Sunpci Card in the Enterprise

SunPCi™ Card In The Enterprise

A Sun White Paper

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, SunPCi, Solaris Operating Environment, Ultra, NFS, JumpStart and “The Network Is The Computer” are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd.

Please Recycle SunPCi Card In The Enterprise

The SunPCi™ card is a cost-effective hardware and software product that provides full PC compatibility to customers who wish to run PC applications on Sun™ workstations. The SunPCi card supports all PCI-based Sun Ultra™ workstations including the Ultra 5, 10, 30, 60 and 450 workstations. The SunPCi card brings together the powerful features of the Solaris Operating Environment™ software and the ease-of-use of DOS and Microsoft Windows programs, giving users UltraSPARC™ performance for technical computing and also providing access to DOS and Microsoft Windows applications.

When deploying the SunPCi card in the enterprise, systems administrators and IS managers are faced with a number of configuration and deployment options which can significantly affect the success of the deployment. This paper will explore many of those options, in the hope that the reader will be able to make better informed decisions about the optimal configuration of the SunPCi card in his/her environment. Additionally, “tricks and tips” will be discussed that may not be obvious from the product documentation.

The SunPCi Co-processor Card

Sun’s SunPCi card provides a complete PC motherboard integrated onto a PCI card for use with PCI-based Sun workstations. The SunPCi card is accessed through the standard Sun keyboard and mouse, with display provided through an X11 window on the Solaris CDE desktop.

The SunPCi card was designed and built as a real PC using only PC components and following de facto and emerging PC hardware design standards to provide an ideal PC compatibility solution for those with demanding DOS and Windows needs:

1 • Compatible

The SunPCi card runs standard DOS and Microsoft Windows 95 operating environments and applications (Windows 98 and Windows NT support are scheduled to be available as future software updates). Only applications which make use of optional PC hardware (i.e. special-purpose PCI cards or specialized graphics adapters) may not work correctly through the SunPCi card.

• High Performance

The SunPCi card is designed to provide competitive performance with desktop PCs. Unlike other designs, the SunPCi card has its own processor, memory, PCI bus and peripherals. CPU-intensive applications running on the SunPCi card perform the same as they would on a comparably configured PC.

• Highly Integrated with Solaris Operating Environment Software

The SunPCi card is tightly integrated with the Solaris Operating Environment software, enabling seamless operation. Specialized software enables the SunPCi card to share a number of the Sun workstation’s resources including file systems, peripherals (floppy and CD-ROM devices), printers, network interface, and the Sun workstation keyboard, mouse and display. In essence, the PC environment is treated as just another application within the Solaris Operating Environment.

• Highly Integrated with PC Networking

The SunPCi card operates exactly like a networked PC. SunPCi card users can be members of standard TCP/IP networks and may interact with others using standard Ethernet-based PC LAN technologies and protocols.

SunPCi Co-Processor Card Overview

The philosophy behind the SunPCi card is to provide components on the card which are essential to performance while employing software to leverage existing resources in the Sun workstation. SunPCi card hardware includes:

• 300MHz AMD K6-2 processor with 512 KB of external cache • 64 MB of 100MHz SDRAM (upgradable to 256 MB using standard JEDEC DIMMs) • SoundBlaster compatible sound with monaural microphone input and stereo line-in and line-out • PC serial, parallel and USB ports (one of each) • External VESA-standard SVGA (HD15) connector for support of an optional external VGA monitor (up to 1280 x 1024)

2 SunPCi Card In The Enterprise • April 1999 SunPCi card software and drivers provide:

• The SunPCi application and X11 based GUI • X-Windows display of the PC desktop in up to 16 million colors at 1280x1024 resolution • Access to the Solaris Operating Environment software and network file systems • Access to Solaris Operating Environment printers • PC hard disk emulation in the Solaris Operating Environment file system • Shared access to the workstation Ethernet interface • Workstation floppy and CD-ROM access • Access from the workstation keyboard and mouse

SunPCi Card Hardware

SunPCi card hardware is provided on a standard PCI Long Card. The main back-panel of the SunPCi card provides audio and USB connectors as well as the HD15 VGA connector. The SunPCi card occupies a single slot in the Sun workstation; a second back-panel provides the serial and parallel port for the SunPCi card. The SunPCi card is available for installation in all PCI-based Ultra desktop systems, including the Ultra 5, 10, 30, 60 and 450 workstations.

