Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

Ok on this second round up before we totally say nay to ajax apps from Michael. I was compelled to take a quick look at the ajax Applications. Check out the ajaxLaunch.com yourself. ajaxwrite(Word type) Choose your region... It does load fast! Some observations... Interoperability... ajaxsketch(Diagrammer) ajaxxls(Excel type) ajaxtunes(play mp3s) eyespot(play/run videos) My Quick observations: They are indeed: fast (they're just couple hundred KB files) user friendly Work fine on Firefox Interoperable No matter what these market developments only show that MS's OS and Office suite are going to come under serious fire in the coming months (I don't think they should wait for years). Things are moving on the web and the pace is really picking up real fast. My word of advice to all these webOS folks? Two words: Security Performance (And by performance I mean user experience, not the performance from a performance engineer point of view!) Don't have these, you won't e

Well , not actually :-). But this might help Michael Robertson ( Who is he? ) pick up the trails of Linspire (formerly known as Lindows) and bung it all on the web with web 2.0 (yawn) with the newly founded ajaxOS (Well its just a webOS like so many). Anyways I'm curious how it'll turn out. I'm not sure if I want to apply for an early invite.

Here's the deal. You don't have a product but a pretty darn good strategy: You spread the word through Seminars, Training You have an average product but a robust (customer is programmed to drool on your suite of management tools) management pack Frameworks are put in place to cultivate a culture of zombies But what about Figures Numbers Benchmarks Performance tests Demos face-to-face tete-e-tete's Reality checks Dos and dont's I think a lot of companies have succeeded in selling software which actually didn't/doesn't do much. No one (during the intake of a software) played the role of the *devil's inquisitor*, on the contrary a lot of *devil's advocates* who snubbed your "Wait a minute, but what does the product actually do?" OR "Hey, where is THE product? I have already bought the management suite, now please end my agony". Lots of things like these happen all the time. WHY? Please don't look for answers at my end, look into the

Well the Server market is already in love with VMware. You will have to be downright ignorant if you were not deploying VMware's ESX Server in your Server environment. But hey what about the desktop? Sure VMware has its VDI. So what is VDI ? VDI is a server-centric computing model that borrows from the traditional thin-client model but is designed to give 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 without limitations. Again its going to be soon the huge mainframe and users with terminals. No hassles, no complaining, plain work! Read here what VMware and Linux vendors are doing to combat the Vista's desktop offering. So much so Shiloh Industries are deploying VDI as we speak! Shiloh Industries is a full-service manufacturer of engineered steel products that serves the automobile and heavy trucking industry. With more than ten plant

We all know how Oracle gave Redhat publicity couple of years back with the unbreakable message. But recent talks and rumors and Larry Ellison's own admission to getting more than cozier to Linux seems like a thing that will probably close the usurpation spree. Probably, I said. So should Oracle take over Redhat or Novell? I think this will be a smart move given that Redhat now has JBoss under its hood. So Oracle will have a cool lightweight Application Server to target the SMB market and the most popular (in the Enterprise world, at least) Linux distribution to its name. So why do users need a tightly integrated Oracle (tightly as in an Oracle application delivered with the Oracle OS, so to speak)? Very simple, it makes the whole ball game all that easier... Easier to sell (No more confusion as to, pick any OS you like) Customer is confused already, why confuse him with the choice of portability (look at MS SQL Server, it runs fine on Windows , Customer buys Windows contract/site l

The beta testfest continues! Got an email from the Beta Manager on the release of ESX 3 RC ( Release Candidate ) and Virtual Center 2.0. Later on the day we will do a quick run on the (market) developments in the Virtualization arena.

