Desktop Virtualization

What is Desktop Virtualization?

Introduction:

Installing and maintaining separate PC workstations is complex, and traditionally users have almost unlimited ability to install or remove software. Corporate information technology departments, and users have therefore often used Terminal Services or Citrix's Presentation Server to provide a stable, "locked down" desktop environment out to the user, who could be either using a regular desktop PC, or a small, quiet and robust thin client.

Desktop virtualization provides many of the advantages of a terminal server, but (if so desired and configured by system administrators) can provide users much more flexibility. Each, for instance might be allowed to install and configure their own applications. Users also gain the ability to access their server-based virtual desktop from other locations.

Definiton & Explanation:

Desktop virtualization or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a server-centric computing model that borrows from the traditional thin-client model but is designed to give system administrators and end-users the best of both worlds: the ability to host and centrally manage desktop virtual machines in the data center while giving end users a full PC desktop experience

  The user experience is intended to be identical to that of a standard PC, but from a thin client device or similar, from the same office or remotely.

    Many commercial solutions also add the ability to switch some incoming client sessions (using connection broker software) towards traditional shared desktop systems such as Microsoft's Terminal Services or Citrix's application servers, blade servers or even to individual unused physical desktop computers.

About Pano logic

What is Panologic?

Pano Logic, Inc. is a privately funded company, developing virtual desktop products and solutions supporting hypervisor agnostic server virtualization solutions such as those distributed by VM ware, Inc. The company has its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, United States, with sales and engineering offices located in Menlo Park; and in Toronto, Canada.

 

About Pano Logic

Time to rethink the desktop

Today's PC architecture does not take advantage of the benefits of virtualization. Over the last five years, server computing has been revolutionized through virtualization, both reducing operating costs and creating valuable new capabilities. Pano's vision is to use server-based virtualization to bring the same level of value and innovation to the desktop. In doing so, Pano has taken a "clean slate" approach to designing a new desktop computing model. This next-generation architecture requires not only virtualization, but also a completely different desktop device. The result is a radically different architecture that makes IT more effective and gives users a superior Microsoft Windows™ experience.

Server-based desktop virtualization is widely heralded as the "next big thing in virtualization". Citrix recently acquired start-up XenSource for $500M in pursuit of this market; Microsoft has recently announced new licensing schemes for server-hosted desktops, along with its intention to aggressively support this new model; VMware, the market leader in server virtualization, is aggressively developing this market with its Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). But there remains a problem: the existing desktop PC and thin client architectures were not designed for this new model of server-based desktop computing. Worse, these legacy architectures defeat the benefits of desktop virtualization. If the desktop is running on the server, why place another operating system on the desktop just to connect to the server?

Pano's innovation: The all hardware, no software desktop

Pano's solution to the unnecessary desktop software is a 100% hardware client that has no CPU, no memory, no operating system, and no software, so it requires zero maintenance and has no security risks. Combined with server-based virtualization, Pano delivers a superior Windows experience.

Ref:www.panologic.com                                                                     

How pano works

What Makes Pano Different

Desktop PCs Today: A Major Management Problem

Desktop PCs today are complex stacks of multiple hardware components, operating systems, drivers and applications. Maintaining and managing this hardware and software consumes more than 70% of the TCO of a typical PC, and it represents the bulk of the workload of helpdesk staff.

The New Desktop

Many solutions have been proposed to reduce the cost of desktop complexity, but none takes the radical approach of Pano Logic's purpose-built desktop virtualization solution: moving the PC and all its software off the desktop and into the data center.

Leveraging virtualization and today's fast networks, Pano Logic's unique design places a small device-the Pano-on the desktop to connect the monitor, keyboard, mouse, and USB peripherals to Microsoft Windows XP or Vista running on a virtualization server in the data center.

Users rely on the same hardware they've always had-their existing display, keyboard, mouse, and USB devices-which are now attached via the Pano to a virtual PC running on the server inside the data center. This architecture makes better use of hardware, eliminates software from the client endpoint, and centralizes the management of desktops.

