Learning Curve

The batch photograph published below is my third consecutive batch on an MX000 Server Administration Course this quarter. Boy, doesn’t that say how popular these machines are!

Published below is the batch photograph of MX000 Server Administration Training concluded in Bangalore last week:

Good week ahead to all of you!

On a week, when the legendary thinker J R D Tata’s 105th birth anniversary was celebrated, it was my privilege to find myself delivering a program on SPARC MX000 Server in one of his several institutions. The below batch photograph comes to you, courtesy a participant of this program. The date on the photograph is a “bug”.

Wishing all a happy friendship week.

I have come home. It always feels nice to be back home. It feels nicer to have come home with loads of good memories; memories about a very short period of my life in an Island, far from my home, its people, its culture and many many other things. Like every other human, I also long to keep all joyous memories safely and dearly. And as long as I can retain the memories of wonderful days of my life at Kingston in Jamaica, I know it always carry a potential to bring smile on my face. It’s adorable; largely because of some kind hearted people.

Let me be frank: I badly wanted to get back home. This was on day one. I began counting days. But soon I got used to the environment, the people, their dialect, the music by the pool side of my hotel, the courteous staff in there, the strange and weird gestures by the street walkers, the hot climate, the sight of beautiful lush green mountains, but not certainly the food. As such I’m notorious for my poor eating habits. So the last thing that I want to discuss in here is about food. Barring that, I have only very fond memories of my journey to a Caribbean Island.

The tall man standing next to me is Devindra Sharma. People call him Dev. He was one of the first two people, whom I met at Fujitsu. That he is an Indian is painted all over his face. But it surprised me to discover that he was born vegetarian. To snatch from him some information around the secret vegetarian food outlets in Jamaica stood high on my priorities. Thus began my company with Dev that may have started with a very casual conversation around Vegetarian food or probably around the details of his favourite chauffer at Kingston, but went on to several other topics: some personal, some historical, some geographical, some cultural and what not. If I know that Lignum Vitae is the National Flower of Jamaica, that’s because of him. I wouldn’t have known that the consumption of unripe fruit called The Ackee, also the Jamaican National Fruit, invites disaster, but for Dev’s detailed explanation. A few hours of conversation with him seemed like a quick flip through the pages of an Encyclopedia! Does anyone here needs more explanation on why I love exposure to the people the most. I thank Dev for all the wisdom that he shared, for all the time that he gave me in shopping around, hanging out in Indian restaurants, driving me around and lastly for his drop at the Norman Manley International airport in Jamaica during very early hours on a fine Saturday morning. I admire him for his linguistic capabilities and several other qualities.

Dev introduced me to Conrad, his colleague. Together we had some fun at a couple of Indian Food Outlets in Jamaica in the evenings.

On the other hand, during the daytime, empowered by the energy and enthusiasm of a youthful audience, I sailed through my assignment at Fujitsu rather smoothly. There weren’t any hiccups in the program that I can think of. Well, if there were any that I am now unable to recall, I believe one among the group in the picture would show up and comment loud and clear. I thank each of them for all learning and fun in the class.

On the final day of the Boot Camp, they very kindly offered me a drive to the famous University Of West Indies. I found it difficult to turn down such an offer, especially when a visit to the UWI was always on my ‘To Do’ list while at Kingston. Consequently, I found myself taking a stroll in the huge campus of UWI, accompanied by some of its alumni. They would have had a stream of memories about their college going days while taking me around the beautiful University Campus. By the time we drove out of the UWI, I had just over a dozen hours left in Kingston.

Again, I am happy to be back home. I’m happy also to have got an opportunity to spend two weeks of my life in a beautiful Island, spending some quality time with some wonderful people, the memories of which, I hope, shall take a very long time to even fade. Farewell, Kingston!

It has been exactly a week since I landed at Kingston in Jamaica. The stay so far has been very pleasant. The days have been quite busy and that coupled with an element of laziness kept me away from blogging for a full one week. Honestly, I haven’t been able to see much of Kingston yet. But whatever I managed to see and experience in the last six days or so, I found this city interesting. Perhaps there are problems here, like every other city, that doesn’t quite seem visible to a stranger like me, settled in the comforts of a luxurious hotel situated in the heart of New Kingston. Whatever it may be, the fact that many major Corporates have their presence in this part of the world and that the city caters to the need of all its visitors fairly well makes it appear a very good destination to me. And like I said, I have been enjoying my stay in this City so far.

