RE: Thin clients -- MIDRANGE-L

I just don't see it happening.

In your multiple applications bundled into a single VM, you're not getting rid of the OS, you're
simply providing a new one. Granted, that OS may be simpler and more securable and Windows/Linux.

It all come down to what you call an OS, in simple terms, an OS talks to the hardware and provided
services to the applications running in it.

i5/OS is a perfect example. What we call i5/OS isn't an OS. It's a combination of VM + an OS running
on a hypervisor.

Now the only place this might make sense is in the data center. Instead of running a web server on
Windows, you could run a web server VM that used it's own proprietary OS. Heck with Linux providing
the basis for the VM Web-OS, you could do it now.

Just think of the file/web/email servers you can get as hardware appliances today. Now, instead of an
physical machine, you could just get a VM image to run on your own hardware.

Just my .02

Charles

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Pete Helgren
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 3:45 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Thin clients

Loyd,

"Are you saying there would be a VM for Word, another for
Acrobat, and another for Outlook?" Nope. I guess you
"could" do it that way if that was necessary but I would
expect that vendors would have a tool for bundling
applications into a VM or offer a pre packaged VM with a set
of applications. An "Office VM" for example (although MS
makes too much money on OS's to go to hypervisor layer VM's).
The idea is that if you package and deliver a set of
applications that can't be modified or updated by the end
user, you have a more secure environment. Of course you'd
want to package other applications as well and perhaps in
some cases you'd just go ahead and deliver a whole OS with
installed applications as your VM. However, switching
running VM's on a hypervisor could be easy as clicking an
icon on the task bar. I switch between running VM's in XP
all the time (I have Windows 98 in one VM and Linux in
another) and it is quick and seamless. Of course these are
running on top of an OS but there is no reason they couldn't
perform the same on a hypervisor.

Copy and paste would be something to consider as you
determined what to bundle together and what you could run in
an individual VM. I suppose the hypervisor layer could do
this. However, since this is all theoretical at the moment,
we'll assume that it IS a hypervisor feature
:-) That would take care of it.

Pete

lgoodbar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Sorry, but ewww. Are you saying there would be a VM for

Word, another

for Acrobat, and another for Outlook? And when a user clicked on a
Word attachment in Outlook, it wouldn't view because Word is on
"another computer" for all intents (not local to Outlook)?

Does copy

and paste work between VMs? Not like when Windows runs

multiple remote

desktops - there you rely on Windows to orchestrate the

copy and paste

functionality. But at the hypervisor level?

That sounds "too secure". And we all know what a secure

computer is -

powered off and unplugged in its own closet.

Loyd Goodbar
Senior programmer/analyst
BorgWarner
TS Water Valley
662-473-5713
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces+lgoodbar=borgwarner.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces+lgoodbar=borgwarner.com@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Pete Helgren
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 14:16
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Thin clients

Booth,

Actually, it is even simpler than that. The hypervisor

vendor would

develop a hypervisor that worked with a specific set of common
hardware components. You could then boot the machine, not

to an OS,

but to the hypervisor itself. The hypervisor might be burned as
firmware or is might boot from the network. The hypervisor would
access a config file that would identify what applications are
available and those applications would boot as VM's on the

hypervisor

layer, pulling the software off a server (similar to Citrix

or other

thin client applications). No local OS, no local file

system (unless

it was needed). So you could have a diskless workstation with just
hardware, memory and CPU. Keeps things simple from a management
standpoint. Yes,

if there was new hardware, the hypervisor would have to

support it but

you *could* also have the VM itself BE a Windows or Linux

OS. Again

the machine itself wouldn't be running and OS, just the

hypervisor to

boot the VM. So the VM could be a standalone app (like word
processing) or a complete OS with installed applications. But the
hypervisor is the key since it could support many VM's of different
types.

The hardware/software savings is probably not the compelling reason
(unless open source projects started writing to the

hypervisor layer

negating the need for an OS) and you can be sure that some

application

vendors would still change for their apps, even if they

were running

on a hypervisor instead of an OS but the whole issue of

management is

even further simplified here. You have hypervisor and hardware.
Anyone who runs on an OS (ANY OS) and that is all of us, knows that
the OS contributes to some application management issues

(not ALL but some).

Eliminating the OS just further reduces the complexity.

Mind you, this is just an idea I have been musing over.

Reality is a

long way off.

Pete Helgren

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