The Pano Management Server, which sits between the Pano and the virtualization server, enables administrators and IT staff to enforce security and access control, including use of the USB ports. IT can configure virtual machines for groups of users or individuals; roll out updates, upgrades, and patches seamlessly; and perform backups of all PCs on their own schedule.

Pano has a single button-the Pano Button-that gives users access to numerous self-help options, which are simply not available on desktop PCs: users will soon be able to go back to an earlier working configuration of their applications, or pick other options configured by the IT administrators.

This out-of-band, self-help, self-service option enables users to resolve by themselves most of the common problems for which they previously relied on support staff, helpdesks, and system administrators.

Pano's unique approach is driven by these guiding principles:

• Move all desktop software to the server
• Deliver a complete solution that removes all barriers to getting started
• Empower users with self-help capabilities

Pano's approach results in a 70% reduction in desktop costs and elimination of security risks at the desktop while giving users a superior Windows experience.

Ref:www.Panologic.com

                                                                                  

The Pano Device

The Pano Device

The Pano device is a zero client- no CPU, no memory, no operating system, no drivers, no software and no moving parts. Pano connects keyboard, mouse, display, audio and USB peripherals over an existing IP network to an instance of Windows XP or Vista running on a virtualized server. Pano is power friendly, consuming only 3% of the energy consumed by a traditional desktop computer.

The Pano is compact, power efficient, and works with all desktop peripherals.

The Pano can be viewed as using the IP network as an extension that connects all desktop peripherals to the virtual machine running on the server.

Getting started with a Pano

To deploy a Pano device, simply connect it to peripherals, network and power. There is no configuration to perform, no firmware to update, and no software to download.

As soon as a Pano is connected to a network, a logon screen appears. Users enter their Windows credentials and are automatically connected to their virtual machines. From there on, it's the same Windows experience.

Using peripherals with Pano

Pano can support a video display, keyboard, mouse, additional USB peripherals, plus external audio speakers or headphones.

Supported Peripherals	Connectors
Video display (resolutions up to 1600x1200)	One RJ-45
USB peripherals	Three USB 2.0
Video display (resolutions up to 1600x1200)	One VGA
Audio Out	Internal speaker
Audio Out	One mini-jack
Audio Int	One mini-jack

Peripherals attached to the Pano device operate the same way they do when attached to a traditional PC. For instance, when users want to read data from CD, they simply attach an external CD reader via one of Pano's USB ports. If the user is authorized to use the peripheral, the CD drive will appear to Windows as if it was locally attached. The only drivers that are used are the peripheral's native drivers, and these drivers only need to be installed on the Windows virtual desktop, not on the Pano.

Security and the Pano

The Pano is secure because it does not run an operating system or any other software. Because there is nothing in a Pano that can be infected by a virus or have malicious code installed, it doesn't need to be scanned for vulnerabilities or exploits.

Even when a peripheral such as a USB thumb drive is connected, Pano remains secure. Peripherals work only when the user is authorized via policies enforced by the Pano Management Server. If the user isn't authorized, Windows doesn't even see the peripheral that is connected to the Pano. If a user is authorized, the peripheral is connected directly to Windows. Pano enforces fine-grained access policies based on user group membership, USB device class, and operation. As an example, a user may be authorized to read from a CD, but not write to it. This policy allows users to copy files or load software onto their virtual desktop, but prevents data from leaking out. Even when users are authorized, Pano can record USB operations so that the business can keep track of all its information assets.

Ref:www.panologic.com

what is font subsetting?

About this post

       Hi ...This is ravi....... I came to know about this topic when i was trying to convert a pdf file (Portable Document Format) to doc file(Microsoft Word Document) , I downloaded many converters like (pdf to doc converter) but i was not sucessfull, After that i downloaded some pdf editors like (Foxit pdf Editor) to do some changes...i was sucessful in editing the pdf file but i was not able to convert it sucessfully, When i tired to convert i  was getting some weird font in my Microsoft Word document .

