remove_from_repos".

7 - Stop the OMS and the Agent

$ <OMS_HOME>/bin/emctl stop oms

$ <AGENT_HOME>/bin/emctl stop agent

8 - from the unzipped directory, run

$ ./runInstaller

8a - Follow the wizard: Email / MOS; Software Updates: disable or leave empty.

8b - Follow the wizard: Installation type: Upgrade -> One System Upgrade.

8c - Installation Details: Middleware home location: enter the directory created in step 3.

8d - Enter the DB Connections Details. Credentials for SYS and SYSMAN.

8e - Dialog comes: Stop the Job Gathering: click 'Yes'.

8f- Warning comes: click 'OK'.

8g - Select the plugins to deploy along with the upgrade process

8h- Extend Weblogic: enter the password (recommended, the same password for the SYSMAN user).

A new directory will be created, recommended:

/u01/app/oracle/Middleware12cR2/gc_inst

8i - Let the upgrade proceed by clicking 'Install'.

8j - Run the following script (as root) and finish the 'installation':

$ /u01/app/oracle/Middleware12R2/oms/allroot.sh

9 - Turn on the Agent:

$ <AGENT_HOME>/bin/emctl start agent

Note that the $AGENT_HOME might be located in the old Middleware directory:

$ /u01/app/oracle/Middleware/agent/agent_inst/bin/emctl start agent

10 - go to the EM UI. Select the WebLogic Target and choose the option "Refresh WebLogic Domain" from the menu.

11 - Update the Agents: Setup -> Manage Cloud Control -> Upgrade Agents -> Add (+)

Note that the agents may take long to show up.

... and that's it! Or that should be it !

A more complete guide is here:

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24628_01/upgrade.121/e22625/upgrading_12101_PS1_gtgstrtd.htm

Friday Tips #4

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:36:46 +0000

It's time once again for our Friday tip. Our question today is about how to determine how much video RAM to allocate for your virtual machines in a VDI deployment:

Question:
How much video RAM do I really need on my VirtualBox VMs?

Answer by John Renko, Consulting Developer, Oracle:
The answer is in the VirtualBox admin guide but it's seldom followed correctly, usually resulting in excess unused RAM to be allocated. The formula for determining how much RAM to allocate is shown below for a 32 bit fullscreen 22" monitor supporting 1680x1050:

bit depth / 8 x horizontal res x vertical res / 1024 / 1024 = MB RAM

Which translates to:

32 bits / 8 x 1680 x 1050 / 1024 / 1024 = 6.7 MB

If you wanted to support dual 22" monitors, you would need twice that, so 13.4 MB.

Anything in excess of what is needed is readily allocated but not used and would be better suited for running more VMs!

Thanks John, that tip should help folks squeeze a little more out of their VDI servers. And remember, if you have a question for us, use hash tag #AskOracleVirtualization on Twitter.

We'll see you next week with another tip!

-Chris

Friday Tips #3

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:42:48 +0000

Even though yesterday was Thanksgiving here in the US, we still have a Friday tip for those of you around your computers today. In fact, we have two! The first one came in last week via our #AskOracleVirtualization Twitter hashtag. The tweet has disappeared into the ether now, but we remember the gist, so here it is:

Question:
Will there be an Oracle Virtual Desktop Client for Android?

Answer by our desktop virtualization product development team:
We are looking at Android as a supported platform for future releases.

Question:
How can I make a Sun Ray Client automatically connect to a virtual machine?

Answer by Rick Butland, Principal Sales Consultant, Oracle Desktop Virtualization:
Someone recently asked how they can assign VM’s to specific Sun Ray Desktop Units (“DTU’s”) without any user interfaction being required, without the “Desktop Selector” being displayed, or any User Directory. That is, they wanted each Sun Ray to power on and immediately connect to a pre-assigned Solaris VM.