Ok all the talk about GFS (Google File System) and the leaked stuff around it. Anyways these guys have released a GMailDrive. Check it out. So what is GMail Drive? GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google Gmail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your Gmail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag'n'drop files to. ...says the creator of GMail Drive. Use it with caution. Its still in its beta phase but cool to play around with the added disk space! No doubt about that. There is also another cool tool P Poperti which does the same. Eventually you'll have GMail which will have the P2P concept which Pando uses (among others) After installing it looks like this... Login

Sure there are a lot of exciting things happening. Sure there is lots of stuff coming free. But look at this. You have to really be nuts to not having done this. Administrators at Canada's largest media company, Quebecor Inc ., can zip entire servers across the country in an hour. Imagine the wonders it can do... Time to deploy Time to market Time for a prolonged coffee break! These firms were already evaluating and testing virtualization 2/3 years ago. All started off as a venture to test the environment. Changing legacy-minded minds When he first tried to pitch the idea of a virtual data center, Happychuk also had to deal with longstanding, field-hardened executives who wanted nothing to do with servers they could not physically touch. "Another argument was that they did not want all the eggs in one basket in a central location. People wanted to know what would happen if the host system failed," he said. Tell me about it. Like an excited client told me that it was soph

In a few hours we'll see what happened in the last few days...

Ok fellas. This is pretty plain and simple. [root@tarrydev ~]# yum -y install bittorrent Loading "installonlyn" plugin Setting up Install Process Setting up repositories core [1/3] core 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00 extras [2/3] extras 100% |=========================| 1.1 kB 00:00 updates [3/3] updates 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:00 E updates 100% |=========================| 951 B 00:14 Reading repository metadata in from local files primary.xml.gz 3% | | 24 kB 00:10 E primary.xml.gz 14% |=== | 112 kB 00:08 E primary.xml.gz 27% |====== | 208 kB 00:05 E primary.xml.gz

I'm in talks with some training centers in the Netherlands on giving some custom made trainings on Oracle 10g R2 RAC on ESX/GSX Servers. I was planning to do that but did not have time to do it. Anyways I was compelled to take this move (and the training center CEO was more than pleased) as I saw (I knew it anyways as I heard from a dear friend at Microsoft)that MOC (Microsoft Official Curriculum) includes a full fledged introduction to Virtual PC. Imagine!!! There are a lot of training centers. In Holland I've been to CompuTrain , Global Knowledge (to name a few) and these guys have a large network. Lots of staff all around the country to be trained. And its MCSE 2003 season. (I'm myself following a MCSE 2003 track this week, besides other plans to do Java, RHCE....ummm lets not go into that) It always amazes me to see that only a fraction of courses are Oracle, Java, Linux, etc. 90% of the stuff is all ASP.NET, VB.NET, SQL Server 2000, 2005...loads of it! And all those pe

Let me tell you something about a great marriage (besides mine). Google + EMC (VMware). These two groups rock. Lots of creativity. Lots of lovely products. Lots of love and passion. Anyways that's not what I was telling you. Here's the deal. Calender is what I need to manage my very busy (off the job) agenda. And thanks to google, it's here now ! Check out the prints... Search Create a quick event Shout box with event details Detailed event pane Import all the emails from outlook etc into your calender. Enjoy!

Do you identify yourself with things like these (if not more)... Managing a busy household Kids need to go to the gym classes, dance classes Bosses/Coworkers yelling on the voicemail Frenzied meetings Monitoring several scenarios at one time (multitasking) These are just a few that I name here. But do you identify yourself with it? I sometimes do! I have young kids. A baby at home. A busy job and I like to be busy as well in many other activities like seminars, training people on Oracle, writing professional articles, blogging, vlogging....And I do many thing simultaneously (like right now at the time of recording , I was busy installing ubuntu 5.10 on my VMware workstation which I'm busy building a Virtual Appliance for the $100,000 challenge ;)) Hang on, Yes. I DO like to be busy but exhaustion can come in waves and sometimes you are overwhelmed with it. Many of us may also have this ADT. Nothing wrong , its just a question of priorities. So lets start talking about it and also

Ok don't get paranoid. I know all that para talk may impress the geeks but not the customers. Do the math and show me some (reliable) graphs. Read here.

It is this commoditisation that is at the heart of these moves by VMware and Microsoft. The virtualisation battle is not going to be won on the basis of who is armed with the best engine, particularly in the face of open source alternatives such as Xen, which the likes of RedHat and Novell are building into their Linux distributions. The spoils will go to the vendor whose engine can be harnessed most effectively. VMware clearly recognises this and is investing heavily in technologies such as VirtualCenter. It's not lost on Microsoft either, but it still has some way to go to catch up. Yep, commoditi z ation. Yep.Yep. Stage is set. It sure means that some parties will have to work hard to really make their product worthwhile. VMware sees and understands it very well. Read on...

