Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

Reminds me of the lovely times (where we played pool in the Marine Club (back in 1994) in Bombay from 10:00 am to 11:00 pm, day in day out). Trickshot - video powered by Metacafe

" How I did it? [object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash /swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0" width="420" height="420"] [param name="movie" value="http://www.mysite.com/my.swf"] [param name=quality value=high] [embed src="http://www.mysite.com/my.swf" quality=high pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="420"][/embed]" [/object] Just replace the [ and ] with < and > . And I found it here , so he deserves all the credit!

Don't we all know it? Ummm...On their site here you can watch them live or alternatively see the archives.

I'll be blogging on some of the (well...most of what grabs my attention)Open Source news. More so because I'm into that "Open Source Enterprize Package" solution which we will be proposing for that international project for Uganda. All that we'll be running on one big server with 100% redundancy. All client communication will run through the WiMax towers which these guys have in abundance. The idea is to provide support for a cluster of technical colleges across that country. Anyways on the server level (we'll come to client pcs soon as well) I am looking to propose all that on VMware Server OR ESX Servers. So we'll keep a good look out for the developments in the Open Source world. With Scalix releasing an OpenSource version of its email server , I will have to find a way to round up a couple of email servers I have. The Community Edition will include: Scalix Community Edition Open Source will consist of the Scalix Server, a new web services API platform

See for yourself. This poll will run till next next (a span of 365 days). Keep them coming, we want you all to vote! And when I said you I meant the " customers/consumers " to poll click here ...

"As companies increasingly rely on virtualization solutions to achieve optimal utilization of their data center operations, it is important that they easily integrate within their systems management solutions," said William Hurley, CTO of Qlusters. "openQRM is the only offering that can integrate VMWare, Xen, QEMU and Linux VServer into a single open-source systems management platform. As a result, the integration of these technologies creates a powerful open source solution for organizations looking to automate their physical and virtualized environments." Read here ... David Dennis from Levanta has some word of caution for a Linux deployment. I guess that's why the guys call their Linux appliance intrepid :-)

God I love these guys! Oreilly wrote something I was wanting to write for a long time. Something that happens to be a part of me. A rebel. An onconventional approach. The grey goat! The speedy ship! Looking at the questions he asks makes me wonder. Do corporations really need to spend money and productivity on introducing another Battlestar Galactica operating system (Vista) from the Microsoft franchise - one so complicated that it can't quite seem to get out of the shop? Will PC users be measurably better off after the expense and disruption of introducing the next MS Office release? Should businesses now pay Microsoft for virus protection services, effectively rewarding them for delivering products without immune systems? Must IT promote yet another frenzied re-implementation of business process calcifying SAP? Do corporate IT departments really need all those outrageously expensive EMC disk arrays, when disk storage is now so cheap that everything computer readable can be tripl

In another news.Well maybe its good for Microsoft. Mark seems to be pleased as well .These guys have been writing some really good software. I just hope that they have the same freedom of speech/programming when working for MS.

Geez, I could have frozen but the guy who wrote this article is pretty cozy with the Xen3.0 so it's pretty obvious that everything about VMware was bound to fail and everything that everyone did (I like the philosophy--smirk) will be better. The author of the article works for Siennax . You have to subscribe to this mag and create an account to read the article, that says enough of the "openness" of such rants! What I find disturbing is such articles make way into corporations. I had this article lying in my post. (We subscribe to this magazine and a lot of biased views are published to push their own software/services. This guy did the same, couldn't resist , I guess). Backroom scuttlebutt thus... Here's an excerpt in Dutch Wanneer je de business case van VmWare eens wat beter bekijkt wordt duidelijk dat VmWare de strijd gaat verliezen.VmWare gebruikt techniek die als voordeel heeft dat de onderliggende hardware transparant wordt, zodat meerdere besturingssystem

