[THIN] Re: To heck with Virtual Machines... I want virtual logons!

my .02 on this one. the idea of capturing an entire users session in a bubble ,so to speak, while easy to say, would not be an easy task. It's more then just what the app is. It is what the user is typing, doing, etc. and must all be captured into a single spot that can then be load balanced across multiple servers. the amount of data to keep real time would be immense and unless stored in RAM would become very slow once you get more then a few on a box. If kept on hard disk, the paging (or the information if stored on a network share) would become a bottleneck. Even if somehow you were able to throw the realtime session information, including keystrokes and settings, into a database somehow, the overall user experience would be very difficult to manage.



Jeff Pitsch wrote:
VMotion has it's limitations. You cannot simply save soemthing to disk and expect to move it cleanly at this point. Yes in the future this will probably happen but at this point you'd slow down the entire process because anytime you have to go outside of memory you slow things down. Virtualizing and moving a whole OS is one thing but virtualizing and moving pieces and parts of that OS i much difficult because you'd have to untangle the entire mess, move it, then reentangle it on the new OS without interrupting or disrupting any and all connections.


Jeff Pitsch
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server

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On 7/31/06, *Jim Kenzig http://ThinHelp.com* <jkenzig@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:jkenzig@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

But they are doing that with Vmotion and the virtual machine copy
so it stands to reason you could probably do it if you put the
memory as part of the virtual session logon. No? 


    */Andrew Wood <andrew.wood@.uk>/* wrote:

but its instance in time - you seem to be thinking of a
session in a static state.
Say I'm working on database entry application, or a business
objects report, or in a large word document cutting anad
pasting text between various documents. Its not good enough that the document or data entry to
be saved on a regular basis - if I want to transport my
session between servers I need to take that whole memory state
for each of my running processes. Maintaining that copy in a
transient and portable way - without losing data is going to
be complicated - imo you'd have to be able to replicate memory
states between servers writing to a disk and compressing for
transfer would take too long, especially for a complex, or
rapidly changing memory states.

        ------------------------------------------------------------------------
        *From:* thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
        <mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> [mailto:
        thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]
        *On Behalf Of *Jim Kenzig http://ThinHelp.com
        <http://thinhelp.com/>
        *Sent:* 31 July 2006 15:02
        *To:* thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
        *Subject:* [THIN] Re: To heck with Virtual Machines... I want
        virtual logons!

Ok think of it this way. Your logon is sandboxed into a
"virtual area of memory" there are tools like Vizioncore for
example that can take a virtual machine and compress it while
backing it up. Why not do this on the fly for sessions?
Compress, move decompress... I am not sure of the timeframe it
would take but it certainly is possible. I am not sure that
you really need to move memory other than the contents of the
clipboard anyways..with longhorn and the way it stores objects
in a db instead of a registry this all becomes possible I
think. Don't think backwards about how things work now and
try and apply it, think about how things could work and apply
it and you will see it is a very viable solution.
Jim


        */Jeff Pitsch <jepitsch@xxxxxxxxx
        <mailto:jepitsch@xxxxxxxxx>>/* wrote:

No, I'm talking of moving your session. You session is so
much more than simply the profile. I believe the OP was
referring to moving your entire session from one device to
another. That's what I'm referencing. You would have to
take all that information (page file, physical memory, etc
etc etc) conslidate it and move it. To me, that seems a
huge task to undertake and I don't see, currently, how it
would be viable.
Jeff Pitsch
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
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On 7/31/06, *Jim Kenzig http://ThinHelp.com
<http://thinhelp.com/>* < jkenzig@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:jkenzig@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

Yeah..the sunray was a cool idea but you can do that
with Citrix. It is just suspending the session and
putting it in a disconnect state.. not really moving
it anyplace.
And Jeff as far as size goes. There is no fricking
reason your profile should be that big.
The persons data files, favorites, etc should be
stored in a home directory on another files server.
I'm talking about server based computing here..not
your home laptop. The idea is that say for example I
have 5 word docuements open and my session needs to be
moved. The documents will be saved to the home
directory, the session moved and then reaccessed in
the same state as to where you left off on the new
server with the same 5 documents opened. The idea is something whose time has come and I really
do believe is the next thing you are going to see in
the virtualization world. Microsoft now owns all the
pieces to be able to do this with it's acquisition of
Softricity. I think MS should pay close attention to
this discussion and by continuing it here we could
work out all the possible scenarios and details of
what such a system would entail.
Jim



