About an year ago, we had reported that Pune based KQInfoTech is working on porting Sun’s ZFS file system to linux. They have now announced that a “Technology Preview” of the port is now complete, and the ported ZFS for Linux is now available in beta. They are looking for interested folks to try out the beta and help them with finding bugs and other issues.
KQInfoTech is a Pune company that's trying to combine mentorship programmes for technology students, along with technology services to the industry and open source projects. Click on the logo to see other PuneTech articles on KQInfoTech's various initiatives.
Pune-based KQInfoTech is an organization started by Anurag Agarwal and Anand Mitra, both of whom chucked high-paying jobs in the industry because they felt that there was a desperate need to work on the quality of students that is being churned out by our colleges. For the 2 years or so, they have been trying various experiements in education, at the engineering college level. All their experiments are based on one basic premise: students’ ability to pay should not be a deterrent – in other words, the offerings should be free for the students; KQInfoTech focuses on finding alternative ways to pay for the costs of running the course. As a part of this initiative, they provide services to industry, and take on open source projects, and the students in their mentorship program actually do the work under their guidance.
What is ZFS?
ZFS – the Zettabyte File System – is an enormous advance in capability on existing file systems. It provides greater space for files, hugely improved administration and greatly improved data security. Wikipedia has this to say:
ZFS is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems. The features of ZFS include support for high storage capacities, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copy-on-write clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAID-Z and native NFSv4 ACLs.
Why ZFS on Linux by KQInfotech?
ZFS is arguably one of the best file-systems available today, and Linux is one of the most widely used operating systems for servers by new startups. So, having ZFS available on Linux would be great. And, With many years of experience in Veritas building VxFS, another one of best file-systems in the world, the founders of KQInfoTech do have the technical background to be able to do a good job of this.
This port of ZFS is an extension to the port of DMU layer by Brian Behlendorf. We have added the missing ZPL layer to Brian’s port. With this addition it becomes possible to mount the zfs filesystem on linux and leverage ZFS’s features on linux.
What next?
If you’re interested in participating in the beta and helping out, or you’re one of the people whose business would really be helped by having ZFS available on Linux, apply for the beta, or get in touch with KQInfoTech: zfs-query@kqinfotech.com.
What: Credenz, Technical Event organized by PICT IEEE Student Branch When: 17, 18, 19 September, all day. Where: PICT Campus Registration and Fees: See the Credenz Website for registration details
Credenz'10 is a 3-day technical event organized by PICT IEEE Students Chapter. Click on the logo to see the website of Credenz 10.What is Credenz?
It is a three day, student-oriented, technical+business event organized by the PICT IEEE Student Branch, and will have competitions, seminars and workshops.
Who should go?
Students from Engineering colleges, B-schools, and other students from technical graduate schools. Also, industry professionals who are interested in being in touch with students, finding the right kinds of students (motivated, passionate), and generally building a bridge between industry and academia in Pune.
What to expect?
Student Competitions on: Programming, Quiz, Paper Presentation, Robotics, Business Plans.
Workshop on Robotics
Seminars on Android, Cloud Computing, and Public Key Cryptography
Why should you go?
PICT is one of the best engineering colleges in the city, and this event is likely to attract the most enthusiastic students from across other colleges. If you’re an industry professional who usually complains about the lack of quality students turned out by our colleges, then you need to go hang out at such events and see the quality and energy. The students are there, you just need to know how to find them.
And if you’re a student, then you really need to be one of those passionate students, who shines inspite of our system. That means participating in events like these and finding interesting industry professionals to hook up with.
The Indian Angel Network (IAN) is the oldest angel network in India - and it has just recently started Pune operations. Click on the logo to see other PuneTech articles that reference IAN
A few days back, we reported that Startup Saturday this month features Ganesh Natarajan and the Indian Angels Network, and will be on Saturday, 11th, 3pm to 6pm. Note, however, that there has been a last minute shift in venue for this event from the usual Startup Saturday location to Yashada on Baner Road. The event will now be held in MDC Conference hall No V. This is on the 1st floor of the auditorium building (first building after you enter the gate, next to parking).