The trip to Kingston from India was rather long. I had to hop a couple of flights before I finally landed at the Kingston airport. Visa is stamped on arrival at Kingston. En route, I halted at Miami for a day and seized that opportunity to see the South Miami beach. On the day when US celebrated its Independence Day, a long stroll through the beach roads exhausted me and I was left with no energy for any other activity except sleep. Luckily, flight from Miami to Kingston was scheduled only on the next day and it was the shortest leg in my whole journey with a flying time of just about 1 hour 25 minutes.

And thus I landed in the Norman Manley Intl Airport at Kingston, located so close to the sea that while landing, for a moment at least, I thought the flight was landing in water!!!

I was charged USD 25 for transportation from the airport to the Hilton Kingston and that I felt was reasonable considering the distance covered. It was water on either side of the road for a good distance from airport to the Hotel and I really enjoyed that sight. Like me, if you also carry a misconception that it’s beaches and beaches all over this Island, please be clear that no one comes to Kingston to see beaches. There aren’t many beaches in this part of the world. For beaches, there are other exotic destinations within the Island.

Being a strict vegetarian has always thrown some challenges during overseas trips. On my arrival at my hotel in New Kingston, one of the things that I did was to walk around the place to spot an Indian restaurant named ‘Akbar,” which always stood prominent whenever Google fetched me the results for ‘Indian Restaurant in Kingston, Jamaica’. I did drop in there a couple of times for my dinner. It’s a decent Indian restaurant worth trying while in this part of the world. They have hotel pick up as well, but yours truly hasn’t made use of that facility yet, as ‘Akbar’ is a just few minutes walk from ‘Hilton Kingston’, where I am stationed. On one another day during last week, one of my friends took me to another Indian restaurant near by. ‘Jewel Of India,’ as it is named is also worth a visit. Most of the afternoons last week, I got into the Earls Juice Center to fetch some fresh fruit juice and strict vegetable meals. Not very tasty, but certainly healthy.

I love the beaches. Since Kingston offered no famous ones and because I had a weekend at my disposal I followed a friend’s advice to book myself on to the Knutsford Express that carried me from Kingston to Montego Bay, an exotic tourist location in Jamaica, on a Saturday, dated 11 July 2009. I came back to Kingston the same day evening in the same bus.

On reaching Montego Bay from Kingston, after a good three hour drive (approximately) with one stop of ten minutes at Ocho Rios, I went and spent some time at the Doctors Cave Beach and then shopped around for a while. To kill some time, I walked around the streets in Montego Bay. It was crowded with Music floating all around the place. I could even spot a DJ standing on the street and playing music for the public! Some street walkers produced weird noise and actions to grab my attention and my response to all of it, as advised in this website, was to just IGNORE them. It works.

And here I’m resting on a Sunday in my hotel at Kingston. Oh yeah, before I forget, I’m here for a very serious reason, not to enjoy a vacation. A two weeks Boot camp around Sun’s Software and Hardware Products at Fujitsu is what really brought me here to this Island. How well I managed to take care of the business purpose of this visit is for the folks in the photograph to comment. May be, their happy faces would well be a positive indication of a good Phase I of the Boot Camp.

Tomorrow I’m starting the Phase II of the program and I am looking forward for a wonderful experience full of learning and fun!

A back to back course on MX000 servers in two different location across the Nation is some kind of indication on the rising popularity of those servers, especially in the Banking sector. With me in the photograph (by the way, I’m on the front wearing a dark blue shirt) are gentlemen from two very popular banks in India, who turned up for a course on MX000 Server Administration at Mumbai last week. Well they use High End MX000 Servers in their data center to run some critical banking applications:

A course on MX000 Server Administration concluded here in Bangalore yesterday and following is a moment from the class.

After a rather long period of time, I chanced upon a Solaris Administration teach this week at Bangalore. It was a quick revision of one of my favourite topics.

Good weekend to all!

Read Jonathan’s blog to know more about Project Vector. After reading it, you would agree with MaryMary for sure. So have a look here and be prepared!

This evening, I parted with the folks in the snap below, concluding a five day session around Sun Fire Midrange Servers. Felt nice to be a part of such an enthusiastic and jovial set of people and I also wish to thank them for the free (as in beer) lunch they offered me this afternoon .