SunPCi Card Software

The visible portion of SunPCi card software is the GUI interface which is used to control and manipulate the PC window on the Sun workstation screen. The remaining software consists of x86 and SPARC™ drivers which integrate the SunPCi card into the Solaris Operating Environment.

SunPCi Card In The Enterprise 3 Disk Storage Options

The SunPCi card supports several file storage options. Your choice amongst these options will involve a tradeoff between performance and ease of administration.

Emulated Hard Drives

The emulated hard disks (C:, and optionally, D:) are implemented as a single large binary file under the Solaris Operating Environment software. From within the SunPCi card environment, these objects appear to be “real” hard disks; on the Solaris Operating Environment side, there is no way to directly manipulate individual files within the disk image. As with any Solaris Operating Environment file, they may be stored on the host workstation or stored on a network volume (via NFS™, CIFS, etc.).

Host Workstation Filesystem

Solaris Operating Environment software directories visible to the host workstation may also be made available to the SunPCi card by mapping a directory to a drive letter, just as you would with a “real” PC network share. The UNC path used for the mount is derived from the Solaris Operating Environment pathname. For example, “\\EXPORT\LOCAL” would be used to access /export/local on the host workstation. (This type of path will be henceforth referred to as a “pseudo-UNC” path.)

Network (CIFS) Shares

As with any networked PC, CIFS fileshares provided by servers on the network (e.g. Windows NT Server) may be mapped to drive letters using a standard UNC path.

4 SunPCi Card In The Enterprise • April 1999 Table 1 summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of each of these approaches.

Emulated hard Emulated hard drive stored on drive stored on Host workstation Network (CIFS) host workstation network server filesystem share

Performance Good Fair Good Fair Bootable device Yes Yes No No Ease of backup Fair Excellent Good Excellent Ease of application Fair Fair Good Excellent distribution

Table 1 Disk storage options for the SunPCi card

In summary, to simplify the distribution of a standard PC boot environment, take advantage of the emulated disk drives (C: and D:). Emulated drives may be placed on local disks for best performance, or on network drives for simplified administration. To enable single- location network-wide update of particular applications or data, use mapped network drives. Per-user data and shared file areas should almost certainly be kept on network drives since this critical data is easily backed up, is well placed for sharing/locking when accessed by multiple users, and will be available regardless of which particular workstation an individual decides to use.

Using Printers

Three types of printers are supported by the SunPCi card: SunPCi card printers, Solaris Operating Environment printers and PC network printers.

SunPCi Card Printers

The SunPCi card includes its own serial, parallel and USB ports (one each). Local printers may be connected to any of these ports and installed using the Windows 95 “Add Printer” wizard.

SunPCi Card In The Enterprise 5 Solaris Operating Environment Printers

Printers accessible to the host workstation may be made available to the SunPCi card by using the “Add Printer” wizard. Proceed as if you are attaching to a network printer; when prompted, browse the “Entire Network” and choose “SunPCi Host”. The print spools available to the host workstation will appear here. Choose one, and complete the wizard dialog normally.

PC Network Printers

PC network printers may be accessed in the traditional sense, either by browsing Network Neighborhood or by using the “Add Printer” wizard.

Using The CD-ROM Drive

Unlike the A:, C: and D: drives, the host workstation’s CD-ROM drive is not permanently available as a drive under Windows 95. You must explicitly map the Solaris Operating Environment CD-ROM path to an unused drive letter in order to use the CD-ROM drive.

To access a CD-ROM:

1. Place the disc in the CD-ROM drive.

2. Mount the disc under the Solaris Operating Environment. If the Volume Manager is running in the Solaris Operating Environment (the default), the disc will be automatically mounted for you within a few seconds. If not, you must mount the disc using the Solaris Operating Environment “mount” command (as the superuser). 3. Map an unused drive letter to the pseudo-UNC path which represents the Solaris Operating Environment CD-ROM, e.g. map X: to “\\CDROM\CDROM0”. 4. You can now access the disc.