This can be achieved by using “tokens” for user assignment – that is, the tokens found on Smart Cards, DTU’s, or OVDC clients can be used in place of user credentials. Note, however, that mixing “token-only” assignments and “User Directories” in the same VDI Center won’t work.

Much of this procedure is covered in the documentation, particularly here. But it can useful to have everything in one place, “cookbook-style”:

1. Create the “token-only” directory type:

From the VDI administration interface, select:

“Settings”, “Company”, “New”, select the “None” radio button, and click “Next.”

Enter a name for the new “Company”, and click “Next”, then “Finish.”

2. Create Desktop Providers, Pools, and VM’s as appropriate.

3. Access the Sun Ray administration interface at http://servername:1660 and login using “root” credentials, and access the token-id’s you wish to use for assignment. If you’re using DTU tokens rather than Smart Card tokens, these can be found under the “Tokens” tab, and “Search-ing” using the “Currently Used Tokens” tab. DTU’s can be identified by the prefix “psuedo.” For example:

4. Copy/paste this token into the VDI administrative interface, by selecting “Users”, “New”, and pasting in the token ID, and click “OK” - for example:

5. Assign the token (DTU) to a desktop, that is, in the VDI Admin Gui, select “Pool”, “Desktop”, select the VM, and click "Assign" and select the token you want, for example:

In addition to assigning tokens to desktops, you'll need to bypass the login screen. To do this, you need to do two things:

1. Disable VDI client authentication with:

/opt/SUNWvda/sbin/vda settings-setprops -p clientauthentication=Disabled

2. Disable the VDI login screen – to do this, add a kiosk argument of "-n" to the Sun Ray kiosk arguments screen. You set this on the Sun Ray administration page - "Advanced", "Kiosk Mode", "Edit", and add the “-n” option to the arguments screen, for example:

3. Restart both the Sun Ray and VDI services:

# /opt/SUNWut/sbin/utstart –c
# /opt/SUNWvda/sbin/vda-service restart

Remember, if you have a question for us, please post on Twitter with our hashtag (again, it's #AskOracleVirtualization), and we'll try to answer it if we can. See you next time!

Creating and using VM Groups in VirtualBox

Fat Bloke — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 12:45:51 +0000

With VirtualBox 4.2 we introduced the Groups feature which allows you to organize and manage your guest virtual machines collectively, rather than individually.

Groups are quite a powerful concept and there are a few nice features you may not have discovered yet, so here's a bit more information about groups, and how they can be used....

Creating a group

Groups are just ad hoc collections of virtual machines and there are several ways of creating a group:

In the VirtualBox Manager GUI:

Drag one VM onto another to create a group of those 2 VMs. You can then drag and drop more VMs into that group;
Select multiple VMs (using Ctrl or Shift and click) then

select the menu: Machine...Group; or
press Cmd+U (Mac), or Ctrl+U(Windows); or
right-click the multiple selection and choose Group, like this:

From the command line:

Group membership is an attribute of the vm so you can modify the vm to belong in a group. For example, to put the vm "Ubuntu" into the group "TestGroup" run this command:

VBoxManage modifyvm "Ubuntu" --groups "/TestGroup"

Deleting a Group

Groups can be deleted by removing a group attribute from all the VMs that constitute that group. To do this via the command-line the syntax is:

VBoxManage modifyvm "Ubuntu" --groups ""

In the VirtualBox Manager, this is more easily done by right-clicking on a group header and selecting "Ungroup", like this:

Multiple Groups

Now that we understand that Groups are just attributes of VMs, it can be seen that VMs can exist in multiple groups, for example, doing this:

VBoxManage modifyvm "Ubuntu" --groups "/TestGroup","/ProjectX","/ProjectY"

Results in:

Or via the VirtualBox Manager, you can drag VMs while pressing the Alt key (Mac) or Ctrl (other platforms).

Nested Groups

Just like you can drag VMs around in the VirtualBox Manager, you can also drag whole groups around. And dropping a group within a group creates a nested group.

