GLOSS session on Open High Availability Cluster

Today we had a session on OHAC. It was a brainstorming session in fact! Till today I had a different view point about clusters and parallel processing. But now Abhishek had explained asymptotic strategies that were involved in clusters. He started off from scratch, explaining even the basics. He started his lecture by playing an “open” video which was designed using Blender software with the help of super computers’ service provided by network.com. I could understand that there would be a heavy loss of data and currency when we have a crash in servers or say, when a disaster strikes.
Interrupt received!!!
Oops! No donut for you! Wait…
For the non techies reading this I’d like to define some of these concepts as I’m eager to let everybody know how things are working in big companies such as Sun, Google (Gmail), Yahoo and others. Actually clusters are two or more systems that execute a applications given to them.In case of a failure to one cluster, the other cluster tolerates and gives a fail safe execution for the application.
Take this situation, when you are making a money transaction through an internet service provided by a bank and suddenly the server which provided you the service failed! Boom!! You won’t know what the consequences may be, right? Again, think of a situation when your mail service provider’s server has crashed once for all. Are you gonna make use of his services from then on? In the same manner think that you want to upload a video and you don’t have youtube functioning, would be very disgraceful right? In such situations you can have high availability clusters. When an application running and some misbehavior occurs in that cluster, it can be transferred with a great ease to the other cluster without making the end user feel that there had been a crash or a change of a cluster.
In this regard, you’ve operating system talking to the hardware and over it, the cluster infrastructure in order to distribute the work properly. The applications are safely distributed into the clusters during a failover by special applications called as Agents.
The most exciting part of the session was the simulation of this architecture into the opensolaris machine. Abhishek had worked to create zones. These zones are nothing but an instance of the operating system’s kernel. He launched a song using real player in one zone and ordered it shutdown. To everybody’s surprise, the real player failed over to another zone and started running successfully.
I was really on this topic even after the session had ended. And now I’ve got a few pdf’s on it. Very eager to go through them! So, rest is next...
To the techies, if you wish to have a view of the presentation, do mail me. I’ll send a copy of it to you.

Nokia is not to be Blamed

With the introduction of Nokia's low cost mobiles, the number of mobile phone users has drastically increased in the past two years. It has become an important tool for communication. People have realized the importance of quick communication after the Tsunami disaster. But this is not all. It was just one time when people thought that cell phones could be useful at emergency situations but, now cell phones are a tool of entertainment and just that. 10 p calling boosters, 22500 message booster, 49p call booster, STD booster, etc are the common offers which make anyone go ga-ga over mobile phones. A good example is the person in this picture!

I was on my way to Trichy. I found my bus driver making some zigzag and stunts while driving. When went near, I could find him talking in his mobile. The road was actually a busy highway which is under construction and the driver was pretty cool calling the end user “chellam, kutti, kanna”. And when I took this picture, the conductor noticed me and got afraid. To add to it, the passengers saw me just as a journalist landing from “The Hindu”.
There are something in this world which we can’t buy such as our life. For everything else there’s mastercard. Hope the driver hasn’t heard this! He He…;) lol!

Baby's day out....