5. When you are finished, unmap the drive and eject the disc.

Note that the CD-ROM drive is not directly accessible by the SunPCi card, so PC applications that expect to be able to directly control the CD-ROM drive (e.g. multimedia titles) may not work as expected because they cannot stream media directly from the drive. Direct control of the CD-ROM drive will be supported in a future revision of the SunPCi card software.

6 SunPCi Card In The Enterprise • April 1999 Changing Default C: Drive Size

When you run the SunPCi card application, the startup script looks for a C: disk image file (~/pc/C.diskimage); if it doesn’t find one, it creates a new C: drive for you. The default size for C: is 256 MB. Once the drive is created, there is no way to grow (or shrink) its size.

To change the default size of the C: drive:

1. Edit (as superuser) the script “/opt/SUNWspci/bin/sunpci”.

2. Look for a line that says “DISK_SIZE=256”.

3. Change “256” to the desired value; 100 is the suggested minimum, and 2000 is the current maximum.

Networking Issues

With few exceptions, networking on the SunPCi card works just as you would expect. From the perspective of Windows 95, you have a generic Ethernet card with an NDIS driver; any services or protocols that can use that platform on a “real” PC should work on the SunPCi card. Examples include: DHCP, Microsoft Networking and Netware clients, TCP/IP and IPX/SPX protocol stacks, etc.

Although the SunPCi card and the host workstation share the same physical Ethernet connection, they are treated as two separate computers on the network. If you are using TCP/ IP, the host workstation and the SunPCi card must be assigned separate IP addresses.

One side effect of the way that the network multiplexing is implemented is that the SunPCi card will not “see” the host workstation on the network and vice versa. In other words, although either one can access every other host on the network, they cannot communicate directly with each other using the network. If it is a requirement to establish network connections between the SunPCi card and the host workstation, you can establish static routes on both systems and use another host or router on the network as a proxy. Here is an example, assuming that:

• The SunPCi card has IP address 192.9.200.1 • The host workstation has IP address 192.9.200.2 • There is another system on the network (our routing proxy) with IP address 192.9.200.3

To allow IP connectivity between the host workstation and the SunPCi card, you need to do the following:

SunPCi Card In The Enterprise 7 1. On the SunPCi card (within Windows 95): route add 192.9.200.2 192.9.200.3 2. On the host workstation: route add 192.9.200.1 192.9.200.3 1 3. On the routing proxy: route add 192.9.200.1 192.9.200.3 0 route add 192.9.200.2 192.9.200.3 0

Network connectivity without the use of a proxy router will be supported in a future revision of the SunPCi card software.

Video Options

The SunPCi card supports two different video interfaces. The default video mode is to use the host workstation’s display; the PC “monitor” appears as a window under CDE. Users may easily move between the SunPCi card session and other CDE applications, cut and paste between applications, etc. One limitation of this mode is that the SunPCi card display resolution (as set by Windows 95 Display Properties) must be less than the CDE desktop resolution. For example, a SunPCi card window at 1024x768 might be displayed within a 1280x1024 CDE desktop.

Because the SunPCi card application is an X-Windows application, you can direct it to display the window on any X-capable device on the network by setting the DISPLAY environment variable or invoking the SunPCi card application with the optional “-display” command line option. Note, however, that remoting the SunPCi card display is likely to result in significantly lower video performance within the SunPCi card window.

The SunPCi card also includes a “real” onboard SVGA controller. To use this mode, invoke the SunPCi card application with the “-vga” command line option and make sure that Windows is configured to use the “SiS” display adapter drivers instead of the “SunPCi” display adapter drivers. The video output for the SunPCi card will now appear at the HD15 VGA connector on the SunPCi card backplate instead of on the host workstation screen. This allows you to hook up a PC monitor and run in a “dual-headed” configuration. VGA performance will be improved in this mode, applications running at different resolutions will run full screen and certain features (e.g., DirectDraw support) will be available that are not available with the SunPCi card’s X-Windows display drivers.

Many newer Sun monitors include both 13W3 and HD15 inputs and feature a front panel A/B switch for choosing between them. If you have such a monitor and want to use the SVGA video drivers, you can cable both the host workstation and SunPCi card video outputs to the monitor, and use the A/B switch to toggle between the displays. This is an ideal solution for environments with limited desk space.

