After finishing up my reflection of 2011 predictions , it’s time to make my predictions for 2012 as today is the last day of 2011. 
1. Virtualization war will be heated between VMware and Microsoft. The trigger will be the Hyper-V 3.0 which is expected to ship in the middle of 2012 with the Windows 8 server. According to many people, the 3.0 release will bring it on par or better than latest VMware hypervisor. Read more... (675 words, estimated 2:42 mins reading time)
Last December I made top 5 predictions on cloud computing for 2011. When the year ends soon, it’s time to review them. I won’t rate their accuracy myself because I am indeed biased. You are welcome to do so in the comments though.
“1. The focus of cloud computing will gradually shift from IaaS to PaaS which becomes key differentiator in competition. Developer enablement becomes more important than ever in ecosystem evangelism, full software lifecycle integration, IDE support, API and framework, and etc.” Read more... (632 words, estimated 2:32 mins reading time)
Even if you haven’t heard about BusyBox, you may have used it. It runs in every ESXi, which doesn’t have a full OS as console like classic ESX. Still, you need an easy way to interact the hypervisor directly. So the ESXi includes a tiny console that uses BusyBox (reduced version) due to its small size.
The BusyBox has been ported to Windows as well. You can download the 600+K executable here. It’s really a simple exe file and you can place it anywhere. Read more... (217 words, estimated 52 secs reading time)
DSL is an overloaded acronym standing for many different things. I first knew it as Digital Subscriber Line for Internet connection, and then Domain Specific Language. Recently I learnt a new one: Damn Small Linux. As you see the word small, you may think it’s for embedded system. It’s not. Read more... (463 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)
This week I spent some time deploying a Web application I developed using Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010 Express (it’s free). For that, I installed Microsoft Internet Information Service (IIS) on my Windows 7 enterprise edition. This turned out pretty straight-forward: Control Panel – Programs – Turn Windows Features on or off. In the Windows Features dialog box, just locate the Internet Information Service and check on it. After a click on the OK button, the IIS (version/build is IIS 7.5.7600.16385) was installed. Read more... (316 words, estimated 1:16 mins reading time)
Social networking has been the hottest area after the dot.com burst. User base is still a critical factor and far more sticky than before. It’s the connections among these users that differentiate social networking from other types of Internet services.
A connection is formed from one user to another. They cannot be on two different web sites, even though theoretically they can. Technically we can define protocols to link users, even groups, together from different sites. But it is not efficient and may not be fast enough to sync up states and discover new connections. Even more issues on business side, not to mention privacy policies. Read more... (312 words, estimated 1:15 mins reading time)
In a recent experiment, I needed to get the VMware Tools installer. Somehow after searching many different places, I couldn’t find it. While writing this article, I found a link to all the installers organized per ESX versions and CPU architectures. The installers are single files, different from an installable CD which I hacked. Read more... (463 words, 3 images, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)
Just finished reading the book The Art of Scalability: Scalable Web Architecture, Processes, and Organizations for the Modern Enterprise by Martin Abbott, Michael Fisher. The book draws on authors’ experiences working at PayPal/eBay and other Internet companies, and covers many aspects of scalability including people, organization, process, and technology. According to Yishan Wong, who used to work under the authors and is now an engineering director at Facebook, “the opportunity to directly absorb the lessons and experiences presented in this book is invaluable to me now working at Facebook.” Read more... (470 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)
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