SZ Quadri - Technology category

KVM seems to be stuck between Desktop (VirtualBox) and Server (Xen)

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 06:01:00 GMT

I have been using VirutalBox for quite some time as desktop Virtualization technology for running XP on Linux and Have also used Xen for Server Virtualization. Lately I have been quite interested in exploring and using KVM as a silver bullet - that is, to use it as general purpose tool.

The idea has been to use it as one seamless solution for both client/desktop and Server virtualization but my playing around and testing KVM makes me feel that:

VirtualBox is still the best free desktop virtualization technology
Xen seems to be still ahead of KVM in Server Virutalziation
KVM seems to be stuck between the two, trying to fulfill both the roles

My hopes have not all gone. I still think that sooner (or later?) KVM will provide an excellent general virt stack that we can use for both kind of usage.

The best thing with VirutalBox is that it provides the best easy to use feature. You resize the window of the XP guest and it seamlessly changes the resolution of the guest to make it totally seamless. You can share files between guest and host very easily. Try doing same with KVM and you need lots of technical stuff to configure to just share files between the two.

Xen is of course the most mature free server virtualization tech in widespread usage.
I tried running many KVM minimal guests (CentOS to be specific) on my Fedora 15 Laptop/Host. Gusts keep consuming 10 to 20% CPU even if they are idle!

The good thing with KVM is that it comes with the Kernel out of the box. Further, RedHat is investing heavily in development of various tools and the core of KVM itself. Spice is very promising project for desktop virt.

All that means, I will still keep following KVM closely.

IP address to Geo-location web tool

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:10:00 GMT

http://ipgeoinfo.com is simple to use, FREE web site for fast IP address to geo location information such as City, Region, Country etc. Other information available includes Time Zone etc. It also points the location on the Google map.

Want to learn the geographical location of the sender of the e-mail? Or want to check from where a particular order has been placed in your shopping cart? Geo-Location is the answer.

This technology analyzes network traffic as well as IP allocation data to determine the approx location of the machine having a particular IP address.

You can create link to this web site with parameter named ip to dynamically provide the visitor with option to check the location.

The tool can be used to prevent credit card fraud or for law enforcement purposes as well.

Check out http://ipgeoinfo.com

jMaki is cool

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:36:00 GMT

Sun's new Ajax framework jMaki is so cool that it lets you mix and match the various javascript libraries available. For example, you can use one dojo widget and another custom widget.

maki, means wrapping things and guess what we did next - wrapped it up in our web application framework 'netForce' as a plug-in. We are still exploring how jMaki can hep us use various ajax components and technologies in unified and simple way.

While jMaki is cool enough and it is very easy to add widgets to your jsp page or web application, I think for web based products one should try to find a common javascript library that can do most of the stuff needed. Dojo is supposed to offer all that we may need in a very clean way. Let's wait to get it mature enough.