It’s a busy weekend here in India with the General Elections 2009 verdict to be out tomorrow. And while that happens, I’m going to journey towards a peaceful destination for spending a restful weekend. To all those who intend to follow the India 2009 Election Bulletins closely, here’s wishing a very interesting weekend!

Solaris 10 5/09 a.k.a Solaris 10 Update 7 is available for download. Click here to get it. Check out Joerg Moellenkamp’s web logs summarizing the new features in Solaris 10 5/09. Also read Scott Davenport’s blogs to know about the bug fixes and enhancements in Solaris 10 FMA with this new release. The PDF of ‘Solaris 10 5/09 What’s New?’ is here.

On a May Day, upon mutual agreement, I’m meeting up with the folks in the picture below for the closing sessions of a course on Sun Fire Midrange Servers at Sun Office here in Bangalore. They are all Field Engineers and the course they are completing today covers topics somewhat close to the ones listed here, but with some additions and omissions.

Wishing all a long restful weekend!

Today Sun is launching the Intel Nehalem based family of x64 blades and rack mount servers. Tune into live webcast and get more details about the same here. Read the press release here.

Want to see how your favourite websites appeared in the past? Thanks to Internet Archive, it’s now possible to travel back in time, all the way to the Year 1996, and take a look at how a website looked at a particular point in time. Well, I went to the Internet Archive, keyed in “www.sun.com” in the ‘Wayback Machine’ search box, selected the date October 20 2006 and got to see this. It’s fun; it’s informative.

And guess what, this massive amount of data (talk about billions of pages and growing) is hosted in a Sun MD and employs Sun OpenStorage. Read more about the ‘Internet In a Box’ here.

Referring to the title of this post, read the press release here. Watch the live webcast here.

Last week I was engaged in bringing up a demo set up at Sun Solution Center in Bangalore, employing a number of components from Sun Software Stack, including IDM (Sun’s provisioning tool), OpenSSO (Sun’s Access Management Solution), DSEE (User Data Store), MySQL (Sun’s database), GlassFish (Sun’s Application Server) and Glassfish Web Space Server (Sun’s portal solution) installed in Solaris Containers.

For reference, the deployment scenario is depicted in the diagram below:

The phase I of implementation involved integrating Sun’s IDM with OpenSSO. The following was the objective:

[*] Configure OpenSSO Enterprise to protect Identity Manager, and to allow single sign-on login to the Identity Manager user and administrative interface.
[*] Configure Identity Manager to provision users and roles to OpenSSO Enterprise.

To achieve the above,there is a neat documentation available here.

Once I got the above integration of IDM and OpenSSO functional in our set up, users could be provisioned from Sun Identity Manager to the ‘idm’ realm in OpenSSO (which finally gets stored in the DSEE 6.x configured as the User repository for OpenSSO).

The actual reason for adding an entry on my blogs around this set up is to express my excitement on discovering the ease of integrating GlassFish WebSpace Server with OpenSSO. I’d reiterate those steps performed to make the GlassFish Web Space Server (installed in one zone of Solaris 10 OS) contact OpenSSO (installed in another zone) for authentication. I presume, this exercise can be performed in a matter of few minutes. So set your stop watch and get going:

Acquire Glassfish v3 prelude. Then click here and download OpenSSO. For instructions on installation, read my friend David’s blog. You would remember him to be the author of free training on OpenSSO. Create a realm, if needed (say ‘idm’).

Download Glassfish WebSpace Server 10.. To install WebSpace Server, you would also need Ant 1.7 or higher from here. Now follow the steps (the following example uses WebSpace Server bundled with Glassfish):

[1] Unzip Ant and GlassFish WebSpace Server.
[2] Set ANT_HOME variable to point to the directory location of new version of ANT.
[3] Goto webspace_dir/glassfishv2 directory and run the following command:
ant -f setup.xml
[4] Once the above step is completed, goto webspace_dir/glassfishv2/bin directory and start domain:
./asadmin start-domain
[5] Upon successful completion of above step, open a browser and access the following URL:
http://webspaceserver_host:8080

If any of the above steps seems ambiguous, please read the installation instructions here.

Once the GlassFish WebSpace Server page is up on the browser, login using the credentials of Administrator (admin@example.com/admin), click on the Control Panel -> Settings -> Authentication -> OpenSSO. Following page is what you would see on your browser.

