Pushpa....an untold story

I know what most of you might be thinking, an untold love story? Yes you are right. This is a love story that I have not told anyone and would never want to forget. Pushpa...I still remember her for the tight hugs and unending kisses. So much love...just that I could not realize at that time, because I was only 4 years old. Sorry if I have watered down your enthusiasm in the story :). Pushpa was my house maid when I was a kid, she was always there from the time I remember my childhood. Taking care of me everyday, even in the troubled times when my parents' marriage was on the rocks.

Pushpa - short, dark, always smiling, with a funny accent and eyes full of love. A picture I would keep as long as my last brain cell is alive. Wish I was a painter, I could have painted her picture and show Pushpa to the world. I remember her brushing my teeth, bathing me, feeding me and putting me to bed but then suddenly she was gone. I don't have any memories of her, for some period of my life, as if someone had erased some part of my memory. Did she quit working at my place or did I just didn't remember? I don't know.

Pushpa did come back on a Sunday evening, with fruits, hugs, kisses and lots of love. Wished me luck and asked me about my problems. She was there patiently listening to my rant about every little thing. How difficult could it be?....if you have young kids, you know what I am talking about :). Every time she used to promise me she will pray to God for me and tell God about all my problems. She used to assure me everything will be alright. Every time she used to shower me with kisses, I used to shrug her off, didn't realize the enormity of that love. Also never realized I would cherish and crave for those moments rest of my life.

This saga of love continued many Sundays, so many that I didn't want to be disturbed during my play time to meet her. But my dad or sister would goad me into it. But after some time she stopped coming. Many Sundays passed without her visits. No one told me what happened to her. I could only faintly remember many years later that every time she visited she was looked more and more sick. I just don't want to think about what happened to her. She is with me and always will be alive in my memories.

Now when I recollect those moments, I wish I was little more matured than I was at that time. Could I have shown more affection or displayed the love I had for her in a more visible manner, may be a just a couple of words "thanks for coming every week" or "thanks for all the love" or may be "I love you so much". I feel sorry for my indifference towards Pushpa, but she wouldn't mind, she would still love me the same.

Pushpa....which ever world you are in...I want you to know that I love you and I miss you. Thanks for coming into my life and giving me so many fond memories. I wish I could have done more....

With lots of love....Kiran Babu (as she used to call me)

Know Your Tyres

Tires have always fascinated me, especially after I learn t about the different types and the technology involved. Here I am going to discuss some aspects of tires that would be of use to us on a day to day basis.

It is important to know the tread pattern of your tires so that you can replace the right tires in an emergency or when buying a new tire.
Symmetrical - most of the cars tires use this pattern, either side of the tires center line have same pattern. Biggest advantage of this design is that these can be used for any wheel of the car - right/left/front/back.
Asymmetrical - tread pattern on the outer side of the tire is different from the inner side, the outer pattern aids in turning and the inner pattern aids in wet conditions.
and in additional could also be Directional - this pattern is normally has groves facing outwards and looks like a "v" in the center of the tire if symmetrical or could be to one side of the tire for asymmetrical patterns. Directional patterns give excellent grip in wet conditions and will help avoid hydroplaning - more details on this in later sections.
 There are different tires for different seasons, and tires for different purposes like performance tires which are built for high speeds, better heat dissipation, better handling but would worn out faster. Sometimes performance tires are also called summer tires as these are not very good for snow conditions. All weather tires on other hand are tires that are not for any specific season, they give a bumpy ride but last a long time.
 Hydroplaning or Aquaplaning occurs when a vehicle at a high speed goes over a pool of water. A layer of water is build between the road and the tire causing loss of traction and control of the vehicle. the deep straight grooves in tires are designed to drain the water on the tire surface there by reducing the chances of hydro planing.
How to handle hydroplaning: The best way to react is to hold the steering firmly and let your foot off the accelerator, gradually engage brakes to reduce speed after passing over the water.


