Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.6

As stated in the beginning of this year Oracle has committed to keep Secure Global Desktop alive. With the release of the new Oracle SGD 4.6 they show to not only keep the product, but also continue in the development :)

"The new capabilities delivered in Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.6 underscore our focus on making applications easier to deploy, manage and support in virtualized datacenter environments."
Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president, Linux and Virtualization Engineering, Oracle

Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.6 has been released on September 10, 2010 and can be downloaded via the 'old' Sun Download Site.

Documentation of OSGD 4.6 (Oracle document collection):

• Platform Support and Release Notes
• Installation Guide
• Administration Guide
• Gateway Administration Guide
• User Guide

Oracle Secure Global Desktop 4.6 is the latest of many new desktop virtualization products and capabilities recently announced including new releases of Oracle VM VirtualBox, Sun Ray Software and Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. This demonstrates Oracle’s continued commitment to providing a comprehensive desktop to datacenter portfolio.

Secure Global Desktop stays alive after Oracle Sun merger

On January 27, Sun and Oracle have been merged into one company; Software. Hardware. Complete.

Oracle is continuing the Secure Global Desktop product as part of their virtualization technology group. The product has been placed within the Desktop Virtualization portfolio.

The announcement has made by Edward Screven, Chief Corporate Architect, during his webcast: "Oracle + Sun: Virtualization Strategy".
The sheets of this presentation are down loadable as well.

Good news for everyone working with Sun Secure Global Desktop or should we now refer to the product as Oracle Secure Global Desktop :)

Secure. Global. Desktop. Complete.

Secure Desktop, Going beyond the default security ...

On November 10, 2009 Sun Microsystems Netherlands organized a Sun Desktop Update Seminar for customers and Sun partners. The focus of this seminar was the new enhancement and possibilities of the Sun Desktop products focused on the new versions of Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Sun Ray Server Software and Sun Secure Global Desktop.

I was one of the speakers of this seminar and gave a presentation on the (new) security aspects and deployment options of Sun Secure Global Desktop.

Download theslides of my presentation:
Secure Desktop, Going beyond the default security ... .

Find here download links to the other presentations.

Sun Secure Global Desktop 4.5 to be released on May 12, 2009

The latest news of the new SSGD version was announced on the SSGD Forum by Jeff Jameson. 

Download version of 4.5 will be available at release on May 12, 2009. GA and the availability of the media kit is slated for May 26th, 2009.
The 4.5 documentation is already available on Suns Documentation site:

• Release Notes
• User Guide
• Installation Guide
• Administration Guide
• Gateway Administration Guide

Sun Secure Global Desktop 4.5 to be released in May 2009

In May 2009 the new version (4.5) of Sun Secure Global Desktop (SSGD) will be released. There are no Release Notes of this new version yet.

More information will be provided around the launch of the new version.

Sun Secure Global Desktop 4.41 released

The 4.41 version of Sun Secure Global Desktop has been released and can be downloaded via the following link:

https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/CDS-CDS_SMI-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?ProductRef=SGD-4.41-SP-LX-G-F@CDS-CDS_SMI


This updated contains the following updates/changes (see blog post "ssgd4.41 to be released soon" :

• New Command for Securing an SGD Server


• Pull-Down Header for Kiosk Mode Applications


• Service Tag Support


• Active Directory Authentication Log Filter


• Active Directory SSL Security Without Client Certificates

Documentation of the 4.41 release can be found at:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/1706.3
and on
http://www.filibeto.org/sun/sgd-users/sgd.html#sgd-4.41-docs

SSGD version 4.41 to be released in September 2008

Sun is releasing the new version of Sun Secure Global Desktop (4.41) in September 2008.

The release date was announced in the Sun Secure Global Desktop Forum:

(http://forums.sun.com/forum.jspa?forumID=815)

The release notes of this new version can be found at:
http://docs.sun.com/source/820-4905/index.html

SSGD version 4.41 to be released soon

A small update to the Sun Secure Global Desktop is about to be released. This update contains 5 new features (besides 123 bug and 1 documentation fix).

• New Command for Securing an SGD Server
  
  A very easy command to enable security without changing files, creating certificates manually. More on this subject in a later post.
  


• Pull-Down Header for Kiosk Mode Applications
  
  Sometimes needed to temporary switch between your local and remote session. This option can be changed per application on the command-line.
  