On the page as displayed above, following is the information filled in to make the WebSpace Server contact the ‘idm’ realm in OpenSSO for authentication of users. Not only that, on successful authentication with OpenSSO, WebSpace Server populates the user information from OpenSSO in its database (HSQL by default)!

Login URL:
http://opensso.ssc-blr.co.in:8080/opensso/UI/Login?realm=idm&goto=http://webs.ssc-blr.co.in:8080/c/portal/login

Logout URL:
http://opensso.ssc-blr.co.in:8080/opensso/UI/Logout?realm=idm&goto=http://webs.ssc-blr.co.in:8080/web/guest/home

Service URL:
http://opensso.ssc-blr.co.in:8080/opensso

Glassfish WebSpace Server installation,configuration and integration with OpenSSO is such a pleasant experience that I invite you to try it and experience it for yourself.

“Sun and HP announced an expanded multi-year partnership agreement that enables HP to distribute and support Sun’s Solaris 10 OS. The top five x86/x64 based system vendors now all ship Solaris with their systems. HP is responding to customer demand for expanded OS support on HP ProLiant server and blade platforms. Sun now becomes a strategic HP ProLiant OS distribution partner and Solaris is elevated to the lineup of key operating environments for the ProLiant platform.”


Listen to the audiocast here. View the Sun and HP Presentation Slides here .Watch Sun Execs discuss HP and Solaris. And here’s the press release.

On the concluding day of this years edition of Sun Tech Days in India, Sun Learning Services (SLS) offered two Hands On Tracks – one on JavaFX and another on Solaris Containers – for its Customers, Partners and Community, and the response was simply overwhelming. Thanks to all delegates who made it for this event.

I’m glad to have got an opportunity to speak to a larger audience on a grand occasion as Sun Tech Days and that too on a very useful Solaris 10 feature, one among several Virtualization Solutions from Sun. To know more details about a training on Solaris Containers, click here.
In another location within the Sun Tech Days 2009 venue, my friend Stacy delivered a full day seminar on the new and exciting JavaFX technology. Detailed description about a JavaFX course can be found here.

How well I performed my job is for the delegates of my session to judge and comment. For me, speaking to an audience comprised of employees of various organizations (IBM, Wipro, UBS, TCS, BOA, HCL,CSC, Reliance to name a few), students and lecturers from several Engineering Colleges around and faculties from our partner Educational Institutions was an immensely satisfying experience.

Due to several last minute onsite registrations, the Student Kits, containing several materials including OpenSolaris and Netbeans DVD went out of stock and some delegates had to go back without it. While we arrange for its shipment to delegates who didn’t get a Student Kit during the event, we would wish to remind all that OpenSolaris and Netbeans could be downloaded from the website as follows for immediate use: (i) OpenSolaris (ii) Netbeans .

Like all previous editions of Tech Days, the one that concluded yesterday also offered me several fond memories. The photograph below is just one of it:

If you were there this morning at HICC, Hyderabad listening to Matt Thomson’s keynote on second day of Sun Tech Days 2009, you probably got to know what cloud computing is. Press talked about its prospects already in todays edition. Matt managed to throw clarity on the definition of cloud computing, demonstrated some of the powerful offerings from Sun and also talked about a couple of key projects at Sun. It was a fluent presentation, packed with lot of information.

As cloud computing takes the center stage, it’d be interesting to follow Matt here to hear from him, directly and promptly, the developments on Cloud Computing at Sun. On one of his slides this morning, Matt listed the attributes of cloud (One Service Fits All, Virtualized Physical Resources, Self Provisioning, Easticity, Pay Per Use,Programmatic Control), in another he talked about Cloud as: (i)Software as Service (SaaS), (ii) Platform as Service(PaaS) and (iii)Infrastructure as Service(IaaS) and finally he explained how developers could utilize the power of cloud for developmental activities,scaling up and down the hardware that they need, as and when they need, build their project on cloud and collaborate with their project mates sitting across different Geographical location. In a stunning demonstration, within a matter of few mouse clicks, all of us got to see a Solaris Desktop – sitting somewhere in a public datacenter- popping up on a Windows laptop. It was exciting! No wonder, the demonstration invoked a loud applause from the audience.

In addition to talking about how a startup company could rely on Cloud rather than building their own data center, Matt also introduced us to Project Kenai and Zembly.