Tire Inflation: Always inflate the tires as per the user manual, you can also see this information on the door frame. You will normally see recommendations for minimum and maximum loads. A slightly under inflated tires give a more comfortable ride but this reduces mileage and in long drives there is a chance of tire burst. A slightly over inflated tires give a better mileage but you will feel the road more and could be comparatively uncomfortable. If tires are worn out more towards at the edges, it means the tires are frequently under inflated. If center of the tire is worn out compered to the sides, it means tires are frequently over inflated. And neither is good for the life of your tires.
Compressed air or nitrogen? I am sure you might have asked yourself this question when you saw the new Nitrogen pumps at the gas station. Well there are arguments for and against Nitrogen. In my opinion Nitrogen is slightly better in terms of maintaining the tire pressure for a longer time, as regular compressed air also has Oxygen which dissipates through the tire at a faster rate compared to Nitrogen. Also Nitrogen keeps the moisture out of the tire and also helps in faster heat dissipation, so slightly extends the life of the tire. It is ideally suited for performance tires or even regular tires that run a lot on high speeds like on highways. But don't bet on finding nitrogen filling stations on Indian highways. So the verdict - stick to compressed air for now!

Long drives? In long drives inflate tires based on how many people are traveling with and how much luggage. And don't forget to cap your tires to prevent frequent trips to the filling station. But if tires are under/over inflated on a regular basis, tires will wear out unevenly.  It is good to have a tire inflator/checker handy, especially if you are planning to drive out of station.
Punctured tire is not uncommon, if it happens in the city limits, all you have to do is call a helpline or drive slowly to the nearest service station. But if it happens on a highway away from the city, you will have to know how to change a tire at least. So know where your spare tire is, where the tools are. If you are unlucky enough to have two tires punctured or spare tire not in condition. Then you will have to know how to plug a puncture as well. It is better to have the tools handy and check your spare tire also when you are going out on a long drive. If you are loosing air slowly, inflate the tire if needed just enough to reach the next available tire repair center. Your tire inflator will be of great help here.

If you are driving in the night, make sure your headlights are working and carry a spare bulb. The reflective triangle that you get with the car will be of great help here as a lot of accidents happen when changing tires in the night. A reflective jacket also would be of help. Don't forget to have a good flash light and spare batteries in your emergency kit.


In depth discussion of emergencies and what tools to carry is a topic for next discussion, till then drive safe!

~Kiran

Virtualization Basics

Virtualization??? No clue?? I don't blame you, the word has not made it to the dictionary yet. It is the next most revolutionizing thing after Microsoft Windows, I think. Of course, its gonna take a while to see its effects in daily computing needs of an average user.

What is Virtualization?In simple words it is a way of putting more than one operating system into one server (hardware) machine. We will still follow the tradition of installing one enterprise software in one OS. But when we host multiple OS's on one hardware we are in effect hosting multiple applications also on the same machine. This OS along with its software is called a "Virtual Machine" and the thin layer of software that sits on the hardware and enables these Virtual Machines is called the Hypervisor.

Virtualization is not simulation - simulation is something that looks like the real thing but it is not e.g. flight simulator. In this case, the actual OS is installed on virtual hardware.

Virtualization is not emulation - emulation requires translation of commands of emulated hardware into language understood by the physical hardware. In this case there is no translation happening.

Both Simulation and emulation approaches are slow and prone to errors while Virtualization gives up to 95% of native performance. Depending on what applications you are running on the Virtual Machine and of course which vendor you are using, the performance varies slightly. But with the vast number of features and cost savings, the little loss in performance is acceptable.

Data centers will be the first to be benefited, then it would be the turn of Desktops in Enterprises and ultimately all the desktops and laptop used by you and me. I think before I jump into the technical details, I should throw some light on the entities involved more so because this post is targeted towards the average Joe who may not be working in the IT field.

Lets start with some jargon:

Data center - place where all the servers (hardware/machines) are kept . These machines are generally much more powerful and costly than our regular desk tops.

IT (Information Technology): Although IT field refers to computer world, but within the computer world IT means the team responsible for setting up of the enterprise servers, desktop, network, basically people who deal with hardware and make the machines available for the users. E.g. System Administrator etc.

A little background story about Data centers:

Generally depending on the size of the enterprise there might be multiple data centers. And every enterprise will have a number of enterprise software like Microsoft Exchange for emails, web servers, application server and scores of such software for every department in the enterprise. As a rule of thumb on one physical server you can put one Operating system and only one enterprise software. Traditionally it is not at all a good idea to have more than one enterprise applications on a single server due to a lot of reasons, it could be a lot of things that could conflict and also if one application is down for some reason it would break the other software also if it is on the same machine. So as the company grows, the number of enterprise applications it needs, keep growing too. That translates into more physical machines in the data center. That means more real estate, more cooling is required- in other words more power is required. Of course more machines running means more carbon emissions. Yes IT is a contributor to global warming. Green IT is one of the benefits of Virtualization - we are going to talk about it more later.