• Service Tag Support
  
  More information on Sun Connection: Register
  


• Active Directory Authentication Log Filter
  
  Once again a better way to perform debugging :)
  


• Active Directory SSL Security Without Client Certificates
  
  This will make it easier to connect to Active Directory in a secure way. The secure connection is needed to be able to let users change there Active Directory password via SGD.
  

The documentation of this new release can be found on the document website of Sun: Sun Secure Global Desktop Software 4.41 Collection. (With a PDF-version of the Administration Guide :) )

The SSGD 4.41 version is currently not yet available for download, but will be soon.

A deep dive in the Alps

Last week I attended the "Deep Dive in the Alps"-event (officially know as Software Technical Event @ Sun Grenoble Engineering Center).

Lots of new information, too many things to put in one post. Therefor I will make multiple posts about the Deep Dive in the Alps :)

A small starter:

• There is a JSR-168 Portlet for Sun Secure Global Desktop.

An Enterprise portal is a framework for integrating information, people and processes across organizational boundaries. It provides a single point of entry and is designed to aggregate information through application-specific portlets.

"Portals unlock business processes and resources for external access,
while maintaining the security, identity and access controls"
- The Burton Group

The current portlet version (1.00.901) is working for SSGD 4.2/4.3/4.3.1
Since there have been made changes in the authentication a new portlet will be created. The new portlet will make use of the new Web-services for SSGD.


Although the dive in the Alps was deep,
"The world is Flat"

Sun Secure Global Desktop 4.4 download available

The new Sun Secure Global Desktop version 4.4 is available for download !

Feature headlines fro this version:

• New web-based Management Console


• Solaris 10 Trusted Extensions as an SGD client, SGD server and application server platform


• VDI support with MyDesktop


• Windows client Roaming Profile support


• Idle Timeout


• Server rename

Download SSGD 4.4

As stated before the documentation for this version can be found on the Sun Documentation website. The documentation can also be downloaded from filibeto.org.

More information wikis.sun.com

Special thanks to Andy Hall

for providing this information

Sun released SGD 4.4 Documentation.

SUN has released the documentation of the new Sun Secure Global Desktop 4.4.

Besides some small neat new features (like 'Automatic Timeout of Idle User Sessions' and 'Support for Solaris 10 OS Trusted Extensions') the biggest change will be the Administration Console. Up till version 4.3 management of SSGD is done with the Object Manager and the Array Manager. Version 4.4 has the new Web based Console.

The SGD Administration Console is now a single point of administration and is dynamic. For instance, when logging in to the SGD Administration Console you can directly see which servers are up and running and how many webtop and application sessions are running on each server.

More on the new SSGD version in later posts. Look at the release notes of SGD 4.4 if you can't wait :)

The new documentation be found here.

Introduction to Sun Secure Global Desktop

It should be wise to start this blog with a small introduction of Sun Secure Global Desktop (SSGD).

In 2005 Sun Microsystems bought the company Tarantella and renamed the product Tarantella Secure Global Desktop to Sun Secure Global Desktop. Tarantella was by then almost 10 years old and was started as a small project within Santa Cruz Operation. The goal of this project was

"any application, any client, anywhere":
to provide access to applications of any type (hosted on back-end servers) from any client device that supported a Java-enabled web browser.

Source: Wikipedia

The current version of Sun Secure Global Desktop is version 4.31 released in May 2007 still has the same goal. When looking a the main product picture of SSGD all the objectives of the goal are still visible:



Besides the full list of features SSGD can be easily modified, extended and incorporated.
I have the intention to elaborate on these modifications, extensions and incorporations within this blog.

Start of the Virtual Desktops Blog

This is the start of a new blog. The main purpose of this blog will be to share information about Virtual Desktops mostly based on Sun Secure Global Desktop (formally known as Tarantella).

My current position within the organization Everett is Senior Technical Consultant Secure Platform Services. Besides having a broad focus I am also trying to specialize in the field of Secure Remote Access. To become a Premier Solution Provider of Tarantella we (Everett) performed the Tarantella Certification Training, which I attended in 2004. After this training I have done multiple totally different Tarantella projects. During those days Everett was also partner of Sun Microsystems, so after Sun bought Tarantalla, we knew the product and the new owner of the product. After this sell we still are doing many projects with the newly named product Sun Secure Global Destop.