Northern Arizona University

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Northern Arizona University (NAU) needs to make use of the latest IT technologies to meet student expectations and to provide for hands-on learning in the classroom. The 3,500 students who study computer information systems or any other discipline at The W.A. Franke College of Business (FCB) rely on a lab to get hands-on experience with tools and technologies. Before 2002, the labs included 150 Windows-based PCs but featured few UNIX workstations. The college wanted a separate UNIX lab but lacked the budget, space, and IT personnel for one.

In 2002 the FCB learned about Sun desktop virtualization technologies. Unlike PCs that run only one desktop environment, a virtual solution would enable students to access Windows and UNIX desktops from a single thin client. To test the solution's viability, IT personnel deployed 16 Sun Ray thin client devices and several Sun Fire V240 servers - the first Sun equipment of this type deployed on campus. The thin clients access either UNIX desktops that run on the Sun servers or Windows desktops that run on Dell 2650 servers, along with Windows Terminal Server and Citrix software.

The Sun desktop virtualization solution proved to be cheaper, more accessible, manageable, and secure than the traditional PC solution. Due to these results, IT personnel deployed an additional 150 Sun Ray thin clients in 2006. The Sun Ray thin clients were a mix of Sun Ray 2, Sun Ray 170, and Sun Ray 270 and were deployed in the college's lab and in the recently constructed student collaborative workspaces. In addition, IT personnel deployed several Sun Fire X4200 M2 Servers to help host UNIX environments.

At the same time, the college also deployed two Sun Fire T2000 Servers with the Sun Secure Global Desktop software. Eliminating the need for Citrix, Sun Secure Global Desktop integrates the Sun virtual desktop solution with NAU's existing desktop PCs. As a result, users can also access their virtual Windows and UNIX desktop environments from PCs or mobile computers running nearly any Web browser with Internet access. Commenting on NAU's decision to replace Citrix with Sun Secure Global Desktop Richard Toeniskoetter, technology director for The W.A. Franke College of Business at NAU says, "Sun Secure Global Desktop from a price point and a feature standpoint gave us more than Citrix. At that time, we were still on a rather dated version of Citrix and the upgrade was costly. So rather than having to go through an extensive upgrade, we could shift over to SSGD and have a more capable solution offering Windows and UNIX environments which is going to work better for us in the long run while saving about $4000 annually."

In 2007 the School of Hotel and Restaurant Management (HRM), a division of the FCB, deployed 38 Sun Ray 270 thin clients to replace outdated PCs and to provide greater access to students. Sun Fire X4150 servers were introduced and began to replace the Dell servers that previously hosted Windows environments, and a Sun StorageTek 2530 Array was added for storage. "The Sun Fire X4150 gave us more capacity and a smaller form factor, at a lower cost," notes Toeniskoetter. "It's just an amazing box." All of the college's Sun servers - which are protected by SunSpectrum Gold Support - run the Solaris 10 Operating System so that users have a consistent environment and can use features like Solaris Containers and Solaris ZFS.

IT personnel recently deployed Sun xVM VirtualBox software and VMware ESX software so that users can access Windows and UNIX environments simultaneously on the same client. "With Sun xVM VirtualBox, students can reconstruct their entire lab environment on their home system and have complete rights to tinker with it," explains Toeniskoetter. In addition, NAU is an Early Access user of Sun xVM VDI 3.0. "We're very excited about this product. Sun VDI 3.0 is really going to take the product to another enterprise level where it's going to handle the brokering of what any user gets, from any place they connect in the entire world", says Toeniskoetter.

As a result of its Sun virtualization solution, the college has provided flexible access to Windows and UNIX desktops - without adding staff, expanding lab space, or paying for an expensive Citrix upgrade. Users also have greater access to their desktops than with the pervious Citrix environment. "With our older Citrix, users couldn't get to their UNIX environments for example," says Toeniskoetter. "And we didn't have a solution to provide students with administrative access to their curriculum Windows and UNIX servers in a secure environment. SSGD gave us a broader capability of what we could offer."

The college has also reduced its energy requirements and asset costs. PCs were typically always on, allowing faculty to access their systems remotely and off-hours. Turning PCs off reduced electrical consumption, but resulted in an asset of no value to the user while off. Switching to the virtual desktop environment provided around the clock access, both in office and remotely, while reducing asset cost and electrical consumption. A PC that is always on costs $70 annually; a Sun Ray thin client device costs $3.50 annually. A PC has an annual carbon footprint of 0.43 metric tons; a thin client's footprint is 0.02 metric tons. This adds up to a 95% savings in electrical costs and carbon footprint. In addition, all of the Sun equipment purchased since 2002 is still in production. "We can bring up the newest release of the Solaris Operating System on Sun hardware that is eight years old," says Toeniskoetter. "I'm very, very impressed with that."

Other benefits of the solution include eliminating one rack from the datacenter, reducing IT costs, and increasing efficiency. "We're saving three to four hours per week not dealing with hardware failures," concludes Toeniskoetter. "When there is an issue, we connect to the user's virtual machine and work on it remotely. . . . Every week I have faculty asking me how they can get on the green platform. So right now, we are demonstrating a model that can replicate an employee's office PC and make it available to them anywhere at anytime. We're really excited about this business model and think it has tremendous potential."