S D Shibulal, COO of Infosys and Prof Deepak Phatak were felicitated by James Gosling in the presence of Anil Velluri, VP and Managing Director of Sun India. When invited to speak, Prof Phatak said, “I’m a teacher. My few minutes could span several hours.” Prof Phatak said in his speech how excited was to see so many developers paying fees for an event like Sun Tech Days and gathering under one roof. He also mentioned that in the past, India had more number of downloads than uploads (in terms of contributions to the OpenSource community) and that he’s seeing a change in that trend off late. Prof Phatak’s speech was short, but inspiring and touching.

I’ve already talked about the ‘Java Jacket Give Away’ event at Sun Tech Days here. The tradition continued this time around as well with a difference that two Jackets were given away instead of one. Looks like over the last three years the weirdest talent that someone could display was singing a song!!

All right, while you try and figure out a weird talent that you possess and probably start polishing it to try and gain a Java Jacket next year at Sun Tech Days, let me hit my bed and sleep, for I have a lengthy speech to make on the last day of Sun Tech Days 2009, tomorrow.

Java is everywhere. It’s perhaps everyday that this technology touches us in one way or the other. But it’s certainly not everyday that you get to hear the Father of Java speaks out his thoughts, live. James Gosling’s presence for the Sun Tech Days 2009 at Hyderabad is undoubtedly the main highlight of this edition of the event, kick-started today at Hyderabad International Convention Center.Day one was very informative and it promises to get better in the next two days.

At Tech Days, you would see anchoring at its best. This morning it wasn’t any different. With a really cool MC on stage, boredom failed to find its place. “Namaste India,” we screamed loud and clear, all of us standing up, as instructed by the Master of Ceremonies, whom you see on left. That set the tone for the rest of inaugural proceedings.
And when the youngest drummer of India showed up on stage, producing some magical moments with his tender hands for minutes at stretch, our energy levels went rather high. It was superb!

What followed then were some useful demonstrations on technologies like OpenSolaris, JavaFX and Java TV.

Anil Valluri,VP and Managing Director of Sun India, gave the inaugural address, briefing about Sun, its business model and other related topics, and concluded his speech by inviting James Gosling on to the stage. It wasn’t surprising to hear a loud round of applause as Gosling walked his way up on to the stage.

Gosling covered a wide range of topics: the evolution of Java from a slow interpreted language in the mid 1990s, its performance improvement over a period of time, the latest release in the form of Java 6 Update 12, the new JavaFX technology, the Glassfish, the Netbeans 6.5 and much much more.

He mentioned the staggering statistics of 15 million downloads of JRE a week, talked about the Java enabled Oyster cards (he pulled out one from his pocket while talking about this) being used in the London Underground by every single train passenger, his work with the rocker Neil Young on the Java-enabled, hybrid-electric Lincoln convertible, why a virus free Java is a preferred choice for applications that require secure transactions over the network and performed a number of demos on JavaFX.

It was quite a charm when he said he was the guilty party behind developing Emacs editor 32 years back or so, which later became GNU Emacs, but urged all present day Emac users to stop using it, as things are not the way it was three decades back and that present day IDEs are intelligent enough to know a lot about the programs that programmers write. Well, here is an IDE worth trying: Netbeans.

Several break out sessions on various Sun Technologies followed James Gosling’s keynote. It was a good first day and it’s only going to get better.

This is Sreekanth Reddy from CSC. I owe him one. As I was approaching the finishing stages of my session on Solaris Cotainers at Hyderabad, my companion Laryngitis showed up with no mercy. My request to Sreekanth then was to perform a demo of an important concept that we had managed to discuss in the class. With no hesitation he stepped forward and not only performed a neat demo, but lectured fluently about it to rest of the audience. Do I need to tell how much helpful this act of his was to me! Thanks Sreekanth

Below you would see the entire audience who dropped in for the SA 355 S10 course concluded at Hyderabad on Saturday, the 7th February 2009:

I know I would need a few days voice rest to recover from this temporary voice loss. At times like this, I tend to rely a lot on pictures and writings to communicate. So if I’ve to tell you now, what I spoke at Hyderabad before my voice vanished on the last day of training, perhaps the picture below will speak out for me. Click on it to know more:

Today I concluded a small batch on IDM 345 here in Bangalore. Published below is the batch photograph:

To know more details on Sun Java System Identity Manager, click here. In case, if you are looking for details on Identity Manager Certification, this is the place to go.

