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Here is a summary of how SUN Microsystems benefits EECS classes:
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271 Soda |
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271 Soda |
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271 Soda |
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90 SUN/Sunray1 displays in 4 labs 9 SUN/SPARC SunRay & login servers (SUN T5220, V440, V280) 38 SUN/AMD worksations (SUN W1100z, SUN Ultra20) 24 x86 worksations 6 x86 login servers 12 x86 backend servers - tapes, email, WEB, LDAP, etcThis represents over half of our servers and seats in our labs. Over 4000 students in EE and CS courses use these computers for programming assignments each semester.
We have 10 SUN Ultra20 workstations with 64-bit AMD cpus running Solaris 10 in 275 Soda. These are used primarily by CS61B to run Java IDEs such as NetBeans and Eclipse. They were donated by SUN in November 2005.
CS61B (Data Structures)
Uses Java in the NetBeans and Eclipse IDEs. This class was assigned
to a 34-seat SunRay lab until the instructor started using IDEs.
The load of 34 students starting an IDE all at once overwhelmed
the single SunRay server for that lab. So we moved the class to
a lab with workstations running Solaris, and the problem was solved.
CS9G (Java)
Overview of Java and IDEs, including NetBeans, Eclipse and Jipe
using Sun J2SE SDK on Solaris.
Each lab has one or more dedicated SUN servers. Most of the SunRays and servers have been purchased via the SUN Matching Grant Program since 2000.
We are running SunRay server version 3.1. The most useful new feature is the support for standard USB flash memory sticks. The SunRays in the labs are all on dedicated VLANs, and we have deployed a couple of Sunrays on the enterprise intranet. This is great for lecture rooms and kiosks. We are not using some of the more advanced features (yet) such as smart cards, multihead displays and hotdesking across servers.
Manager's Comments:
We are very pleased with the ease of maintenance of the SunRays and the
performance of the SunRay Enterprise Server software on our E420 and E280
servers.
I don't have hard numbers, but there has been a significant decrease in
maintenance time when compared with diskful UNIX or Windows workstations.
The only feature that is we miss is the "Failsafe" login mode under CDE.
We hope Sun will implement that in the next release of the server software.
Our servers are:
Technical references:
The labs:
Successes:
http://www.sun.com/products/sunray1/
http://www.sun.com/products/sunray1/whitepapers/
http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pub.cgi?file=sunray.help
- Each lab uses one or more servers. We have used as many as 45 SunRays
on one server, but for classes that put a heavy demand on the server,
we have reduced that to about 16 SunRays on one server.
- We have as many as 35 SunRays on one 100mb VLAN.
- The server and network performance is quite satisfactory.
- Each server is running Solaris and the SunRay Server Software.
- We are using pre-existing UNIX (LDAP) logins, not using smart cards.
- Over 2000 students in EE and CS courses use the SunRays for programming
assignments each semester.
- In just 2 cases, our SUN servers were overwhelmed by the concurrent
activity of 25+ students during a lab: CS61B running Eclipse and CS3
running Firefox and JVM. In the first case, we moved them to a lab
of individual SUN AMD-based workstations running Solaris X86. In the
second case we installed a more powerful server. We replaced a Sun
V280 (2 900-MHz USIII cpus, 8-GB RAM) with a Sun V440 (4 1.6-GHz USIIIi
cpus and 16-GB RAM).
- ease of network configuration and appliance setup
- fewer computers to patch, upgrade and monitor for network security
- fewer ethernet addresses (conserves addresses)
- using standard pre-existing Solaris software
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Kevin Mullally Manager, EECS Instructional Support Group email: kevinm@eecs.berkeley.edu |