                */Matt Kosht <matt.kosht@/* wrote:
                Didn't Sun already attempt this with the Sunray? It
                has "hot desking"
                allowing you to disconnect and move around to other
                Sunrays keeping
                your session alive. Admittedly this is more a hardware
                solution. I
                don't think Sun ever got a lot of interest as you can
                do almost all of
                it with any thin client and a PS 4.0 server.

                http://www.sun.com/sunray/sunray2fs/

                I like your idea of having this software based, device
                and server
                independent ( a Vmotion style move of a session to
                another server is
                very cool). Get that C++ compiler busy Jim!


                On 7/28/06, Jim Kenzig http://ThinHelp.com
                <http://thinhelp.com/> wrote:
                >
                > Remember the Virtual Workplace video Citrix showed at
                Iforum about 4 or 5
                > years ago? It was very Star Trekkish with a guy
                walking around with a little
                > portable computer holding a tele/video conference
                with people around the
                > world. He went from his office, to his car and then
                to his home where he
                > plugged into a cradle and brought the conference up
                on his giant plasma TV.
                > They connected people from all over the world. When
                the channel got staticy
                > and dropped and then came back up, he went Oh never
                mind we just switched
                > over to a new server.
                >
                > Ok that was Citrix's vision of access back then. Any
                where, any place, and
                > any device. Fast forward to 2006. The CPS 4 package
                has much of this
                > functionality.. session reliability for example and
                application isolation so
                > apps don't step on each other. Conferencing built in
                and more.
                >
                > Now stay with me here and I will take you on a
                visionary dream of mine and
                > eureka moment I had last evening in my sleep. (and
                yeah this happens all the
                > time)
                >
                > Maybe we are approaching this whole virtualization
                thing backwards. Instead
                > of virtualizing servers and desktops I think we
                should be virtualizing user
                > profile sessions.
                >
                > Here is my dream. You know how VMWare has that
                Vmotion stuff where you can
                > move a machine over from one physical server to
                another and not miss a beat?
                > That is pretty awesome stuff. I started thinking
                (while I was dreaming of
                > course0 why can't someone come up with a way to have
                multiple identical
                > servers with the same apps loaded on them and an
                admin tool that can take a
                > users entire logon session profile(everything they
                are doing) and move JUST
                > THE SESSION with the profile over to another machine.
                And then I took it a
                > step further. It could be automated with a tool to
                monitor users sessions
                > and move ones over that are stressing the CPU over to
                a less used machine.
                > So instead of moving a whole server or machine over
                just move the user over.
                > This is sort of what happened in the virtual
                workplace video.
                >
                > I'm asking how hard can this be to do? Put the entire
                logon into a "virtual
                > session profile"..everything the user is doing. If
                the users session slows
                > down they get a flag that pops up that Asks if they
                would like to be moved
                > to a less busy server, if they say yes, it saves
                their session state, tells
                > the user to hang on a sec while it moves the session
                profile over to a new
                > server and then restores and restarts the session on
                the new server. A step
                > further...give the user the option to save their
                session logon state..apps
                > open etc into a "virtual session profile" so that the
                could connect back in
                > days, weeks or even months later exactly where they
                left off. (and it
                > wouldn't matter which machine they connect to) With
                programs like
                > softricity to hold the basic backend app information
                something like this
                > should be doable. This is not the same thing as
                virtual desktops...I want
                > virtual SESSION profiles not Desktops!
                >
                > Such a virtualization method would be way more useful
                than virtual machines
                > because you could do things like create a virtual
                profile with settings that
                > would not be changed and use it across your
                organization, you could then
                > have a flex type of setup that saved session settings
                and personal files in
                > another home storage folder if necessary.
                > The benefits being you never have to reboot a server
                with users on it, you
                > can have way more users on a real server than you can
                on a virtual server
                > and you would have much more control over users
                sessions as you could set up
                > a system to monitor only the ones you want. ...ie..
                always make sure that
                > the Directors virtual profile is sent to the least
                busy server. I know some
                > of this stuff exists today but this is the panacea I
                want. Think it will
                > ever happen? I do.
                >
                >
                >
                >
                >





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