R U Virtualized..??

If you thought that "Existence" is THE THING, then you might be little outdated according to some existing living beings with brains. With computer hardware and software industry booming and breaking all limits, virtualization has become the next buzz word. Just imagine on the same hardware you can have any operating system you want to run without uninstalling/installing operating software every time. Its like you have different machines on the same hardware and you can power up anyone you want or you can even power up more than one machine depending on the hardware you have.

One of the companies making hay while the concept of virtualization shines is Vmware. They are closely followed by Micorosoft. I personally have had a chance to work on Vmware products, namely Vmware Workstation, Vmware ESX Server, Vmware Virtual Center and Vmware Lab Manager. I am not into lab administration but some how I have this love for computer hardware and labs.

I will describe how to resolve common errors which Vmware users face but at a later point of the time. First for the benift of those who don't know much about this technology, let me explain you in a nut shell what different products do.

Vmware workstation: You can install this software on your personal desktop or laptop which has some or the other operating system already installed, say Windows. Now using vmware workstation you can creat a virtual machine which will live on your host operating system (windows). In this virtual machine, you can have any other OS you want, for example linux. This Virtual machine works as a seprate machine in it self. You decide how much hardware resources you want to allocate to this virtual machine. This is a very good way for people who seldom require working on two different operating systems.

Vmware ESX server: This is a better and much advanced version of Vmware workstation. This is mainly usefull for organizations and not much for individual users. Unlike Vmware workstation, VMware ESX server does not need any host operating system. it installs directly on the hardware. Once the ESX server is installed, you can create "n" number of Virtual machines on it, with different operating systems of you choice. The number of virtual machines will but off course depend on your hardware and the performance you want from the virtual machine. However, it is very easy to increase RAM and CPU allocation in a virtual machine at any point. I have a server with 16 GB RAM, and on that I am hosting more than 12 Virtual machines at any given point of time. All you need is some extra GBs of hard disk.

Vmware Virtual Center and Vmware Lab Manager:
These two software are basically used by lab admins to administer the virtual lab infrastructure. One can do anything and everything from these softwares like creating, deleting, cloning, migrating virtual machines, License management, etc.

The most amazing feature Vmware products offer is the snap shot feature. If you thought that you cannot go back in time, then Vmware has some other thoughts for you. I just love these feature. Once I have my virtual machines with all the softwares and settings I need, I just take a snapshot of the same. After that I can revert to this snapshot any time I want to, even if I get BSOD on my virtual machine. This feature has made me some what fearless at work. I know, that even if I screw up, I can get back to the last stable check point anytime I want to. I just need to keep taking snapshots at regular/correct time.

Another feature I looooooovvveee in Vmware is of cloning. It makes life so simple. You can clone any virtual machine or create templates of virtual machines and then deploy any number of virtual machines you want to from these templates. It hardly takes 15 minutes for me to get a new virtual machine using cloning.

As of now, I will leave you guys to play around with vmware products and get virtualized.  My next post will be for those who use Vmware produts, some do's and don'ts...

Incase you have some specific scenario you want me to talk about then just leave a comment on the post..

Asta lavista..! :)

Sometimes Rice can be the ultimate Savior

A sheer coincidence, as I was wondering that it has been quite a while since I myself visited my own blog (I think it would qualify for height of laziness), I came across this interesting article which tells us about a last effort we can make to save our gadgets after they have taken a refreshing bath.

Imagine a $300 Apple Ipod or your fancy mobile phones or PDAs just happen to be too thirsty and decide to take a dip in water. Is it the end of life for them..?? In this case I am quite sure that you will try what ever it takes to revive back the gadget. In case it comes alive, good for you and you can stop reading the article and utilize your time in something else. Just in case you don't care about your drenched gadget (Hard hearted person) then you should also stop wasting your time in reading this article.

Now since you have already reached here, I won't waste much of your time and come to the point directly. Most of us know about Rice as one of the primary edible item. But there is more than this. Rice is known to be a very got absorbent of water. All you need to do is take a bowl of uncooked rice and put your gadget in it. Make sure that you power off the gadget and if possible dis mantel it (i.e. remove the battery, cover, etc). Dis mantel only to the extent from which you can re-assemble it. Leave the gadget inside the bowl, covered with rice for at least 48 hours. You might get lucky, if rice successfully absorbs all the moisture from the gadget.

I am not too sure of the success rate of this method. But again, if there is no other way, then this is at least worth a shot. Piece of advice, keep the electronic gadgets away from moisture and water.