Hardware maintenance/upgrade or applying patches to the OS esp. windows is nothing less than a daunting task. You need to schedule time for maintenance based on the users of that machine, then stay late of work on weekends so that bringing down the server will have a minimal impact. And after applying the patch you need to test it. Also ordering/setting up the machines with required software and testing it, is a pain in the neck for IT. Well more machines means more spending on IT for the space, cooling, power, people to maintain them. Well all these problems are about to become passe very soon. It already has for most of the fortune 1000 companies. Having said that it is not at all confined to big enterprises, many small and medium enterprises have already embraced Virtualization. Before we proceed, one important thing worth mentioning here is the capacity of the hardware has been increasing over time. Meaning the CPU speed, the number of CPUs, the number of cores per CPU (number of logical processing units in a processor, the more cores per processor the more powerful it is), the memory the hardware boxes can handle has considerably increased over the years. And generally keeping future requirements in view the hardware procured is much larger than needed. As a result the utilization on the servers is much much lower than its capacity. Not to mention the off peak hours where utilization is all time low or even zero.

Lets sum up some of the problems with traditional IT:

1. Under-utilization of hardware

2. Increasing requirement for space, cooling, power

3. Increasing carbon footprint

4. Resources required to manage the servers

5. Security - need to keep track of all the different versions of operating systems and keep them updated with the latest patches and service packs.

Virtualization addresses all the above problems and a lot more.

Lets look at of the advantages of Virtualization:

Server Consolidation - To host say 10 OS (along with their enterprise software of course) you will not need 10 physical machines. You would just need one virtualized server. And 10 is just an example, based on the capacity of the hardware you can stack up a whole lot more virtual machines without much of a performance impact.

Infrastructure cost reduction - Since less number of physical servers are required, the cost of space, power and cooling

IT responsiveness increases - due to the ease of provisioning new servers or maintaining them, the response time of IT team will increase dramatically.

Improvement in application availability - features like High Availability ensure min. down time. Without the cost of traditional redundant systems.

Back up and recovery - With ability to back up the whole VM and to recover at the VM Virtualisation takes these features to new heights.

Disaster recovery - provides disaster recovery at a fraction of the cost of traditional disaster recovery approaches that needed exact replication of the existing hardware set up.

Above all makes earth a cleaner and greener place by reducing carbon emissions be it from computers or cooling systems required.

Well the list goes on, but that discussion would be an item for another topic.

I hope you got a basic idea of Virtualization.

I am sure you must be thinking what you can to lay your hands on it to get a first hand experience. No you need not be an IT admin to experience that. Already there is stuff that you can play with and that too for FREE:

Hosted products (Run as a program on an OS) :

VMware Player - Runs an already created VM on Windows platform. E.g. you can download already created Ubuntu VM on your Windows Vista.

VMware Server - Dont be afraid of the word Server, it also runs on any windows OS but along with running any pre-existing VMs (Virtual Machines) it can also create any new VMs. And the options are endless, you can probably create a VM of any OS that you can possibly find.

Server products (Run on the hardware and enable VM running on top of it):

ESXi hypervisor - this is the smaller version of ESX (commercial Hypervisor from VMware) with foot print of 32 MB with all the functionalities of ESX but remember this is for server level hardware only.

Commertial Products:

Hosted:

VMware Workstation: This is similar to VMware Server discussed above but it has VMware Tools and other pieces of software that are designed for use of a typical Software Developer.

VMware Fusion: You own a Mac and want to use windows applications, not a problem. VMware Fusion is the tool for you.

Server:

ESX: the most mature hypervisor in the market.

There are lot of other products in both Desktop and Datacenter areas. But its not possible to put all the related topics under one title. Lets keep the details for another article. But for more details you can certainly  visit www.VMware.com

P.S. These are entirely my personal views and do not reflect the opinion of my employer VMware Inc.

~Kiran Malla
Resistance is futile...you will be Virtualized

Down the memory lane - part I

Its been quite an exciting time esp last six months - we moved back to India. We made a calculated decision to come back for good, leaving behind all the things that we loved and hated in the US. The reasons are a lot and a completely different topic ;). Now that we are back in India and kind of settled, we finally got some time to go down the memory lanes and cherish some of our wonderful moments in the US. When I think of my life in the US, for some reason I do not remember the life before marriage. May be because may be it wasn't as colorful :); I know Lovely must be smiling reading this. Since it would be too big a topic to cover in a single post, I will publish in parts; this part is dedicated to our garden.