This evening I’m leaving a city where the father of Java would enlighten thousands of Java aficionados a couple of days forward to the Valentine’s day this year in a grand event that’s expected to bring a record number of developers under one roof. Well I’m no James Gosling to address an audience of thousands, but came to Hyderabad to teach half a dozen folks some lessons on Sun Fire Midrange Server . The course concludes today and I’m off to Bangalore, hoping to hit Hyderabad soon to find myself seated among a huge audience ,listening to James Gosling and several other distinguished speakers. My dear reader, while you make up your mind to plan and attend this years Sun Tech Days in India, I’ll leave you with the batch photograph of this weeks batch at Hyderabad, concluding today.

And yeah, if you decide to take up the rare opportunity to see James Gosling and other visionaries of Sun share their thoughts, live, register for Sun Tech Days 2009 right here.

A weekend session on Solaris 10 covering a Virtualization feature, SMF, Least Privilege model, ZFS and DTrace concluded in Bangalore last evening.

For those who haven’t got hold of a copy of OpenSolaris 2008.11 Live CD, it’s probably the time to do so. Click here and get one.

I’m glad to have kicked off this New Year with one of my favourite training programs:

I’m flying back to Bangalore from Mumbai tonight for a weekend session on Solaris

Sun announced the acquisition of Belgium based company Q-Layer, thereby expanding its cloud computing offerings. Read the full story here.

Published below is the batch photograph of the Sun Fire HES Training conducted at
Trichy during the Christmas week:

What a week, this bygone week! After four weeks of continuous training on Sun’s software solutions, this week I met up with a group of Field Support Engineers for a discussion on Sun Fire Midrange Servers. When I started this class on 08th December 2008, Monday, I never imagined that it would turn out to be a unique experience in my teaching career. What it is, you would know from the following paragraph.

On 8th, I felt slight weakness in my voice. By evening, I could speak nothing. I still had four days of training left, when an ENT advised me for a complete voice rest. Calling off the batch was an easy option, but not the best one. Hence on Tuesday, my training participants found in the classroom a whiteboard full of instructions, conveying to them clear and loud about an ‘Instructor Led Voice-less’ training that they were about to face! With a hope of some divine intervention, I continued from where I left on day one and it began to work in my favour. I have never written so much continuously on a white board ever before and I have never played such lengthy dumb charades either . For three full days (almost), I took sessions, without uttering a single word! Occasionally, someone would volunteer to explain to the whole class, concepts that required repeated explanations. It was tough, but it was immensely satisfying. I am not saying that I would ever want to have an experience like this in future, but then this would stand as one of my memorable sessions for obvious reason. I extend my heart-felt gratitude to folks in the picture below for their extreme cooperation in helping me complete this session on a very satisfying note. Thank you folks!

Those who aren’t Field Engineers, but administrators of Sun Fire Midrange Servers and are on the look out for a Sun Training, check out this course. Wishing you all a restful weekend!

If you are wondering, where to look for the newly released OpenSolaris 2008.11, I suggest you go here NOW. Interested in watching the launch event? It’s right here at 9:00 A.M. PST today.

It has been frequent, it has been popular and it has been well received as one of the best offerings from SLS – the course on Sun Java System Identity Manager. Ask me for a count and I’d disappoint you because I’ve lost track of it, for IDM 345 happened aplenty in this part of the world. All the same, let me put up the batch photograph of last weeks IDM class in here:

Through a teach back session, in a matter of an hour, I got to hear from them, all that they learned in five days time. Their performance was captured and that’s what you see below:

In continuation to my earlier post about JavaFX 1.0 launch, I would wish to guide my readers to the details of a JavaFX seminar made available by Learning Services at Sun: It’s here.

Published below are the batch photograph and the photographs taken during the teach back sessions of DIR 2340 training, concluded on 27/11/2008, Thursday:

Last week I completed the smallest ever batch on Sun’s provisioning tool, course coded IDM 345. My Master at times says words along these following lines: it doesn’t matter how many people come to listen to you, you have to speak what you have to speak. And so I spoke, to an audience of three, whom you see in the photo below:

Good week ahead to all of you.

Sun MD has arrived. Check this out to know more.

NetBeans.org has announced the availability of NetBeans IDE 6.5! Should you feel interested in knowing more about this IDE, there are vidoes here. Or download it and start using it straightaway.