Big Indian Burrp, Little Italy Style ;)

Long long ago, (actually just an year ego, See Sug, I miss you so much that even an year has become long long ago to me), Sug was leaving Bangalore for good (Ohh did I call it for Good, she relocated to Chennai aka Madras ;) ). So some of us decided to have dinner together. All of us reached a restaurant at 100ft. Road, Indira Nagar(Bangalore but off course). They call them self as "Little Italy".

"Little Italy..?? Why would someone like to add "Little" to their name", I thought. Clearly frustration of being waiting for the last 5 minutes for getting a table was building up inside me. Since we had been told before hand by the Restaurant management that it will take at least 20 minutes for us to get a table, I guess the frustration was only because my friend was all set to leave Bangalore.

I believe that both Joy and Sadness are two different sides of the same coin, so where there is sadness, there will be Joy too. Very soon all our sadness of parting with Sug was turned into a pleasant Joy of life. All credit goes to the Chef of Little Italy. Ohh sweet lord, there menu is like an encyclopedia, I wonder if they actually serve so many Italian dishes back in Italy. To make life easy, they have a very friendly dish code (Ex: A.2, P.14) just to help people who have difficulty in pronouncing the Italian dish names.

That day was a rare one, since I agreed to go in for a pure vegetarian dinner...and I do admit of not being particularly happy with the decision...at least initially. But I was pleasantly proved wrong. Little Italy is a place which has almost everything in place (be it ambience, food, hospitality, bar) and that too just perfectly. Who says that there is limited number of dishes when it comes to veggie or Italian food or both? If you do, then you gotta visit Little Italy.

We gorged ourselves with pastas, risottos, wood burn pizzas (Ow Maa Gawd!!! that was one awesome thing..!!!),lasagne etc etc....gosh I'm already salivating!! The first impression of the food was, it smells good, looks great but might be less in quantity. We were soon proved wrong as the food was over filling, but this didn't make us happy since we all had already become too greedy and wanted to try each and every dish on the menu. Finally came in the time for Desserts..! Most of the desserts we ate were amazing but there was one which stands tall among the rest.. Choco Bomb..!! It is like the mother of all bombs and desserts..! It’s the most perfectly prepared dessert I have ever had. The temperature, sweet, bitter, softness everything..!

One look at the food served at Little Italy and you know its been cooked with a lot of care to appease the taste buds as well as health-conscious minds (at last I can have pastas and not feel guilty !!;) Tho I am quite sure that cheese is an integral part of Italian dishes)I always thought healthy and tasty food are kind of antonymous - but definitely not any more.

As compared to other restaurants in Bangalore who serve Italian food, Little Italy is on the lower side when it comes to pricing. Initially you might think that pricing is quite high but then quality never comes cheap. A dish here wuld cost you little over Rs 200/-, Drinks(Mocktail/Cocktail) would take away another 200 bucks. And then the sweet dish would take just the half the earlier two had been taking. So roughly per head the cost comes little over 500/- but all is completely worth off. Spending so much hard earned money at Little Italy gives me good food and satisfaction..! ;)

Since then I have been visiting this place almost once every week..I'm actually contemplating on going green:).

Bon - appetite..!

Beginning Of A New Era..!

So should I start my blog by chanting some mantra or something of that sort, not to make sure that my blog gets millions of hits but just to prevent millions from hitting me..! [Sigh] I really suck at this, but still I will go ahead and write all sort of crappy things on my blog.. Why..??? Well you can say I love to torture people like you who are so job less that they are reading my blog.. My Blog..??? OMiGodddddd…. Out of million of blogs you decide to read my blog..!!! I can just wish you good luck, going forward if you just press Ctrl+F4(Damn you computer geeks..), then its truly understandable.

Writing has never been my cup of coffee (Damn rite, Its cause of people like me that all the CCDs and Baristas and Starbucks get huge business). I've never been a good writer my whole life. Even when I was in school, I remember, I would always score excellent marks in Moral Science,Maths,Science,History,Geography etc and infact I was always one of the toppers (Who am I trying too fool!!! So incase you know me from school or college or from work, keep your mouth shut..!), but when it came the languages, I always had these apprehensions, be it English or for that matter Hindi, which is even worse.
But here I am, writing my first blog on the internet. The interesting thing to notice for my readers(if any) and most importantly for me is to see how long can I continue with this, because I've never been focused about anything in my life. I've always enjoyed the tag of being laidback and even I'm amazed by the fact that I'm scratching my head and chin and beard which I don't have, to write something on a public forum.

All the best to my readers(again..if any)!