Exactly. Fooood for thought! Benchmarks! Show me the money! Storage Subsystem Performance in VMware ESX Server compares the performance of virtual BusLogic and virtual LSI Logic SCSI drivers within VMware ESX Server for a variety of data sizes and access patterns. Get it here!

Modern life is pushing us to the limits. Managers, Executives, CEOs, CFOs, CTOs and all others down that food chain are suffering from a mild form of this symptom. While we all do our best to deny it, I want to talk about celebrating it. Don't shy away by calling in sick, avoiding colleagues/co-workers who *seem* like a threat but are actually not! and anything else that may bother you. Celebrate the fact that... You perform You multitask You manage you homes/families You succeed among others. And I will talk about it (probably tonite) to optimize your life by Working out (yeah, It's not just for those biceps/pecs/quads, its DOPAMINE !!! And your brain needs lots of it, among others) Drinking (but not pushing it!) Having sex Taking a break once in a while Not being ashamed to ask for help! (Don't choke in it!) Enjoy your family/friends/kids Life is short. You want to work and contribute. You will soon realize that you can do it all if you set things straight in your head.

I will soon be replacing the Oraflame.com site (built in Mambo) with Joomla. Here I will try to migrate the content, and give it a new look. Check out the dev page .

Also on a side note, I've been away from the VMware challenge for a long time. It's time to start cooking. I'll be done in a week or so with my first product. I do have something on my mind ;-). Then I'll post the package on my site and also submit it to VMware.

Read it here .

US mobile carrier Sprint has organised a deal with rock band Pearl Jam through website Fanscape to provide officially licensed Call Tones and Ring Tones (or 'Ringers') of the band's first single from their new album.Grunge rockers Pearl Jam,... Official Pearl Jam ringtones are here. Read more

Check them out . I'm waiting for May2nd! Wrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......

I went to see the Foofighter's store and really liked stuff they had for babies/toddlers. Check'em out! I'm ordering these cool things for my Brian! And since summer is coming up, we'll buy it for ourselves as well...The black T-Shirt for me and the other one for my lady :-) Maybe that will inspire me enough to really get back to where I left off, before I landed here with you losers ;-) VMware has it too. Lots of them!!!! Cool! Now that's what I mean by rocking on... for Brian And for Meeeeeeeeeeeeeee... Or should I wait for that job offer, then I have them ;-)

I'd actually love to hear her talk (as in podcasts) but I'm rather content with her blogging at VMTN . In the midst of mad rush towards Virtualization and where everyone is setting and freeing their software (no matter its junk or means absolutely nothing). Anyways each to his own. but still one HUGE HUGE issue is being forgotten. The customer is getting smarter by the day. I think Diane raises some very crucial issues in her first post. Benchmarks. There are starting to be multiple offerings for virtualization and the customer needs a way to evaluate the performance of the different offerings on apples to apples basis. There should be a benchmark that can show the performance in real-world relevant ways and also in a way that requires as inexpensive a setup as possible. Yes, I want benchmarks . I'm not going to risk my business on anything. I want a solid product! I think I will talk a bit about "Why cook a solid virtualization product?" soon. I love to do the i

FirstMerit Bank of Akron is apparently saving massive amounts with Virtualization. Samic also found SVC a bit buggy in the beginning. “With any new product, you have growing pains until you figure out the quirks. In the beginning, you'd be on a page assigning disk, click the page to refresh, and it would time out. But IBM has fixed the bugs." After getting comfortable with SVC, Samic deployed EMC’s VMware to virtualize the bank’s servers -- mostly IBM BladeCenter blades connected to the SAN. He is now running approximately 114 virtual servers in his SAN. "Without the I/O capabilities of SVC, there's no way you can have so much efficiency in the SAN where you don't have to worry about contention issues." They saved atleast $300,000. I'll say money saved is money earned! Elizabeth Millard talks about what to and what not to virtualize . While Stephen Shankland of ZDnet wonders if virtualization could play the role of a miracle drug. Read further but if yo