We have grown almost all the vegetables that you can normally think of and we have grown them through out the year. We have grown chillies, capsicum, brinjal, ladies finger, onion, garlic, tomato, beans, cauliflower, broccoli and different varieties of cabbage. We have grown multiple herbs - parsley, mint, coriander, chives, methi etc. In the summers, we almost never bought tomatoes from the market and used to distribute the veggies to friends and neighbors. I normally used to take care of the veggies section and Lovely used take care of the flower section, and I do not know the names of most of the flowers except for Sun flowers, roses and hibiscus. I would leave the flower details to Lovely to fill in. One thing I really can't forget is the sun flowers; they grew more than 12 feet tall and some of the flowers were huge. I have added Sweety's pic with the sunflowers and you will see less than half the plant in the pic. Even the roses were exceptionally big in size. And not to forget the blueberry plan that yielded only one blue berry after one year.

I used to spend 1-2 hours a day with the plants either pruning them or watering them; it used to be my best time pass. I am adding some of the pics from our home garden in the US. Let me walk you through my memory lanes.
Tomatoes
Mint
Cabbage
Chillies
Brinjal
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Bell pepper
Cabbage
Ladies finger
Banana
Zinnia
Zinnia
Hibiscus
Rose
Sunflowers (& Sweety)

After coming to Bangalore, we have, fortunately, found a house that has some space for plants. We have made a fresh start, not as much as we want to but its a start. I will add those pics soon, till then have fun.

~Kiran
Green is good.

Every day Virtualization

This post is targeted mainly towards students and regular computer users. Its all about uses of Virtualization in our daily life. I will highlight specific VMware products that can be used to simplify our every day computing needs.

Lets see a few scenarios/problems where Virtualization has provided some interesting solutions:

1. Use of multiple OS - Running multiple OSs has become a part of daily activities among students and computer professionals. All those who have tried to configure multiple OS on one machine would know that it is not an easy task. Creating partitions and installation is one thing, if something goes wrong in the process then we are in a soup. Even if we do succeed in setting up the OSs, can we run all of them at once, share files, switch to a different OS in an instant or change disk space and other configurations on the fly? The answer is NO. Well the good news is that we don't need to do all that any more. Partitions and dual boots are things of the past.
Solution: Virtualization. VMware provides some desktop Virtualization products that can be installed on the Windows OS and in turn can create virtual machines with any OS you want. VMware supports more than 40 different OSs. Interesting part is that these software are FREE. We will see in this post what are those software and theirs uses.

2. Portability: Ever felt the need to share your work or show case your project in a different computer or environment and it doesn't have the OS you are looking for? Traditionally one would need to replicate the same environment by setting up the different partitions, OS and custom settings on the new machine. But with Virtualization we can carry the entire virtual machine (Complete OS, all the applications and the data in it) in one single file in a USB stick and run it on the new machine just like any other application. We will see how we can do that with VMware products.

3. Security: How many times did you install something that screwed up your system and may be even made you reinstall windows? Or some program you were never able to uninstall? Copied a file with virus and was never able to clean/remove it? Well these problems are passe now. You can create snapshots (save the state of OS in the form of a file) of the Virtual machines at any point of time and revert back to the previous snapshot when something goes wrong. Lot of corporates use this feature to test their software on Windows. E.g. if QA finds any bugs in their software, instead of developers trying to reproduce the bug, the complete virtual machine is sent over to the Developers.

Well the advantages are not limited to the above points but lets get into the the crux of our discussion - VMware implementation and see the means of achieving these benefits.

VMware hosted products: - These products need a host OS to run on like Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac.
VMware Server (FREE):
This software installs on Windows OS just like any other Windows application. Once it is installed, Virtual Machines can be created with the amount of memory, disc space, OS of your choice. The FREE version can be downloaded at: http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

Once the VM (Virtual Machine) is created (and booted) it acts like a complete OS in itself. In the console view, things can be seen exactly the way it would appear in an OS loaded on the hardware directly.

How does it work? Well that's the magic of VMware, it makes the Windows think it is running just another Windows application but it is in fact running a complete OS. Once you get your hands dirty with VMware products, you can figure out how to share files between the OS in the VM and the host OS or even among the VMs. There is no need to partition the discs or dual boot as the new OS runs on top of windows like any other Windows application. The number of OSs that can be run on our Windows is only limited by the memory and disc space we have. VMware can support any number of VMs.