StarOffice 9 is available now (including Mac OS X version). Press release is here. To know more about this office productivity suite, visit this page.

I just got back to Bangalore last night, after concluding a training session on Sun Java System Portal Server at Chennai. Though we do have a standard five day course on Sun Portal Server, based on an old version, the customer had an urgent need to gear up their skill sets on newer version of the product, prompting us to customize our standard program by introducing an approximate two day content on Portal Server 7.2, the most recent Sun Portal Server version, developed based on OpenPortal project.

For me, it was engaging to first discuss the fundamentals of Portal Server using the standard course materials and then use a handout, prepared locally, to discuss the installation and configuration of Portal Server 7.2 on Glassfish v2, introduce the audience to the OpenPortlet Portlet Container project as well as the PortletPack used as plugins in Nebeans 6.1 IDE and finally concluding the discussion by installing WebSynergy Milestone 3 the next generation Portal Server from Sun, released on 31st October 2008. I sincerely hope that the discussions help all folks in picture below to go out and execute their project with minimal roadblocks.

Preparing the hand out for this session was tiring, time consuming, but was enriching. I express my heart-felt gratitude to all the bloggers on Portal technology, whose blog posts came in very handy for me in completing the process just in time. I know there must be someone out there who would be wanting to get a text book installation of Portal Server 7.2 done on Glassfish and might be wandering around the world of Internet trying to fetch detailed note on the installation procedure. For all of such souls, I have uploaded an extract from my handout that details on the installation and configuration procedure of Portal 7.2 on Glassfish. If interested, download it from here.

Read more about the OpenSSO product here. To download the product click here.

If you haven’t read about Solaris 10 10/08, this is the place to go. What’s the big deal about this new release? Well, the big deal is:

“ZFS File System Enhancements: The ZFS file system has been enhanced with recent work from the OpenSolaris community, providing ease of data management with no additional cost for acquisition or support. The new version of Solaris ZFS file system offers increased data integrity and fully integrated disaster recovery capabilities. ZFS file system can be used as the sole file system for any class of system, with support for booting and/or for use as a root file system.“

To learn about all new features/enhancements in Solaris 10 10/08, watch a video here

In case someone asks you for a copy of the same, please guide them to the Solaris 10 download location.

I’m already late in talking about this product. Without further ado let me help you navigate to the relevant press release: It’s here. More details about the product here.

Published below is the batch photograph of my ES 345 session at Orange. Can’t wait to hear from them about their success in Cluster Certification Exam. That’s their promise to me.

Want to know more about T5440 Server, click here. It’s being launched today!

Today was the concluding day of a three day session on Solaris 10, featuring SMF, Least Privilege, Zones, DTrace and ZFS. Below you would see the folks who participated in the discussion (one of ’em is missing from the snap). We also had a quick demonstration of OpenSolaris LiveCD and its 3D Desktop features using Compiz. If you haven’t got your copy of OpenSolaris yet, it’s time you get it from here.

Tomorrow early morning I’m flying to Delhi for a session on Solaris Cluster 3.2 and very clearly I don’t think I have sufficient energy to write an essay at this stage. I have started to get a feel of how a marathon is like.

Good week ahead to all of you.

With only another couple of days more in FY09Q1, it’s safe to assume that I would have on my record an Access Manager session as the last one this quarter. It happened at Hyderabad and the folks who came in for it are in the picture below.

I would hope that very soon all of ’em would subscribe for the free OpenSSO training available at OpenSSO website, which no doubt would compliment the ILT on AM 3480 course they attended, especially to gain insights on topics like Session Failover and protecting J2EE Applications(Module 3 and Module 5 respectively in OpenSSO Training).

Before I take leave, let me also publish below their teach back sessions. I must say, they did a fantastic job in reviewing the whole course all over again on the final day.

Wishing you all a grand week ahead

Sun isn’t a software company, neither a mere hardware vendor; it’s a Systems Company, where equal importance and attention is given to the Research & Development of components in both hardware (Servers and Storages) and Software portfolio. For rather a long period of time, my sessions have been more oriented on the Sun Software stack, obviously running myself into the danger of losing touch with the developments in the field of Sun Systems. Just when it seemed to me that I would be out of touch with Sun Hardware offerings, the folks in the published picture below came to my rescue by dropping in to Sun classroom for a discussion about Sun Fire HES. It was fun! Thank you all for some great time.

