Re: Thin clients -- MIDRANGE-L

"I just don't see it happening."

Perhaps not. As I read the article I just began to think about how that could simplify some applications. Lets say that you have a CRM app that has a built in order entry and email. Right now, even if you delivered the whole thing as a browser based app, you'd have to do a considerable amount of tweaking and lock down on any OS to give them that capability and ONLY that. If it was a traditional "green screen" application, you could deliver it on a 5250 terminal and never have to worry about them surfing the net, downloading stuff, playing CD and DVD's and all the other things that employees do to "fill their time" while working. But if you have the client app running on an OS, you have to do quite a bit of work to keep a user from using other features of the OS. With the approach I have been talking about you deliver only what is needed to the user. Period. And, since you don't host in an OS, you don't have to worry about locking other stuff down.

It is all conjecture anyway. Until there ARE applications that run in a VM NOT hosted on an OS, we won't know what this would look like in "real life".

Pete

Wilt, Charles wrote:

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

--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.

This e-mail transmission contains information that is intended to be confidential and privileged. If you receive this e-mail and you are not a named addressee you are hereby notified that you are not authorized to read, print, retain, copy or disseminate this communication without the consent of the sender and that doing so is prohibited and may be unlawful. Please reply to the message immediately by informing the sender that the message was misdirected. After replying, please delete and otherwise erase it and any attachments from your computer system. Your assistance in correcting this error is appreciated.