8 SunPCi Card In The Enterprise • April 1999 If you choose to use the SVGA video drivers, the mouse will not automatically attach to and detach from the SunPCi card application session. You must manually attach and detach the mouse using meta-M (M plus the “black diamond” key on your keyboard). When using the SunPCi card’s X Windows display driver, the SunPCi display is on the workstation monitor, and the mouse will automatically attach and detach as you move it into and out of the SunPCi card application window.

Systems Management

From the perspective of systems management, the SunPCi card behaves like any other networked PC. This fact yields a number of options for administration of the SunPCi card software environment.

Emulated hard drives (C: and D:) are nothing more than large binary files under the Solaris Operating Environment, making them very easy to distribute using conventional UNIX® tools. Administrators can prepare a prototype disk on their own system, then simply copy the disk image to a desired set of users. This is an extremely effective way of approaching initial deployment, as well as an easy way to repair a badly maligned system (simply reinstall a “known good” disk image).

Multiple C: drives can be created with different software, configuration options or even OS revisions on them, and users can change environments by simply restarting the SunPCi card application with a different command line argument. This facility is invaluable for software developers and beta testers who need access to multiple environments or a controlled test environment.

Emulated C: and D: drives can be made shared resources using the standard Windows tools, allowing systems administrators to view, modify and update disk contents remotely and/or using automated procedures.

Finally, since the SunPCi card presents a standard NDIS interface to Windows, agent-based network administration frameworks such as Tivoli Enterprise software work as expected.

Deployment Scenarios

For purposes of illustration, let’s look at three hypothetical deployment opportunities for the SunPCi card and how they might affect your configuration choices.

SunPCi Card In The Enterprise 9 Scenario #1 - Fully Network Based

Metropolis City College has a student population of 100,000 and an incredibly small operating budget that is shrinking every year. All departments on campus, including IT, are constantly being forced to “do more with less.”

The Director of Student Computing, Yuni Karogawa, faces a number of significant challenges. She has a staff of four systems administrators to service a computing community of over 100,000 users; obviously, systems administration procedures must be highly efficient, centralized and cost effective. The computer knowledge level of her users varies from “novice” to “expert” to “hacker king.” Although MCC is a strong believer in UNIX desktop systems and has been a longtime Sun workstation customer, Yuni is facing significant pressure to deliver the ability to run PC applications. Most of the computing resources on campus are of the “public use” variety, i.e., no one user “owns” a particular machine. Instead, users perform their computing tasks at public work areas, sitting down at the first system that is available.

Yuni has decided to equip the public Sun workstations with SunPCi cards. She is quite concerned about disk space requirements because giving each potential user their own copy of all of the standard campus applications would require a tremendous amount of disk storage on the network servers. She also needs to minimize the number of user errors that might occur to keep her small staff from being inundated with support calls.

Yuni created a prototype C: drive using her own Sun workstation and SunPCi card. This drive image and its associated files are placed in the ~/pc directory of each SunPCi card user; in this way, every user starts out with a “known good” PC environment. If the user’s environment gets hopelessly misconfigured, support time can be minimized by simply reinitializing the user’s C: drive from the “known good” disk image.

Because the users’ C: drives are stored in their home directories on network servers, their PC environment “follows them” when they sit down at any public workstation.

Standard campus applications are stored on network servers and used by mapping drive letters to network shares. Installing these applications in a centralized fashion yields several benefits:

• Disk storage is minimized; only a single copy of each application need be installed • Application upgrades need to be performed once, in one location • Application installations can be write-protected to minimize tampering • License metering can be easily implemented

In the case of MCC, the small performance hit taken when accessing the C: drive over the network is a small price to pay for the reduced systems administration workload.

10 SunPCi Card In The Enterprise • April 1999 Scenario #2 - Partially Network Based

At a large financial institution, trader work areas currently contain both a Sun workstation and a PC. Space on the trader’s desk is at a premium, and the need to manage two separate computers per user is a systems administration nightmare. Wally Phillips, a system administrator, has been chartered with addressing these issues.