    After all this effort i came to conclusion that i should figure out  the reason for my failure...then while editing in (Nitro pdf professional) i came to know that there will be a option while creating a pdf that option is called (FONT SUBSETTING) this option is provided by the Adobe acrobat distiller while making a normal document in to a pdf..

EMBEDDING AND SUBSETTING THE FONTS

Subsetting Fonts:If you subset the font, the person who receives your PDF would need to have your same font in order to make changes to your PDF. The file size of the PDF would also be smaller because you are embedding only part of a font. When you subset a font you usually just embed the characters you are using (obviously it depends on how you are subsetting your font).That's why somebody on another computer would have your same font in order to make changes.

Embedding Fonts: If you embed the whole font in the PDF, the person on the other end can make changes to it even if he didn't have your font, if he has the full version of acrobat or another program with the capability of modifying PDFs. The file size of the PDF would also be bigger because you are embedding the entire font

M0dification  Vs  View/Print:  There is  big difference between modification and view/print

the above topics will come to play when the context is modification. we can not change a PDF with font subsetting, but we can view them.If you embed your fonts properly and your fonts are not corrupted, then whether you subset the font or not will not affect the way somebody else can view or print your PDF.

Quick Reference:

--> Full Font Embedding = Larger file size

       Recipient doesn't needs the same font to view or edit the file

-->subset Font Embedding  = smaller file size

      Recipient doesn't need the same font to view but does need the same font installed in order to edit the file

-->No Font Embedding  = Small file size

      Recipient need to have same fonts installed

Classes of ip address

Class A - This class is for very large networks, such as a major international company might have. IP addresses with a first octet from 1 to 126 are part of this class. The other three octets are used to identify each host. This means that there are 126 Class A networks each with 16,777,214 (224 -2) possible hosts for a total of 2,147,483,648 (231) unique IP addresses. Class A networks account for half of the total available IP addresses. In Class A networks, the high order bit value (the very first binary number) in the first octet is always 0.

Network(n)	Host (h)
115.	24. 53. 107

Class A - 0nnnnnnn hhhhhhhh hhhhhhhh hhhhhhhh

1 -> First bit zero (0) ; 7 network bits(n) ; 24 host bits(h)

2 -> Initial byte: 0 - 127

3 -> 126 Class As exist (0 and 127 are reserved)

4 - > 16,777,214 hosts on each Class A

 ______________________________________________________

Class B - Class B is used for medium-sized networks. A good example is a large

college campus. IP addresses with a first octet from 128 to 191 are part of this class. Class B addresses also include the second octet as part of the Net identifier. The other two octets are used to identify each host. This means that there are 16,384 (214) Class B networks each with 65,534 (216 -2) possible hosts for a total of 1,073,741,824 (230) unique IP addresses. Class B networks make up a quarter of the total available IP addresses. Class B networks have a first bit value of 1 and a second bit value of 0 in the first octet.

Network(n)	Host (h)
145.24.	53.107

Class B - 10nnnnnn nnnnnnnn hhhhhhhh hhhhhhhh

1 -> First two bits 10; 14 network bits; 16 host bits

2 -> Initial byte: 128 - 191

3 -> 16,384 Class Bs exist

4 -> 65,532 hosts on each Class B

  _____________________________________________________

Class C - Class C addresses are commonly used for small to mid-size businesses. IP

addresses with a first octet from 192 to 223 are part of this class. Class C addresses also include the second and third octets as part of the Net identifier. The last octet is used to identify each host. This means that there are 2,097,152 (221) Class C networks each with 254 (28 -2) possible hosts for a total of 536,870,912 (229) unique IP addresses. Class C networks make up an eighth of the total available IP addresses. Class C networks have a first bit value of 1, second bit value of 1 and a third bit value of 0 in the first octet.