Once our VM is up and running, we can practice or do projects in the new OS. When its time to show it or share it on other computers/environments the entire VM i.e., the new OS along with all the applications and data loaded into it, can be loaded into a USB stick. This can be done by just copying the ".vmdk" file of the VM. Each VM has a vmdk file associated with its name that stores the OS, all its application and data into just this one file. Amazing isn't it. This VM can also be played on any other machines that have VMware products installed.

One important feature of VMware server is the snapshot feature. It can save an instance of a VM with the new OS and all its programs in a snapshot. We can name our snapshots and create a tree structure of those snapshots. The coolest part is that we can traverse this tree as we want, e.g. soon after a VM installed-OS is created, say Linux, we can save a snapshot called 'LinuxOnly' then go ahead and install all the software we want and save another snapshot say 'LinuxLoaded'. For example if Linux gets corrupted while installing an application, there is no need of reinstalling the OS again. We can just revert to the earlier snapshot - 'LinuxOnly'. This feature is similar to Windows Restore but is much more efficient and without any risk of data loss. We can even record and replay our actions on the VM. You can find the latest news about VMware Server at http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

VMware Player (FREE):
This is very similar to VMware server minus the functionality to edit or configure the VM. In other words, it can just play a ready made VM but cannot create or edit it. You can compare VMware player to Real Player, real player can play movies but cannot create one, similarly VMware player can play VMs but cannot create them. This is a very light-weight software. People who do not want to create or edit VMs, but just want to run them, then VM Player is THE thing.

VMware Player can be downloaded for FREE at http://www.vmware.com/download/player/

We can Google for ready made VMs of any Open Source OS. It is indeed surprising to see how many people/enterprises have shared their VMs for free. Also, different FREE virtual appliances from various companies can be found at http://www.vmware.com/appliances/. But be sure to search for FREE hosted VMs.

VMware Workstation:
This is can be viewed as an extended version of the VMware Server. VMware Server is for the average user but Workstation is typically for an IT Profession. It has all the bells and whistles, tools needed for the Developer community. If you are a software professional dealing with multiple OS, I strongly suggest you to take a look at VMware workstation. This is the first product of VMware, it is very mature and has been there in the market for around 10 years now. It used to be called GSX. Only recently a downsized version of it was released to the general public in the name of VMware Server, for FREE. You can download VMware Workstation at http://www.vmware.com/go/buyworkstation

Students aspiring to be Developers will also find it quite amusing. But they don't have to worry about the cost as VMware gives a good discount to students on the Workstation at http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/academicstore.html

VMware Fusion:
You have a Mac and a PC (Windows) but have trouble sharing files? You own a Mac but missing Windows? Or planning to use a Mac but cannot move away from your Windows applications? You don't have to worry about it any more. With VMware Fusion, a Mac can run any Windows OS. Fusion is very similar to VMware Server in terms of functionality, the only difference is that Fusion sits on a Mac instead of Windows. People even say that new VMware Fusion 2.0 runs Windows better on a Mac than regular Windows. I havent tried it yet but guess its true, as it makes use of the powerful Apple hardware.

You can download the latest version of VMware Fusion at: www.vmware.com/go/buyfusion

It is not a free product but for all the convenience it offers for the Mac users, I think the price is well worth it. But if you are a student, you can get a hefty discount on Fusion at http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/academicstore.htmlThere are lot of programs targeted towards students, including sharing costly resources for projects. More details can be obtained at http://www.vmware.com/partners/academic/usage.html

If you haven't got your hands wet with Virtualization, the FREE VMware products listed above are a good start. Dont forget to vist www.vmware.com for the latest news about these products and more.

So what are you waiting for, go virtual...go VMware.

Please let me know what you think of this post. Any suggestions/comments about the current post or any ideas for future posts are welcome.

~ Kiran Malla

Resistance is futile...you will be Virtualized

Reference: www.vmware.com

Disclaimer:

The information put here may not be entirely accurate. Any information that is found incorrect or incomplete is not a deliberate effort and can be considered as my limitation of knowledge on this topic. The views expressed here are entirely personal and are not directed towards any particular person or company. Any inaccuracies can be highlighted in the comments so that the article can be corrected after a fact check. All the Virtualization products discussed in the article are related to VMware Inc. only as I have knowledge about those products. There could be other Virtualization products available in the market that could do the same or a better job than the applications discussed in this article.