Can’t really accept that I’m 18, now! I got my learner’s license by last month and today I went to the Chengalpattu R.T.O office to get my test done. My morning started exactly by 6:40 a.m. and I had a good bath and then noodles, an easy and light breakfast. My father having noticed the 100 INR in my purse and gave me 50 more INR to spend. I started my journey with my T-Shirt on, quoting “Some people call it laziness, but I call it deep thinking”. I missed my first bus but didn’t miss the second. The bus was quite full and I had to stand. The bus conductor came late to me and so, I had enough time to plug my ear phones to my 5600 Xpress mobile and listen to the same old Mungaru Male and 50 cent’s songs. Later, I got my tickets to Thirukalkundram, a small town near by, where the driving school had one of its main branch offices. I got down there and took attestation in their office and started towards Chengalpattu. This time the bus was crowded, but I had no other option than traveling in it. I had a 10 INR, but the conductor wanted me to give exactly 4.50 INR. Finally he came to a compromise and gave me back only 5 INR in the end. I didn’t mind for that 0.50 INR cause, it could at least help him with a tea if he did the same with 4 more people like me. I got down by the railway gate and went straight down the road connecting the R.T.O office. 8:00 a.m. was not so early. I didn’t see any shop open by the road side. I was quite surprised and continued with my long walk. Going further I could see a lot of men standing and crowding like the housefly does! Never mind, that was the R.T.O office. The representatives of my driving school approached a dozen of their clients (includes me too…) and checked for the correct details in the learners’ license. After checking, they asked us to stand by the ‘second left’ where the test for two wheelers would ‘commence’, ooh! It was like a circus but people had wet faces as though they were attending some public exam. Even I was afraid too as I had not known to drive a geared two wheeler. I pretended to be cool headed but. Then there was one such man, a representative from another driving school. He gave practice to his clients with the Kinetic Honda which he had. Seeing people doing miserable job with that Kinetic Honda, even I asked my driving school representatives to give their vehicle for my practice. But they had their own reasons to deny it. Later then, it was like the Park Sheraton’s fashion show. The judge – R.T.O was in one end and we candidates in the side. The co-ordination and the time keeping were very perfect with that of the “name callers” and “senders”. We were asked to make a U turn in front of them without keeping legs on the road. Some made it perfect. But some others didn’t mind having their legs down for balance. There were some people too, who fell on the ground without even being able to balance the two-wheeler. After some time, loud came the noise calling, “Sanjeev Gopinath”. I took the kinetic Honda, raised the accelerator and made a big U turn to end up with a perfect drive. After then, I sat in the TATA Indica which they provided and made a perfect start. The R.T.O sitting near me asked me to stop. That ended my tests. Now I’m a tested citizen of India to drive on any roads across our country with any two-wheeler or four-wheeler. But this didn’t end the game. I was asked to wait behind the R.T.O office in order to check my details and give them a “cheese-smile” for my license. I came to the spot and to my negative surprise; I saw the whole of Indian population waiting there. There were different sets of people, rich-poor, literate-illiterate, male-female, young-old, bathed-not bathed, etc. The license officers took around 3 hrs to call me. Meanwhile I had no place to sit. So I was wandering over there and somehow had a time pass with my counterparts. To the heat waves of the sun thrashing me, even my cell had got switched off. I discussed politics, corruption and things of that sort with some minds there. There was a big well just outside the office where there were lots of fishes. I even watched them to pass away my time and can’t say, there were many photos and gum bottles in the well. I thought, oh! God, hopefully Sanjeev is only the best citizen; he doesn’t do such things. I was called by around 1:10 and I completed my processing there. I was asked to sign using a pen connected to an input device which directly displayed the handwritings on screen. I thought, oh! One day I could program for the updated device drivers for this hardware! Huh, readers! Where will my mind go? After all, I’m a computer Engineering student.

I started to home and reached by 3:00 p.m. My day, though very tiresome was exposure giving. I could understand the underground works going on in many of the state government offices. I came across different sets of people and I could understand the population explosion of India. Being in a township, I never had any difficulties of standing in a queue, hearing words of the frustrated under-treating officers. Around me I had only seen a developed India, but today I had an eye opener. Hence, it was a very different day.

My Computer Life

It was a day when my dad was asking me a few questions when I was playing ‘Age of Empires’. He had asked me, how can one program such brilliant computer games???
Suddenly a spark struck in my mind on programming. I found the pleasure that one could get from programming something. When you could get the output of a complex problem quickly; I thought, oh! This could be the best area in which we can develop our skills on.
I started programming as early as when I was in 6th. That led me to the strongest foundation that one could never imagine on. I started of with QBASIC and then slowly went to website development through the Yahoo! Geocities. That helped me to learn much of the tricks and tips in various branches of computer science and commerce. With the ideas of QBASIC I had gone to a coaching center to learn C-language. But the lady there, ordered me to finish MS-Office and the continue with C. Hence I had to continue with MS-Office. Then I finished my C and completed my C++ too. This happened by the end of 10th as I had got 75% scholarship for a Diploma in C, C++ and UNIX in CSC. I had promised my teachers there to complete 6-10 projects by the end of the course. But when I saw the project catalogue, I was off! They were quite tough. But I had kept my promise. I submitted around 4 projects which included…
• Calendar
• Calculator
• File Manager
• Database Manager

Then with the introduction of Operating Systems in my +1, I started off with a DOS based cross platform called as Entrada Emission. This could help for a text processing, file management, database management, presentation management and much more across different machines. I made this version portable when I was in my I yr. B.Tech. I had created many applications such as Natter Man for having a chat via the school LAN.
The turning point of my computer life came when I was in 12th std., my principal madam had called me while talking with the software engineers. She wanted to have a question paper generator for one word answering. The software engineers had asked her for a great time. I promised her that I’ll make one for her within a week time or even less than that. This made the software engineers envy the regards and the pride that my princi., had on me. Then with my entering into the college I had joined GLOSS and my life has been pretty interesting from then on.

People I would like to thank in this regard:
• Mr. Mohan Kumar (My 6-8th Computer Teacher)
• Mr. Narayan Balaji (My 9th Computer Teacher)
• Mr. Dharmarajan (My 11th Computer Teacher)
• Mrs. Bhuvaneshwari (My 12th Computer Teacher)