Via the command-line, nested groups are specified using a path-like syntax, like this:

VBoxManage modifyvm "Ubuntu" --groups "/TestGroup/Linux"

...which creates a sub-group and puts the VM in it.

Navigating Groups

In the VirtualBox Manager, Groups can be collapsed and expanded by clicking on the carat to the left in the Group Header.

But you can also Enter and Leave groups too, either by using the right-arrow/left-arrow keys, or by clicking on the carat on the right hand side of the Group Header, like this:

..leading to a view of just the Group contents. You can Leave or return to the parent in the same way.

Don't worry if you are imprecise with your clicking, you can use a double click on the entire right half of the Group Header to Enter a group, and the left half to Leave a group. Double-clicking on the left half when you're at the top will roll-up or collapse the group.

Group Operations

The real power of Groups is not simply in arranging them prettily in the Manager. Rather it is about performing collective operations on them, once you have grouped them appropriately.

For example, let's say that you are working on a project (Project X) where you have a solution stack of:

Database VM,
Middleware/App VM, and
a couple of client VMs which you use to test your app.

With VM Groups you can start the whole stack with one operation. Select the Group Header, and choose Start:

The full list of operations that may be performed on Groups are:

Start

Starts from any state (boot or resume)
Start VMs in headless mode (hold Shift while starting)

Pause
Reset
Close

Save state
Send Shutdown signal
Poweroff

Discard saved state
Show in filesystem
Sort

Conclusion

Hopefully we've shown that the introduction of VM Groups not only makes Oracle VM VirtualBox pretty, but pretty powerful too.

- FB

Friday tips #2

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:20:59 +0000

Welcome to our second Friday tips blog! You can ask us questions using the hash tag #AskOracleVirtualization on Twitter and we'll do our best to answer them.

Today we've got a VDI related question on linked clones:

Question: I want to use linked clones with Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. What are my options?

Answer by John Renko, Consulting Developer, Oracle:

First, linked clones are available with the Oracle VirtualBox hypervisor only.

Second, your choice of storage will affect the rest of your architecture.

If you are using a SAN presenting ISCSI LUNS, you can have linked clones with a Oracle Enterprise Linux based hypervisor running VirtualBox. OEL will use OCFS2 to allow VirtualBox to create the linked clones. Because of the OCFS2 requirement, a Solaris based VirtualBox hypervisor will not be able to support linked clones on remote ISCSI storage.

If you using the local storage option on your hypervisors, you will have linked clones with Solaris or Linux based hypervisors running VirtualBox.

In all cases, Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure makes the right selection for creating clones - sparse or linked - behind the scenes. Plan your architecture accordingly if you want to ensure you have the higher performing linked clones.

DOAG 2012 and Educause 2012

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 23:35:56 +0000

Oracle understands the value of desktop virtualization and how customers have really embraced it as a top tier method to deliver access to applications and data. Just as supporting operating systems other than Windows in the enterprise desktop space started to become necessary perhaps 5-7 years ago, supporting desktop virtualization with VDI, application virtualization, thin clients, and tablet access is becoming necessary today in 2012. Any application strategy needs to have a secure mobile component, and a solution that gives you a holistic strategy across both mobile and fixed-asset (i.e., desktop PCs) devices is crucial to success.

This means it's probably useful to learn about desktop virtualization, even if it's not in your typical area of responsibility. A good way to do that is at one of the many trade shows where we exhibit. Here are two examples:

DOAG 2012 Conference + Exhibition

The DOAG Conference is fast approaching, starting November 20th in Nuernberg, Germany. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that we attended last year as well.

This conference is fantastic for us because we get to speak directly to users of Oracle products. In many cases, those DBAs, IT managers, and other infrastructure folks are looking for ways to deal with the burgeoning BYOD model, as well as ways of streamlining their standard desktop and access technologies. We have a couple of sessions where you can learn a great deal about how Oracle can help with these points.