Company policy dictates that essential PC applications be replicated on each desktop; a failed application server could cost the firm millions of dollars in lost trading activity. User data, on the other hand, is required to be stored on network servers. Data is heavily shared, many data are generated by real-time transaction feeds, and centralized, secure and guaranteed backup are essential.

Wally decided to use the SunPCi card as an alternative to the PC on each user’s desk. Using his own Sun workstation and SunPCi card, Wally configured prototype C: and D: drives that contain Windows 95 plus all of the required PC applications. User data are accessed via standard PC techniques (mapping drive letters to network shares).

Wally knew that many of the PC applications used by the traders were custom built-in-house applications that ran at a variety of standard PC resolutions. With that in mind, Wally chose to use the SunPCi card’s onboard VGA controller so that all of those applications ran fullscreen. To free up even more valuable desk space, Wally cabled both the workstation’s and SunPCi card’s video outputs to the same Sun monitor, allowing him to remove the old PC completely.

Traders can now run both Solaris Operating Environment applications and PC applications, at full speed on the same system. They can use the monitor’s A/B switch to toggle back and forth between the CDE and Windows desktop displays. In short, the only significant change to the trader’s user experience is a large increase in the amount of space available on their desk!

Scenario #3 - Fully Standalone

Major Charles Fennek, a systems administrator for the military, supports the use of Sun workstations in battlefield management. There is a requirement to run PC applications as well as Solaris Operating Environment applications. The systems are drop shipped into a battle zone and are configured on the spot. There is never any guarantee that the system disk images have survived the rigors of battlefield transportation so the disks are wiped and reinstalled upon system deployment.

Major Fennek has configured his mobile command center with a Sun server set up to install client systems using the JumpStart™ installation framework. This provides quick and reliable configuration of large numbers of Solaris Operating Environment software clients using network install. Although the systems will be deployed on a battlefield network, they are treated as standalone systems because there is no guarantee that a given system will be available (or even intact!) at any given time.

SunPCi Card In The Enterprise 11 Back at the home office, Major Fennek used his Sun workstation and SunPCi card to configure prototype C: and D: drive images that contain Windows 95 and all of the PC applications needed on the battlefield. These drive images, along with the SunPCi card software package itself, were integrated into the JumpStart procedure in the mobile command center. As a result, when the Sun systems are configured on the battlefield, not only is the Solaris Operating Environment software installed and configured, but the complete PC operating environment (Windows 95, applications, and data) is installed and configured as well. In just a few minutes, a complete standalone system is configured and ready to go.

Conclusion

As has been shown, the SunPCi card is a flexible solution for Sun workstation customers seeking an effective, hardware-based PC compatibility solution. Offering a range of deployment options, support for Solaris Operating Environment software and PC network resources, and leveraging the host workstation's video and removable media, the SunPCi card provides the functionality and familiarity of PCs alongside technical applications running under the Solaris Operating Environment software. And, because it is compatible with a variety of Sun and third-party network management packages, the SunPCi card is a cooperative network neighbor in heterogeneous enterprise environments.

Given its breadth of customization options and ease of administration, the SunPCi card can satisfy the range of PC applications requirements of most users, network administrators, and information systems executives.

12 SunPCi Card In The Enterprise • April 1999 SunPCi Card In The Enterprise 13 Sun Microsystems, Inc. 901 San Antonio Road Palo Alto, CA 94303 650 960-1300

For U.S. Sales Office locations, call: 800 821-4643 In California: 800 821-4642

Australia: (02) 413 2666 Belgium: 32 2 716 7911 Canada: 416 477-6745 Finland: 358-0-502 27 00 France: (1) 30 67 50 00 Germany: (0) 89-46 00 8-0 Hong Kong: 852 802 4188 Italy: 039 60551 Japan: (03) 221-7021 Korea: 822-563-8700 Latin America: 415 688-9464 The Netherlands: 033 501234 New Zealand: (04) 499 2344 Nordic Countries: +46 (0) 8 623 90 00 PRC: 861-831-5568 Singapore: 224 3388 Spain: (91) 5551648 Switzerland: (1) 825 71 11 Taiwan: 2-514-0567 UK: 0276 20444

Elsewhere in the world, call Corporate Headquarters: 650 960-1300 Intercontinental Sales: 650 688-9000