For the Curious ...

After spending a little over 2 months, I am back from the US. The trip went fairly well, got to see a new place. The only complaint is I didn’t get to go to Florida… I had this grand plan of driving to Florida, getting to Orlando, going around a few parks there (including Disney :) ) then from there going to Miami and then drive all the way to Key West; but this couldn’t happen cause I never found any one to go with me :(. But no complaints, I will probably go down there next time. I think its time, I pen down all i have experienced in the US. I landed there on the 2nd of March, Simmy was supposed to be picking me up but unfortunately for me that day, it snowed !!! I land at about 3 in the evening and then travelled about 40 miles to Alpharetta and checked in the Hilton nearby my office. Simmy and Reni were there to check on me, we sat there chatting for a hour or so then we decide to go out and pick some stuff out… basically, my first visit on the road in the US in Alpharetta… I was ...

Sitting here in my hotel room, I was in deep reverie of the days that have passed since I have come to the US. It seems like a long time, but if my memory serves me right, its actually less than 2 months. It seems like forever. Snapping out of it, I am happy that i am getting to go back home 3 weeks earlier than expected and originally planned. I am supposed to be flying on the 8th of the May and if all goes well, I will be in Bangalore at the midnight of the 9th. I am so happy that i am literally counting my days here. My emotions would probably be understood by some one who is serving a life time sentence and his days of getting out of the jail is closing in. Anyways, these days have been like a sentence to the “ Kaala Paani ” (For those who don’t know what it means, It was a jail on an island where inmates were sent and they had no way to return)  . But this also has been an experience to me, driving 320 miles in 2 days just around Atlanta, meeting new people and to see the US...

In the search of the “Fundamental” entity in the grand scheme of things that we form a small part of, I thought it would be interesting to know a theory that makes the most logical sense. There have been fights, talks and debates about whether or not God exists. People have been imprudent enough to challenge the existence of God and term that Science is every thing. I thought this theory might interest them as well. Before I go any further, let me make it clear that I love science and this is nothing against science. What I believe science is a candle (or any Light source) in the centre of a dark room. We don’t know how big the room is or how big the space is, all we see is till where the candle can throw light on. when we get a better light source, we are able to see some thing we never knew in the past, some times proving our old assumptions wrong. Science is nothing more than when we gain understanding of how some thing works, and not really create it. It always existed, but we ne...

In this blog, let us see a Step by Step approach that you would take to troubleshoot a Cluster XL problem in Checkpoint. Normally, this problem comes of after a reboot or an Upgrade or as a result on some change in the underlying network. When troubleshooting the CPHA, the following commands are very helpful cphaprob state cphaprob list cphaprob –a if The status of the CPHA is shown by the first command. First thing that you need to do is verify basic connectivity between the firewall interfaces. Allow the cluster members to ping each other (if not already allowed by the policy) and ping away, you should be able to verify the basic connectivity in this way. If the connectivity exists, then find out which firewall has the problem, it will normally be the down firewall Number Unique Address Assigned Load State 1 (local) 10.0.0.1 100% Active 2 10.0.0.2 0% Down Here as you can see the second firewall is down, you need to first go ahead and just execute ‘cpstop’ and ‘cpstart’ commands on t...

The Backbone of Cloud Computing is Virtualization or so to say splitting a single box into multiple virtual boxes each capable of providing similar functionalities on a smaller scale. So next time you want 5 application servers, think before you buy 5 machines. The Virtualization has hit almost all Vendors and in almost all phases of Network, Security and Applications. Processor Virtualization: Intel and AMD have entered this on a Hardware level. They have started to produce Multi Cored Processors, especially for the Virtualized environments. This will change the Software only Virtualization to Hardware assisted virtualization. If I remember this right, AMD Opteron  (AMD-V technology) is being developed by AMD, and Intel is fighting it out with the Intel® VT-x processors. These have the ability to assist the hypervisors in the Trap processing, Hyper threading and Pipelining request. Desktop / server virtualization: The first one to be hitting virtualization was the Deskto...

People, I am back with the “Cloud”, and this time its the design strategies. In my last Cloud blog, I mentioned about what Cloud computing basically means. Now I am going to talk about the strategies and the concerns that companies have before moving them, how it can benefit in the long term, so on and so forth. The three basic kinds of clouds are Private Cloud Public Cloud Hybrid Cloud I don’t think they need an explanation as most of us know what public, private and hybrid means. Now before actually diving down in to what kind of strategy needs to be followed, let me explain the biggest concern The above mentions the biggest concern of all the companies who know what a cloud is and are sceptical about moving to the cloud. Its the “Cloud Security” . Its because of this the cloud computing is not developing as fast as it should be. Companies are worried about their data being stolen on the cloud as it is on the Internet and is a Shared Pl...

I am flying to Atlanta today, and I write this blog here sitting at the airport, waiting for my flight which has been delayed by an hour. After a long day at the office, which seemed even longer because I had to wait for the cash and then the tickets (As usual, things were not very organized and had to do last moment modifications)and then had to prepare a training schedule for the people who I have never met or for that matter even spoken to, apart for the regular greetings that we exchange out of courtesy. Just to add to the madness, the  shared drives went down, and then we had to discuss Service Remediation (A project that I take care of), with absolute zero data. I somehow bade farewell to people and with great difficulty was able to get out of office at about 8:15 PM. I then came to KP’s place, where I had all my belongings packed and ready to fly. This trip has not exactly been like the ones I have had before. First there were some delays in me getting my Visa done, and th...