Session Schedule (look under "Infrastruktur & Hardware")

The two sessions focused on desktop virtualization are:

Oracle VDI Best Practice unter Linux (Oracle VDI Best Practice Under Linux)
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Implementierungen und Praxiserfahrungen (Virtual Desktop Infrastructures Implementations and Best Practices)

We will also have experts on hand at the booth to answer your questions on using desktop virtualization. If you're at the show, please stop by and say hello to our team there!

Educause 2012

Another good example is Educause. We've gone the last few years to show off a slough of education oriented applications and capabilities in the Oracle product portfolio. And every year, we display those applications through Oracle desktop virtualization. This means the demonstration can easily be setup ahead of time and replicated out to however many "demo pods" that we have available. There's no need for our product teams to setup individual laptops for demos -- we can display a standardized Windows desktop virtual machine with their apps all ready to go on a whole bunch of devices like your standard trade show laptop, our Sun Ray Clients, and iPad.

Educause 2012 just wrapped, so we're sorry we missed you this year. But there is always next year! Until then, here are a few pictures from this year's show:

You can also watch this video to see how Catholic Education Australia uses Oracle Secure Global Desktop to help cope with the ever changing ways that people access their applications.

-Chris

Welcome to our Friday tips series!

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 19:40:59 +0000

Today we're starting a brand new blog series. For your Friday afternoon reading, we'll be posting a technical tip or question and answer on a technical topic. We'll start by introducing ideas on our own, but we'd really like it if you were involved and asked us questions via Twitter! Tag your tweet with #AskOracleVirtualization and we'll consider your question for the blog.

Today's tip is on Storage and Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure:

Question: I run Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 3.4.1 on Solaris and use a local ZFS storage pool. How should I configure my ZFS ARC cache?

Answer by John Renko, Consulting Developer, Oracle:

Oracle recommends about 5G of ARC cache per template in use to achieve up to a 90% disk read offload. Set your ARC min=max to reserve the maximum amount of your remaining memory for your running VMs. In /etc/system:

set zfs:zfs_arc_min = 5368709120
set zfs:zfs_arc_max = 5368709120

The amount you need to reserve will depend on your template but this has proven to be a great start for a typical windows 7 VM running productivity applications.

London Nov-8: Desktop Virtualisation Seminar

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:28:24 +0000

Simplify Application and Data Access with Oracle Desktop Virtualisation

Many companies claim they’ll handle your application access needs, and yet only Oracle can provide you with every component needed for secure and reliable access to Oracle Applications and other enterprise software from a variety of devices. This means you can design your deployment knowing that all of the pieces work together, from applications and virtualisation to servers and storage systems.

Join us to learn how Oracle desktop virtualisation helps you get the most from your valuable IT resources. Topics we’ll cover and demonstrate in this productive half-day event include:

How to provide secure access to applications and data from nearly anywhere on a wide range of devices

Use cases for desktop virtualisation

How desktop virtualisation can support a wider business transformation agenda

Reasons to embrace employees using their own devices for work-related activities

How virtualisation can extend the life of your PCs and other devices

How desktop virtualisation can decrease your carbon footprint and IT costs

<<

Lots of great stuff going on with Oracle Secure Global Desktop!

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:04:59 +0000

You're probably familiar with Oracle Secure Global Desktop, our solution for providing secure, browser-based access to Oracle Applications and other enterprise software. It's a fantastic product and one I've been personally involved with for nearly a decade! I wanted to give you a quick update on all the fantastic things that are going on with it:

First, we have done a few videos with Oracle's Mohan Prabhala at trade shows recently. You can get a quick product refresher and an update on the latest new features by watching these:

Next, we talked at length with Brian Madden and Gabe Knuth on Brian and Gabe LIVE about Oracle Secure Global Desktop. Click here or on the screenshot below to go to the brianmadden.com video. Part 1 focuses on Oracle Secure Global Desktop.

