[THIN] Re: To heck with Virtual Machines... I want virtual logons!
- From: "Jim Kenzig http://ThinHelp.com" <jkenzig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 05:16:42 -0700 (PDT)
What you measured them? : ) Yeah I just remember them being big...they were
Microvax II's, was it the PDP boards that were bigger?
Jim
Rick Mack <Rick.Mack> wrote:
Hi Jim,
Thems not the MicroVaxes I worked on (boards 10.45 x 8.43 inches). NASA must
have been using bloated up MicroVaxes, or were you using real and not Micro
VAXen?
Used to be able to do some amazing things with VAX clusters.
Over 20 years after the VAX cluster hit the streets Microsoft have finally got
a "clustereable" product in Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003.
Pity it's designed for parallel computing because it'd make a really
interesting TS environment. Automatic session failover and everything....
regards,
Rick
Ulrich Mack
Volante Systems
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Jim Kenzig http://ThinHelp.com
Sent: Tue 1/08/2006 10:36
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: To heck with Virtual Machines... I want virtual logons!
You are correct they did!! it was pretty novel idea to say the least. I used to
work on Microvax II's at NASA in the day. I miss the old 2 ft by 2 ft computer
cards.
Jim
Steve Snyder wrote:
At the risk of dating myself I'll point out that the old microVAX clusters used
shared memory between the machines - a technique that though it may not
necessarily provide the complete solution for your idea it's something that
could likely facilitate its feasibility nonetheless. If only Microsoft can
catch up with where DEC was ages ago...
On 8/1/06, Jim Kenzig http://ThinHelp.com <> 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 <> 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] On Behalf Of
Jim Kenzig http://ThinHelp.com
Sent: 31 July 2006 15:02
To: 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 <> 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
Forums not enough?
Get support from the experts at your business
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On 7/31/06, Jim Kenzig http://ThinHelp.com
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
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 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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