Network(n)	Host(h)
195.24.53.	107

 

Class C - 110 nnnnn nnnnnnnn nnnnnnnn hhhhhhhh

1 ->First three bits 110 ; 21 network bits (n) ; 8 host bits(h)

2 ->Initial byte: 192 - 223

3 ->2,097,152 Class Cs exist

4 ->254 hosts on each Class C

  ______________________________________________________

Class D - Used for slightly different from the first three classes. It has a first bit value of 1, second bit value of 1, third bit value of 1 and fourth bit value of 0. The other 28 bits are used to identify the group of computers the multicast message is intended for. Class D accounts for 1/16th (268,435,456 or 228) of the available IP addresses.

Network(n)	Host (m)
224.	24.53.107

 Class D - 1110mmmm mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmm mmmmmmmm

1 -> First four bits 1110; 28 multicast address bits(m)

2 -> Initial byte: 224 - 247

3 -> Class Ds are multicast addresses 

 ______________________________________________________

Class E - Class E is used for experimental purposes only. Like Class D, it is different from the first three classes. It has a first bit value of 1, second bit value of 1, third bit value of 1 and fourth bit value of 1. The other 28 bits are used to identify the group of computers the multicast message is intended for. Class E accounts for 1/16th (268,435,456 or 228) of the available IP addresses.

Network(n)	Host(r)
240.	24.53.107

Class E - 1111rrrr rrrrrrrr rrrrrrrr rrrrrrrr

1 -> First four bits 1111; 28 reserved address bits

2 -> Initial byte: 248 - 255

3 -> Reserved for experimental use

  ______________________________________________________

 

Broadcast - Messages that are intended for all computers on a network are sent as broadcasts. These messages always use the IP address 255.255.255.255.

  ______________________________________________________

Default Network - The IP address of 0.0.0.0 is used for the default network.

  ______________________________________________________

Loopback - The IP address 127.0.0.1 is used as the loopback address. This means that it is used by the host computer to send a message back to itself. It is commonly used for troubleshooting and network testing.

 ______________________________________________________

Ip Address and its classes

About this post:

        Hi this is ravi again, I am now learning IBM Tivoli storage manager in an institute, while learning fundamentals for the course i searched for this topic called IP ADDRESS AND ITS CLASSESS  and another reason for searching for this is: I used to see different types of ip addresses in different places, I found the ipaddresses in my company as on type and other  in my institute.

so in the below artical i would like to explain the ip address and its different classes Note: i am not really good in my English.......so comment if there are any changes to be made

--> What is an ip address?

     An IP(Internet Protocol) address is an unique identification number given to a particular device or node present in a computer network. The ip address is stored in the memory in binary form but we can see that in decimal values each representing 8 bits, the range of each bit is 0 to 255 known as octets and these decimal values are separated by dot. so this notation is called "dotted decimal notation" .

 Ex: 151.124.200.222.

 In binary form it is 

      151       .    124         .      200       .      222  

 10010111 . 01111100 . 11001000 . 11011110

Every IP address has two parts 

 1)Network address

 2)Node/device  address

NEXT:Classes of IPaddress:

D.B.Cooper

Hi….This is one of the distinguished topic I am going to present here in this post, I came to know about D.B.Cooper when I was watching a famous TV series called Prison Break.

At first I thought the character was part of the script but when I saw a program in discovery channel about the unsolved mysteries I found out this man was real. I was very curious to know more about this guy so I browsed many sites and gathered some info. In this post I am going to present detailed information about D.B.Cooper his skyjack, plot etc and I hope this is going to be very interesting………

The case of D.B. Cooper is one of the most famous crimes in American history. It is also the only skyjacking in the world that has gone unsolved. Over the past three decades, the FBI has investigated nearly 1,000 suspects. They might as well be looking for Sasquatch. D.B. Cooper is folklore now. He’s inspired books, movies, safety regulations for airplanes, and treasure hunters. A bar celebrates the anniversary of his heist with a D.B. Cooper look-alike contest. Poems have been inked.. Songs too, like Chuck Brodsky’s “The Ballad of D. B. Cooper”:

It was Thanksgiving eve

Back in 1971

He had on a pair of sunglasses

There wasn’t any sun

He used the name Dan Cooper

When he paid for the flight

That was going to Seattle

On that cold and nasty night

NEXT: Hijacking

D.B.Cooper - Hijacking

That night changed aviation history. It started in Portland, Oregon, when a man walked up to the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines. He was wearing a dark raincoat, dark suit with skinny black tie, and carrying an attaché case. He had perky ears, thin lips, a wide forehead, receding hair. He gave his name, Dan Cooper, and asked for a one-way ticket to Seattle, Flight 305. The ride was a 30-minute puddle jump. He sat in the last row of the plane, 18-C, lit a cigarette, and ordered a bourbon and soda. The plane took off and he passed the stewardess a note.

Florence Schaffner was 23, cute, perky, the sexy stewardess. Working on planes, she’d been approached by so many men that she’d taken to wearing a wig onboard to disguise herself. She dropped the man’s note in a purse, thinking, Just another guy hitting on me. But the man was insistent. “Miss. You’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.” She looked at the man’s eyes. She saw that he was serious.

 

She read the note. It was printed in felt pen, all capital letters, elegantly formed. “I have a bomb in my briefcase. I want you to sit beside me,” it read. She did as he requested, then asked to see the bomb. She saw a tangle of wires, a battery, and six red sticks. Then he dictated some instructions: “I want $200,000 by 5:00 p.m. In cash. Put in a knapsack. I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want a fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny stuff or I’ll do the job.” He let her get up to take them to the captain. When she got back, the man was wearing dark sunglasses. 

NEXT:Hijacking part-2

D.B.Cooper- Hijacking part-2

Schaffner’s mind was reeling. She imagined her parents back in Arkansas watching the evening news. She imagined the plane exploding. She imagined this man taking her hard by the wrist and raping her right there. She took deep breaths. Inhale, exhale, repeat.Surprisingly, the man was able to calm her down. He was not a so-called sky pirate, which she’d read about in the papers, or a hardened criminal. He was not a political dissident with a wish to reroute the plane to Cuba, like many of the hijackers until then. He was polite. Well spoken. A gentlemen. At one point, he offered to pay for his drinks with a $20 bill and insisted the stewardess keep the rest ($18) as change. He also seemed like a local, glancing out the window and saying, “Looks like Tacoma down there.”

 

The plane landed on the Sea-Tac tarmac, greased up by the squalls of the rainstorm. It was late, two hours late, because FBI agents needed time to collect Cooper’s ransom and to station their sharpshooters. Inside the cabin, Cooper ordered all passengers be released. The airline staff then carried his ransom—$200,000 in $20 bills (the bundle weighed 21 pounds) and parachutes—onto the plane as it refueled. The gentleman hijacker was getting anxious. “It shouldn’t take this long,” he said, and told the captain to get the plane back in the air. Where to?

 

“Mexico City,” he said, and delivered more specific flight instructions: Keep the plane under 10,000 feet, with wing flaps at fifteen degrees, which would put the plane’s speed under 200 knots. He strapped the loads of cash to himself and slipped on two chutes—one in front, one in back—and moved deeper into the vessel, toward the aft stairs, which were used to let passengers disembark from the rear of the plane. The 727 was the only model equipped with such stairs. He lowered them. The seal of the cabin broke, and there was engine noise in his ears and the cold, black, wet windy night outside. He climbed down the stairs and hovered on a plank over southwest Washington. The plane was too high to see anything below. The cloud ceiling that night was 5,000 feet, and some of the most rugged terrain in this country was beneath it: forests of pine and hemlock and spruce, canyons with cougars and bears and lakes and white-water rapids, all spilling out into the Pacific.

Out a little service doorway in the rear of the plane cooper jumped into the darkness into the freezing rain. They say that with the wind-chill it was 69 below not much chance that he’d survive but if he did where did he go?