Listen toward the end for Brian to say, “I kinda want this actually at TechTarget right now.”

The analysts are talking about us, too. When we released Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7, Chris Wolf over at Gartner had this to say on Twitter.

Last, just a quick reminder for existing Oracle Applications customers that Oracle Secure Global Desktop is easy for you to leverage for secure application access. Oracle Secure Global desktop is certified for use with Oracle browser-based applications such as Primavera, E-Business Suite and with Exalogic. Steven Chan over at the E-Business Suite Technology blog gives a great explanation of how Oracle Secure Global Desktop works with E-Business Suite, as an example.

As the title says, lots of great stuff going on!

-Chris

Oracle OpenWorld 2012, Live From The Show Floor Videos

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 19:16:17 +0000

At shows like Oracle OpenWorld, we like to catch up with the session speakers and other experts with short video clips that we post on our YouTube channel. For Oracle OpenWorld 2012, we put together this handy playlist of server and desktop virtualization related videos:

We were also able to catch up with a few Oracle Linux partners at the Oracle Linux Pavillion. You can find those videos here:

And if you'd like to look at the slides for any of our virtualization presentations or any other Oracle OpenWorld session, have a look at the Oracle OpenWorld 2012 content catalog. There's a lot of great information there!

-Chris

ANNOUNCEMENT: Windows Server Certified As Oracle Secure Global Desktop Clients With Oracle E-Business Suite 12

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 21:45:54 +0000

We are proud to announce the certification of Oracle Secure Global Desktop for use with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 virtualized environments acting as desktop clients connecting to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 environments. 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Server are certified. These combinations may also be used in conjunction with Oracle VM, if required.

Oracle E-Business Suite customers and partners may now use Oracle Secure Global Desktop as an access layer for Oracle Applications, knowing that Oracle fully certifies this particular scenario. For more details, please refer to this Oracle E-Business Suite Technology blog or My Oracle Support (Note 1491211.1)

Windows Server Certified as Secure Global Desktop Clients with EBS 12

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:27:06 +0000

Oracle Secure Global Desktop provides secure access to centralized applications—Microsoft Windows, UNIX, mainframe, and midrange—from a wide variety of popular client devices, including Windows PCs, Oracle Solaris workstations, Linux PCs, and thin clients.

Secure Global Desktop is certified for use with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 virtualized environments acting as desktop clients connecting to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 environments. 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Server are certified. These combinations may also be used in conjunction with Oracle VM, if required.

How does this work?

For example, a Secure Desktop Client can connect to a Secure Global Desktop environment. That environment can be running Microsoft Server 2008. That environment can be used, in turn, as a "desktop client" to access Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3.

Requirements

EBS 12.1.3 + Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)

Secure Global Desktop version 4.6 or higher

Internet Explorer 8 (32-bit and 64-bit) or Internet Explorer 9 (32-bit and 64-bit)

JRE Plug-in 1.6.0_32 (32-bit and 64-bit) or later 1.6 releases

EBS 12.1.3 + Windows Server 2008 (32-bit)

Secure Global Desktop version 4.6 or higher

Internet Explorer 8 (32-bit) or Internet Explorer 9 (32-bit)

JRE Plug-in 1.6.0_32 (32-bit) or later 1.6 releases

EBS 12.1.3 + Windows Server 2003 R2 (64-bit)

Secure Global Desktop version 4.6 or higher

Internet Explorer 8 (32-bit and 64-bit)

JRE Plug-in 1.6.0_32 (32-bit and 64-bit) or later 1.6 releases

EBS 12.1.3 + Windows Server 2003 R2 (32-bit)

Secure Global Desktop version 4.6 or higher

Internet Explorer 8 (32-bit)

JRE Plug-in 1.6.0_32 (32-bit) or later 1.6 releases

References

Oracle Secure Global Desktop with E-Business Suite Release 12.1.3 (Note 1491211.1)

Related Articles

What's New in Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2?

