Success Stories

Michigan Tech University

The staff and students at Michigan Tech University (MTU), a 7,000-student school located near Marquette on the upper Michigan peninsula, are enthusiastic about their new network of Sun Ray 1 enterprise appliances. A school like Michigan Tech--with its strong engineering and computer science programs--needs to stay current with changing technologies, but it also needs to keep a watchful eye on its limited IT budget. Sun Microsystems' Sun Ray 1 enterprise appliances are giving Michigan Tech exactly what it needs: big computing power and flexibility for a low per-user cost.

Mike Dolan, system administrator for three departments and chair of the school's System Administration Council has always been a proponent of Sun Microsystems' products. Armed with his experience deploying and using a few pre-release versions of the Sun Ray 1 enterprise appliance, Mike was able to steer the school towards choosing the Sun technology to replace a variety of desktop computers and workstations in the school's administrative offices and computer labs. Departments that were at first leaning towards PCs running Windows or Linux operating systems were quickly and easily persuaded by the ease-of-use and rapid deployment capabilities of the Sun Ray 1 enterprise appliances.

Major factors that sold the school on the Sun Ray solution included its zero desktop/client administration requirements, low per-user price, and the ability of the Sun Ray to run both UNIX and Windows applications on a single desktop. The Sun Ray's smart card reader, a device that allows students and staff who hold smart cards to replicate their work sessions on any free Sun Ray device (also known as Hot Desking) was another big score.

Other benefits that have made the adoption and deployment of over 200 of the new Sun Ray 1 enterprise appliances at MTU, include:

• User sessions being immune from localized power failures and other interruptions
• Easy replacement of units (simply by plugging in a new device)
• Expandability in the form of USB support
• Use of the Sun Ray appliances as either desktop PCs or as powerful full-blown UNIX workstations

The cost savings resulting from deploying Sun Ray enterprise appliances instead of multiple workstations and desktop computers are being diverted to where the investment is really needed: to research labs and the development of enhanced server functionality.

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On the back-end, the Michigan Tech Sun Rays are supported by a variety of mid-range Sun Enterprise servers: Ultra 10, Enterprise 250, and Enterprise 450s accessed via a 100/10Megabit ethernet environment. Some of the servers were already in use at the school and others came bundled with the Sun Ray enterprise appliances. Existing servers were transformed into Sun Ray servers by simply installing the Sun Ray server software. The only stumbling block encountered in the deployment was the outdated wiring in some of the department buildings--a problem the school got around by deploying their Sun Ray enterprise appliances on a public network as opposed to an exclusively private network.

Mike Dolan is enthusiastic about the Sun Ray's ease of use and ability to maintain user sessions via use of the smart card. Explaining the success of a recent training session, Mike said, "[we] gave a very successful Sun Ray demonstration yesterday. After announcing it for the meeting, we had a full house. The demo went off flawlessly. We passed around the Sun Ray during the boring parts of the meeting and then just plugged it in and "poof" there was the loginscreen. We logged in, proved that sounds and graphics were awesome. Thentotally wowed them by pulling the power plug on the Sun Ray, unplugged allthe devices, plugged them back in and "poof" there were our active sessions.

"After the meeting a few of us [worked] on the smart card reader and got itworking with our MTU IDs! No special cards needed! I turned onself-registration and had two of my cards registered and a flurry ofothers. It was awesome to be able to just quickly pull a card and putin another and there was your session!"

One faculty member joked, "It does not make any noise in my office - so I have to type harderto make it sound like any work is being done."

Thanks to Michigan Tech University's deployment of the Sun Ray 1 enterprise appliances, Mike Dolan's job of administering all his computers is a lot easier. He and his fellow system administrators are able to devote more time to server-side activities, rather than worrying about problems on user desktop computers. As far as the students and staff at Michigan Tech are concerned, the Sun Ray 1 enterprise appliances have exceeded their promise of putting the latest computing technology into the hands of students and faculty without breaking the budget--with a minimum of installation and configuration tasks. Small wonder that Mike and his colleagues are "Sun Ray Crazy."

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[c] 2000 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, Java, Sun Ray 1 Enterprise Appliance, Ultra 10, Sun Enterprise 250 and Sun Enterprise 450 are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other product names are used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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