NEXT:Investigation and leads of FBI 

D.B.Cooper - Investigation and leads

Cooper left behind a few things, including the spare chutes and 8 Raleigh-brand cigarette butts. Authorities were surprised also to find the hijacker's black tie and tie tack, with a mother-of-pearl detail—an overlooked potential bit of evidence that was perhaps the only mistake he made. FBI crime-scene experts catalogued 66 fingerprints that could not be matched to the crew or other passengers. They led nowhere.

 

The authorities tried follow the plane, wait for him to jump, then track him to the ground.  but the opportunity was lost in a questionable choice of a chase plane. The Air Force scrambled up two F-106 fighter jets from McChord. Those pilots were instructed to follow at a safe distance and watch for a jumper. But the fighters are built to fly at speeds of up to 1,500 mph. They were useless in slow-motion, low altitude surveillance. The authorities tried to recover by sending up a slower-flying Air National Guard Lockheed T-33, but Cooper probably had already jumped by the time it arrived.

 

Nasty weather on the night of the jump led authorities to put off a ground search until the next day,  An exhaustive search, by land and by air, over several weeks failed to turn up any trace of the hijacker or his parachute.

In 1980, some of Cooper’s money surfaced. A boy found $5,800 in decomposing twenties buried in a bag, a few feet from a river. The FBI searched the area again, hoping to find more bills—or, better yet, a body. They found nothing.

 

The Cooper file is now a morgue of dead-end leads. It sits buried in the basement of the FBI’s Seattle field office and occupies several shelves in long rows that open and close by spinning black plastic wheels. The belief among agents handling the case now is that Cooper died in the jump—the conditions were simply too brutal to survive, and the twenties would have blown away. When a new tip arrives in the mail, the Feds typically shrug it off and file it away. 

NEXT: Suspects

D.B.Cooper - Suspects

In 1971, mass-murderer John List was considered a suspect in the Cooper hijacking, which occurred only fifteen days after he had killed his family in Westfield, New Jersey. List's age, facial features, and build were similar to those described for the mysterious skyjacker. FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach stated that List was a "viable suspect" in the case. Cooper parachuted from the hijacked airliner with $200,000, the same amount List had used up from his mother's bank account in the days before the killing. After his capture and imprisonment in 1989, List strenuously denied being Cooper, and the FBI no longer considered him a suspect. List died in prison custody on March 21, 2008

 Five months later, Richard McCoy, a former Sunday-school teacher from Utah and a Vietnam helicopter pilot, jumped out of a plane over Utah with a $500,000 ransom. He was snatched by the FBI a few days later with $499,970 in a cardboard box. McCoy told the Feds he wasn’t Cooper, but they didn’t believe him. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Then he escaped, using a fake gun made from plaster of Paris stolen from dental supplies, and led a crew of convicts through the prison gates with a garbage truck. When the Feds found him again, there was a shoot-out. McCoy was killed

The next major suspect was Duane Weber. Just before he died in 1995, Weber’s wife claims, he told her, “I’m Dan Cooper.”  She became suspicious and began checking into his background. Weber had served in the Army during World War II and had later served time in a prison near the Portland airport. Weber recalled that her husband had once had a nightmare where he talked in his sleep about jumping from a plane and said something about leaving his fingerprints on the aft stairs. Jo recalled that shortly before Duane's death, he had revealed to her that an old knee injury of his had been incurred by "jumping out of a plane." The FBI compared Weber's prints with those processed from the hijacked plane and found no matches. In October 2007, the FBI stated that a partial DNA sample taken from the tie that Cooper had left on the plane did not belong to Weber.

The October 29, 2007 issue of New York magazine stated that Kenneth P. Christiansen had been identified as a suspect by Sherlock Investigations. The article noted that Christiansen is a former army paratrooper, a former airline employee, had settled in Washington near the site of the hijacking, was familiar with the local terrain, had purchased property with cash a year after the hijacking, drank bourbon and smoked (as did Cooper during the flight) and resembled the eyewitness sketches of Cooper. However, the FBI ruled out Christiansen because his complexion, height, weight and eye color did not match the descriptions given by the passengers or the crew of Flight 305