Fat Bloke — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 16:11:33 +0000

A year is a long time in the IT industry. Since the last VirtualBox feature release, which was a little over a year ago, we've seen:

new releases of cool new operating systems, such as Windows 8, ChromeOS, and Mountain Lion;
we've seen a myriad of new Linux releases from big Enterprise class distributions like Oracle 6.3 and Solaris 11, to accessible desktop distros like Ubuntu 12.04 and Fedora 17;
and we've also seen the spec of a typical PC or laptop double in power.

All of these events have influenced our new VirtualBox version which we're releasing today. Here's how...

Powerful hosts

One of the trends we've seen is that as the average host platform becomes more powerful, our users are consistently running more and more vm's. Some of our users have large libraries of vm's of various vintages, whilst others have groups of vm's that are run together as an assembly of the various tiers in a multi-tiered software solution, for example, a database tier, middleware tier, and front-ends.

So we're pleased to unveil a more powerful VirtualBox Manager to address the needs of these users:

VM Groups

Groups allow you to organize your VM library in a sensible way, e.g. by platform type, by project, by version, by whatever. To create groups you can drag one VM onto another or select one or more VM's and choose Machine...Group from the menu bar. You can expand and collapse groups to save screen real estate, and you can Enter and Leave a group (think iPad navigation here) by using the right and left arrow keys when groups are selected.

But groups are more than passive folders, because you can now also perform operations on groups, rather than all the individual VMs. So if you have a multi-tiered solution you can start the whole stack up with just one click.

Autostart

Many VirtualBox users run dedicated services in their VMs, for example, running a Wiki. With these types of VM workloads, you really want the VM start up when the host machine boots up. So with 4.2 we've introduced a cross-platform Auto-start mechanism to allow you to treat VMs as host services.

Headless VM Launching

With VM's such as web servers, wikis, and other types of server-class workloads, the Console of the VM is pretty much redundant. For some time now VirtualBox has offered a separate launch mechanism for these VM's, namely the command-line interface commands VBoxHeadless or VBoxManage startvm ... --type headless commands. But with 4.2 we also allow you launch headless VMs from the Manager.

Simply hold down Shift when launching the VM from the Manager. It's that easy.

But how do you stop a headless VM? Well, with 4.2 we allow you to Close the VM from the Manager. (BTW best to use the ACPI Shutdown method which allows the guest VM to close down gracefully.)

Easy VM Creation

For our expert users, the New VM Wizard was a little tiresome, so now there's a faster 2-click VM creation mode. Just Hide the description when creating a new VM.

Powerful VMs

As the hosts have become more powerful, so are the guests that are running inside them. Here are some of the 4.2 features to accommodate them:

Virtual Network Interface Cards

With 4.2, it's now possible to create VMs with up to 36 NICs, when using the ICH9 chipset emulation. But with great power comes great responsibility (didn't Obi-Wan say something similar?), and so we have also introduced bandwidth limiting to prevent a rogue VM stealing the whole pipe.

VLAN tagging

Some of our users leverage VLANs extensively so we've enhanced the E1000 NICs to support this.

Processor Performance

If you are running a CPU which supports Nested Paging (aka EPT in the Intel world) such as most of the Core i5 and i7 CPUs, or are running an AMD Bulldozer or later, you should see some performance improvements from our work with these processors. And while we're talking Processors, we've added support for some of the more modern VIA CPUs too.

Powerful Automation

Because VirtualBox runs atop a fully blown operating system, it makes sense to leverage the capabilities of the host to run scripts that can drive the guest VMs. Guest Automation was introduced in a prior release but with 4.2 we've revamped the APIs to allow a richer and more powerful set of operations to be executed by the guest. Check out the IGuest APIs in the VirtualBox Programming Guide and Reference (SDK).

