The Vacuum Tube : Enterprise

IronPython, the Next-Gen Glue for the .NET Platform

Viral Tarpara — Fri, 18 May 2007 03:00:00 GMT

Although, I was unable to attend MIX '07 this year, one of the most exciting announcements at the event was Silverlight, a next-generation media delivery format for the internet. Couple with this announcement is something that I was amazed by. Microsoft has announced support for Python and Ruby using their Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR)! Python was my first scripting language and one of the first projects at my engineering internship at Intel was was to convert a whole bunch of nasty PERL code into a manageable script library that could be extensible and modular ~~I'm sure I'll get a few emails from PERL fanatics~~. IronPython is fully CPython-compatible implementation that gives programmers the ability to directly interface with .NET objects and attributes. In addition to the manageability benefits of the platform, IronPython yields substantial speed improvements over CPython around 200%! Learn more about IronPython and IronRuby by watching the MIX session here!

Microsoft IT Showcase: How We Deployed Vista

Viral Tarpara — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 01:32:00 GMT

Hi everyone! I want to invite all of you out there to join Microsoft for a live webcast on March 27th, 2007 to learn how Microsoft deployed Vista within the company. It will give all attendees a great 300-level view of the process as well as an inside look at MSIT! Register here! The webcast will be presented by Chad Lewis, Microsoft IT Group Program Manager. For more information on our many IT showcases and whitepapers, go to http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itshowcase

And now back to college basketball :)

Microsoft IT Whitepaper on Virtualization

Viral Tarpara — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 01:51:00 GMT

I'm sure many of you have seen this, and though I linked to it in response to one of my TechNet emails, I thought it should warrant a separate post. The whitepaper is an interesting read on how MSIT has done planning and deployment of virtual servers using Virtual Server 2005. Many businesses are now grasping the concept of virtualization and how it can reduce their IT costs. Something that was only previously deployable with a large IT staff can now be done in a single room on a few boxes. When I think of virtualization, I am reminded of that hilarious IBM ad with the guy who says, "the servers are our friends!" ~~If only their products were as easy to like as their messaging.~~ The point of that commerical is that as IT needs grow, it is logical to add more appliances and servers to meet those needs--but somewhere along the line, many IT departments forget about efficiency. This is not surprising considering senior IT administrators are routinely tasked with putting out fires rather than being an active layer of overall business strategy. As small and mid-size business managers wise up to the cost savings that virtualization can provide now and in the near future with Longhorn, it is important for professionals in the industry learn from best practices from corporations that have gone through the hurdles of deployment using alpha and beta builds. Now, some two years later, explore how a mature solution like Virtual Server 2005 R2 can impact your business today.

Google Study on Harddrive Failure Released

Viral Tarpara — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 01:08:00 GMT

Google Labs is known for periodically releasing internal statistics and research to the general public. Just released a few days ago is a study showing the rate of failure for Google's harddisk infrastructure in their insanely huge data centers. Surprisingly, "heat" is not concluded to be a significant factor in harddrive failure, relatively speaking. Among other things, it breaks down the failure rates of drive between 0-5 years old and acknowledges the benefits and short-comings of SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) that is built into all modern drives today. If you're planning on building a data center in the near future ~~5 FIOS in my mom's basement muahahaha~~ this is a must read!

On a related noted and as a Hindu, I am eagarly waiting for Google Caste Beta to be released! ~~Beyonce Subhramaniradhakrishan?~~

And now ladies and gentlemen, "your moment of zen."

IBM Discovers the IT "Ark" with Open Desktop Platform

Viral Tarpara — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 21:23:00 GMT

I read this article and thought to myself, "Cool!" Then reality set in. I've been waiting for Apple to enter the enterprise space for a while, though, knowing full well that there are a plethora of manageabilty issues related to deploying and securing OS X in large numbers. Since Apple is probably a few month away from having a proper roadmap for enterprise, it seems IBM has done some legwork to help them out as they are supporting Apple in their new desktop platform. IBM's support of OS X shows that Apple is increasingly winning mindshare in the industry as a business operating system (see: Lotus Notes for OS X). They plan to roll out the platform internally to about 5% of the company which is admirable. I'll be waiting for IBM to release more information on how they plan to easily *cough* manage 3 different OSes with granular control using their "Open Client Offering." I'm sure IBM has their top people on it...top people