A lot comes into my email (GMail) and I treat it all as pretty important. I got this email from the Pentaho( www.pentaho.org ) guys. If you've forgotten, they are the open source BI fellas. And they are growing the big way. Check out here for the list of downloads and the new shiny BI suite version 1.2 as well. I am on the lookout for a complete enterprize class software for an organization. And all of it has to be Open Source. I will be planning to propose it all to run on one server (with a redundant copy of it geographically seperated on a similar server). All that on VI3 or the new VMware server from VMware . PS: I will be running it on my VMware Workstation or VMware Server and will be demo'ing this BI suite in our upcoming post. PS2: I am beginning to feel the need to dedicate a complete post to "A Complete Open Source alternative to proprietary software". I saw " The Croquet Project " and it looks pretty interesting.

I'm trying it out here . Cool things are the ease of migration o Move your blogs to Multiply o Move your pics from Flickr to Multiply . . . Must be more to it. Its private so you invite just your pals/family.

Go get it and start playing!

Well this is much in line with the SAN vs SATA battle that we once spoke about and also built a server. Sure Sun went ahead and delivered it to you on a silver platter ! Really cool product! I'm beginning to feel that Sun's back! Good going, Jonathan! Imagine you can just say your big fat SAN goodbye. We are talking about our biggest big daddy Oracle (RAC /Standard) database on one server. Or the stuff recommended by Sun : Designed For You * HPC/Grid * Business Intelligence/Data Analytics * Digital Media Streaming * Digital Video Surveillance * Nearline Storage That sure is a purty little thang! This is an amazing way for SMB market and I am thinking of Universities and Schools across Africa, India, Argentina, Brazil to name a few. I already know what I'm gonna be proposing to the Uganda team coming this September. Imagine this 64bit AMD dual core server, 16G RAM and the whole stack from db, web apps, ldap,crm/erp, mail etc built on the virtualization l

Well since I'm all tamed with the backache (its getting a lot better though and I'm already taking walks etc) and am settled in my bed with laptop, I had all the time and a lot on my mind. What I'm going to talk about here is certain marketbusting and extraordinary marketing strategies to win terrain at massive speeds. You know kick ass stuff. The stuff that puts you in a league of pioneers. I remember back in 95 when I flew home from Singapore to Delhi, my parent picked me up at the airport. I was looking at all the new developments in the area. My dad said: "Yeah, a lot has changed". I replied wryly :" Expansion is the law of the universe". Well but it indeed comes at a cost. Bigger and sometimes smaller but smarter stars, galaxies expand at the cost of others. Well a smart executive knows that having the cannibal in the house is a necessary evil (we won't get too much into the product cannibalism here though). Anyways sometimes expansion has to b

This Forbes article talks about some really down to earth yet easily forgotten issues when it comes to presentation. I am personally advising/supervising an international internship with "Virtualization with VMware" project. And indeed no more than 20 slides. In fact 15 are enough. I personally prefer to address the audience (which can be an amalgam of techies, business managers, developers) on key issues which they can understand and even encourage them to raise questions. Thus keeping 2-3 minutes (max!) for each slide is more than enough. Tom Taulli also gives an example of VMware: Don't wax on about the mind-numbing details of your company's product or service. Focus on the two main things investors really want to know: the product's value proposition (why customers will pay for it) and the company's competitive advantage in providing it. For example: VMware develops a cost-cutting technology that effectively turns one computer into a variety of servers--a

Having a great product is one thing and having a cool documentation (and constantly up to date) for that matter is another. I like the way VMware guys constantly are working on documentation all the time. R eading T he F reaking D oco is a must. And you know it! Old KB New KB -- Check it out! Online documentation - starting VI3 (If you're not foolish like me carrying printed PDFs all the time and want to read it all online) -- Psst VMware, it does take a while before the html is rendered, take a look at it.:-) All documentation page So remember my friends, documentation (and an up2date one for that matter) is your only true lasting friend. After all the sales and hi-fi dudes are gone, you and the documentation will have to burn the midnight oil.

Just got a email from Google team. I had been waiting for this for quite some time. Not that I have any complaints with my squirrelmail but now I'm going to test the Gmail for my domain .