Powerful Platforms

All the hardcore engineering that has gone into 4.2 has been done for a purpose and that is to deliver a fast and powerful engine that can run almost any x86 OS because of the integrity of the virtualization. So we're pleased to add support for these platforms:

Mac OS X "Mountain Lion"
Windows 8
Windows Server 2012
Ubuntu 12.04 (“Precise Pangolin”)
Fedora 17
Oracle Linux 6.3
Solaris 11

Here's the proof:

We don't have time to go into the myriad of smaller improvements such as support for burning audio CDs from a guest, bi-directional clipboard control, drag-and-drop of files into Linux guests, etc. so we'll leave that as an exercise for the user as soon as you've downloaded from the Oracle or community site and taken a peek at the User Guide.

So all in all, a pretty solid release, one that we hope you'll enjoy discovering.

- FB

Java Summer Workshop in Tokyo

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 00:04:46 +0000

This time I had the chance to attend to an event at the Oracle Aoyama Center, the Java Summer Workshop 2012.

Although the event was mostly in Japanese, there were two links in English by Arun Gupta and Bert Ertman .

Arun Gupta introduced us to the world of Java EE 7 in a dynamic presentation where he showed improvements in EJB, JMS, JSF, etc including the very interesting WebSocket. More information on Java EE 7 can be found here.

Bert Ertman talked about Spring, or well, migrating from old Spring to Java EE 6. He made his presentation very appealing by using (images of) notes on a pinboard in his slides. Although I am not too much into Application Servers anymore it was refreshing to hear his talk and to notice that i am not too outdated.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7 Released!

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 13:54:30 +0000

Today we are proud to announce the general availability of Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7, the latest release of Oracle's enterprise-class software to simplify access to server-hosted applications. Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7 has gone through tens of thousands of hours of engineering and quality assurance hours, to make the product rock-solid. This new release delivers significant enhancements which provide rich user experiences, enhanced security, faster deployment, exceptional application responsiveness and expanded list of supported server operating systems and internet browsers.

Rich User Experiences: With Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7, users can run multiple applications on different physical monitors attached to their client device. This increases productivity for users in organizations such as call centers, financial institutions etc. Also with this release, improved performance for 3-D applications utilizing OpenGL 1.3 graphics extensions is supported. The above capabilities are achieved due to incorporating a new protocol engine, based on the X.org foundation X Server release X11R7.6. In addition, Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7 now supports audio-input capability for server-hosted Windows applications. This allows use of conferencing, training etc applications with Oracle Secure Global Desktop.

Enhanced Security: With Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7, connections to the server are made secure by default, during installation. This ensures optimal out-of-the-box security, eliminating the need for additional post installation tasks by the administrator and ensuring consistency for large enterprise deployments. Secure mode installation also enables connections between the Oracle Secure Global Desktop servers in an array to be encrypted. For more information, please refer to the Oracle Secure Global Desktop Security Guide for Release 4.7.

Faster Deployment: With Oracle VM 3 templates, anyone using Oracle VM 3 need not download, install and configure the supported operating system and the Oracle product(s) individually. A new Oracle VM 3 template that includes Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7 and Oracle Linux 5.8 can easily be imported and cloned from as a virtual machine within Oracle VM 3. This results in a nearly instant deployment and configuration of Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7.

Supported for Latest Platforms: With Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7, support for the latest internet browsers including Internet Explorer 9, Chrome and the latest Firefox ESR has been added. In addition, Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7 servers can now be installed and are supported on Oracle Linux 6 and Solaris 11 operating systems.

Exceptional application responsiveness: Exalogic is hardware and software engineered together to provide extreme performance for Java applications, Oracle Applications, and all other enterprise applications. Oracle Secure Global Desktop can run on Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud to provide secure remote access directly to Oracle Applications co-resident in Exalogic for an exceptionally responsive user experience. The following video from Oracle product management provides more details.

For more details regarding Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7, please refer to the Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.7 documentation.

Oracle's press announcement regarding this release can be found here.

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