9. April 2010 by admin.

Loaded the spice server software as the VDI front end. Check back for more info…

Here is the partial specifications from the paper:

“Virtual Device Interfaces (VDI) provide a standard way to publish
interfaces of virtual devices by a software component. This enables
other software components to interact with these devices. Going
forward, the first component will be called the back-end and the second
component will be called the front-end. An example for using Virtual
Device Interfaces is as part of a virtual machine system, where the
back-end will be the hardware emulation layer. The back-end will expose
interfaces like display port, mouse input etc. The front-end will plug
into the display output and will render its output according to it's
specific implementation. The front-end will also plug into the mouse
input and send mouse events to be processed by the back-end. In
addition many other interface types can be exposed by the back-end.
Another example of back-end is a remote display system in a physical
machine environment. Here, the back-and is implemented using known
techniques for interacting with the native OS for the purpose of
receiving display updates and pushing inputs. The back-end exposes
interfaces like display output, mouse input etc. The front-end can be
exactly the same as in the previous example.

By using VDI one back-end an use many types of front-ends without any
special code modification. It is also possible for the back-end to
dynamically switch front-ends, and improve back-end usability and
flexibility. The use of front-ends by many back-ends allows for a
better sharing of development, maintenance, and overall product
quality.”

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19. March 2009 by admin.

The attack allows for privilege escalation from Ring 0 to the SMM on many recent motherboards with Intel CPUs. This particular exploit can hide itself in the SMM space when tied with a rootkit. While we are all concerned about a probable hypervisor exploit, the SMM attacks work at an even deeper hardware level of abstraction, as SMM is more privileged than a hypervisor. The Operating System cannot disable or ignore SMI calls. To disable SMM one has to disassemble the the firmware physically. Since SMI takes precedence over any OS call, an SMM rootkit is extremely stealthy. Rafal Wojtczuk released the paper explaining the exploit and the code. Now somebody has to integrate it with a hypervisor rootkit like Blue Pill or GMER. 

The paper and the code can be found at:

http://sanjaysays.com/__oneclick_uploads/2009/03/smm_cache_fun1.pdf

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18. March 2009 by admin.

Technical details: F
Support for Microsoft Hyper-V: F
Support for VMWARE: A
Support for XenServer: B
SMB usefulness: F
Green Field applicability: A
Forklift upgrade needed: A
320 blades per managed entity: A
640 sockets (2560 cores): A
192GB RAM/blade (60TB): A

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17. February 2009 by admin.

The other day I was talking to Khalid about Mr. Crofford’s blog regarding power consumption in our datacenter and he mentioned that we may cut down on cost (power/datacenter space) if we get rid of the redundancy. Later that day while talking to Rusty and Adrian, we came to conclusion that in some of our accounts, how active-active network configuration for load sharing/load balancing has added more complexity.

These made me think – which I rarely do. J I did a quick MTTR (mean time to repair) and MTBF (mean time between failures) calculations for Cisco devices and it seems that we can easily meet an

Now imagine a specific cloud architecture (Infrastructure 3.0 or now being called IAAS – infrastructure as a service) which has less redundant elements which will result in a huge power savings over the year.

We can come up with processes and very tight configuration management (as per ITIL v3) that will allow us to swap out a failed piece of hardware quickly and meeting our SLAs.

Moreover if we have the right procedures, every two months or quarter we can bring up the cold standby and seamlessly failover from the active component thus making sure that the configurations are sync’d and not wearing out the same piece of equipment with overuse.

In this area the ongoing support cost (read human resource) will go up. But this may spur us to do more automation.

If anybody is interested and time permitting we can indulge in a full study. This may be one of the area where we can save some money for us and our clients by going green. We will do good both to our customer and to our future generations – what a thought!!

******Time to create few more Spore creatures to inhabit my Spore Ecoverse.********

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11. February 2009 by admin.

Information Technology (IT), as I came to realize over all these years, is a major support function for the business. With the on going economic recession, IT organizations are cash strapped and are not going to invest in newer technology.

But this can be changed if IT organizations can tie newer technologies directly to business needs which use technology to assist the business to increase revenue and reduce the over all cost of doing business. Money will come.

How can we, in IS/IT, help our business to increase revenue and help decrease cost at the same time?

Our answer will be to invest in a flexible and agile infrastructure, which will negate the current state of economy and its impact on business, by enabling the most valuable assets of any business in an inexpensive way. And we all know the most valuable asset of any business is its people and customers.

In short we need to transform from a self-defeating network to a self-defending network (as Cisco proclaims…)

Here are some business trends and corresponding new technologies to transform the way we do business today:

• At home workers
• Reduce leased square footage at corporate
• Move products/services to the Web (Internet)
• Simple contact center
• Support mobile work force and customer collaboration

The technologies we will see in action are:

• Collaboration Technology
  • WebEx Connect Clients
    • PC
    • MAC
    • IPhone
    • Blackberry

•  
  • WebEx Connect Space
    • Document Share
    • XMPP application (multi IM client connectivity with Video)

• Mobility solutions for the collaborative workforce
  • Single number reach
  • Presence – native in Call Manager
  • Context aware mobility
  • Secure Unified Communication and mobile access
  • Cloud Application like Email and Calendar services

All of these will give rise to the Unified Workspace…

So we are seeing a paradigm shift from IT support perspective and *Remote people are no longer half people*

In today’s blog we will start looking at Cisco’s WebEx collaboration platform architecture.

Cisco has recently announced that it is going to follow the “software-as-a-service” model for its WebEx Connect Collaboration Services. It will be hosted in Cisco’s cloud computing environment across their “global delivery network” spanning 4 continents…

No to mention that the WebEx Media Tone Network is a Service Provider grade network… The intelligent network element will be comprised of voice/video/QoS enabled network components.

The Cisco application element is comprised of WebEx Collaboration Solutions. The solution suite contains the following:

§         WebEx Connect

o       Jabber XMPP client federated with six or seven IM clients like GoogleTalk, MSN, Yahoo messengers, etc….

o       Native Call Manager integration for *Presence*

o       Shared Space (like SharePoint but based on open platform)

§         Business Specific Meeting Solutions

o       Event Calendar

o       Sales Calendar

o      

o      

o      

Any other custom applications like an billing application which will keep track of all cell phone/ email/desk phone and WebEx meetings for a lawyer with her specific client and then sending a report to another application which will send an invoice to the client.

WebEx clients are now available for PC, Linux and MAC platforms and for IPhone and blackberry handsets.

More to follow….

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7. February 2009 by admin.

I just bought a car and I was going through the over 700 pages of accompanying manual (in the CD). My car has anywhere between 70 to 100 microprocessor-based electronic control units (ECUs) connected throughout the body of the car.

The new Airbus has a little more than 110 ECUs.  This means this car is executing anywhere between ten to twenty million lines of software codes to control every electronics and most of the electro-mechanical devices from brakes to the volume of the CD-changer. It controls even the driver/passenger side airbags to check the pressure of the tires and makes the GPS work.

Modern automobiles are complex systems and a far cry from the era when they used to be an assembly of battery, carburetor, alternator/distributer and some electrical systems.

The huge arrays of electronic sensors throughout the modern automobile body now have to withstand extreme temperatures and road conditions.

With push towards intelligent auto systems, the cars in near future will run 300 to 500 million software codes in 400 to 500 ECUs.

The language used is mostly variations of assembly codes in BeeProg+ or ELNEC programmers. Many system integrators are now offering AlgOR (Algorithm On Request) services to auto manufactures and large dealers.

March towards the Singularity is ON J !!!!

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