This evening I’m off to Hyderabad for an Access Manager training, a product which isn’t certainly a piece of hardware . But clearly, I ain’t a Software Instructor either!

Today Sun announced Sun xVM portfolio, a compelling set of internet scale virtualization solutions that provide a new level of choice for companies looking to simplify their IT infrastructure. Click right here to watch its web event.

The set of components in the Sun xVM portfolio include:
* Sun xVM Server
* Sun xVM Ops Center
* Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure(VDI) Software
* Sun xVM Virtual Box 2.0

Interested in taking a xVM virtual tour. This is the place to go!

Referring to the title of this post, read the whole story here. By the way all through the article in the aforesaid link, you would read about two major Open Source projects of Sun. Click on each of the image above and you would get enough information about both of it.

It’s only today that I completed my third batch this quarter on IDM 345 training.

Meet my new friends. Majority of them belong to Kenya. With India joining the Emerging Market, an announcement you can read in big boss’s blogs, I might get to meet more such folks in the days ahead. They learned Cluster and taught me back some words in Swahili, their National Language. I ain’t bad at picking up lessons, for you would now hear me say, “Siku njema”

Update:
Recently I came across a great article on 100 best things to do in Kenya. It’s here.

Though I wrote about my entry to Noida in my earlier post, I haven’t yet talked about my exit. Reached Bangalore at late night on the day forward to the India Independence Day. Things went well. With only a half an hour lunch break on all days, with absolutely no tea breaks in between and with only five members from an organization sitting through the training (see them in the snap below), it was quite obvious that the sessions would end quite smoothly, well in time. Thus on the day of Raksha bandhan, the day next to the India Independence Day, we closed our discussion on IDM well before 3:00 in the evening. Now, that doesn’t happen often for an IDM 345 course.

The most attractive price tag that I’ve ever come across is free*. Generally, the asterisk sticking around the news about the free releases would often have some or the other strings attached to it. Some time back Sun announced the release of OpenSSO Express, which is made available to the public, again for free. For those who managed to get to the OpenSSO site and download the product would already be aware of the fact that, there wasn’t any ‘conditions apply’ tag attached to the free availability of OpenSSO from Sun. That means absolute zero entry barrier for those interested. I have heard complaints from many, that though Sun gives away products for free, we charge heavy for its training! Not sure if that’s true, but if there is anyone out there who believes it so, it’s time to think otherwise.

My good friend David has managed to prepare a courseware and a VM Lab files to run through some complex deployment scenarios of OpenSSO. And what more, all of this you can download and learn for free. For that, visit the OpenSSO website and click on the ‘Training’ link. Please note that this current beta training is offered on the unsupported pre-release product (OpenSSO build 4.5). For more details with snapshots on the process, check out David’s blog. And yeah, do find some time to thank him for this work. Happy learning!

Having a back to back sesssion on Sun’s Provisioning Tool isn’t a new affair. If it was Chennai that hosted an IDM training last week, it’s in Noida – the other end of India – that the same training is happening this week. In a few minutes time I would start my new batch on IDM 345 training. Before I get introduced to the folks sitting through the training this week, let me complete an all familiar task of introducing my previous training batch to you all:

Have a great week ahead, all of you.

On a day, when a series of low intensity bomb blasts sent shocking waves in the city of Bangalore, all of us in the picture below were concluding our discussions on Solaris Cluster. For the wonderful time spent with such a huge batch and for the unprecedented serial blasts in Bangalore that shocked and disappointed all of us, this concluding day of ES 345 training wouldn’t dissipate from my mind for long.

Click on the image here and you would be taken to a page full of information on world’s largest open source, identity management project. A derivative of this project is Sun Java System Access Manager,a core identity infrastructure product offered by Sun Microsystems.

Today marks a significant day for the OpenSSO community as Sun announces comprehensive, enterprise-class support and indemnification for OpenSSO. More details about the same here.

If you are one of those folks, who keep track of the press coverages (just like me), you may want to read the press release of the announcement here.

So what are you waiting for, click on the button here, download OpenSSO, share it, get started and then learn more about it from the OpenSSO Resource Center.

If you are looking for a store full of OpenSSO goodies, this is the place to go.

Oh yeah, before I forget: we do have a Sun Learning Services course on Sun Access Manager, course coded AM 3480, details of which are published here. Enjoy this ‘seamless access.’