The event is free for all to attend. See the original announcement for all other details, including registration information.
The call for papers for two interesting security conferences has just been announced, and as usual, PuneTech is trying to encourage its readers to make submissions to the conferences. As indicated in an earlier post, PuneTech does not promote paid conferences, but we’re happy to promote the call for speakers for these conferences, because, for selected speakers, the conferences is free :-).
World famous security researcher Bruce Schneier is expected in Pune for ClubHack2010 in December. Image via Wikipedia
The first of these conferences is ClubHack 2010, which will be in December 2010, and will feature world famous security expert Bruce Schneier, and the second one is the nullcon dwitiya which is actually in Goa (but is featured in PuneTech because null started in Pune, and is still a largely Pune-driven group).
ClubHack 2010
ClubHack2010 is expecting a deep knowledge technical presentations/demonstrations on topics from the world of Information Security. These presentations are expected to be of 40 minutes each. The schedule time for each presenter would be 50 minutes out of which 40 minutes are for the presentation & 10 for the question-answer sessions.
Indicative list of Topics for ClubHack2010
The following list of topics is made keeping in mind the most interesting topics in hacking & security. This is more of an indicative list, the papers submission can be on other topics also but have to be close to this & the theme of the event.
Protocol / Application based vulnerability in networks and computers
Firewall Evasion techniques
Cloud Application Security
Data Recovery and Incident Response
Mobile Security (cellular technologies)
WLAN and Bluetooth Security
Analysis of malicious code
Cryptography and Cryptanalysis
Computer forensics
Cyber warfare
Open source hacking toolkit
Cyber Crime & law
Hardware mods
Important dates for ClubHack2010
Click on logo see all PuneTech articles about ClubHack
Abstract Submission: 30th October 2010
Announcement of selected papers: 5th November 2010
Full Paper Submission: 15th November 2010
Speaker Benefits for ClubHack2010
Economic Return Ticket â from your nearest international airport to Pune
Accommodation (upto 4 days)
Local Tourism package (in Sahyadri Ranges, Western Ghat)
One extra ticket for the event
No other expenses as ClubHack is a not-for-profit group & finding sponsors in India is tough 🙂
Click on the NULL logo to see all PuneTech articles about NULL
null is a security community that started in Pune, and is now very active in a number of cities in India, including Bangalore, Delhi, Bhopal, etc. They have monthly meets and regular security awareness camps in various Institutions and Organizations, and they also hold an security conference in Goa every year. null describes itself as
We are a bunch of security phreaks who like to share our technical expertise and hacking skills with each other and spread awareness among the common people about the good, the bad and the ugly side of computers and technology. We believe that sharing the right technical knowledge leads to expertise and innovation and that is what we strive to do in our meets and events.
nullcon dwitiya is the second annual null conference, and will be in Goa in Feb 2011. They are soliciting research done by the community as paper submissions for nullcon. Submissions are expected in 4 tracks:
Bakkar: 1 Hr Talks
Tez: 5-30 min Talks
Karyashala: 2-4 Hrs Workshop
Desi Jugaad (Local Hack): 1 Hr
Submission Topics for nullcon dwitiya
For “Desi Jugaad” (Local Hack) nullcon is looking for submissions of any kind of local hacks that you have worked on (hints: electronic/mechanical meters, automobile hacking, hardware, mobile phones, lock-picking, bypassing procedures and processes, etc, Be creative :-D)
For the more traditional papers, the indicative domains are:
Hardware (ex: RFID, Magnetic Strips, Card Readers, Mobile Devices, Electronic Devices)
Tools (non-commercial)
Programming/Software Development
Networks
Information Warfare
Botnets, Malware
Web
New attack vectors
Mobile, VOIP and Telecom
VM
Cloud
Critical Infrastructure
Satellite
Wireless
Forensics
Important dates for nullcon dwitiya
CFP End Date: 30th November 2010
Speakers List Online: 10th December 2010
Conference Dates: 25th â 26th February 2011
Speaker Benefits for nullcon dwitiya
Speaker benefits are available for selected speakers in the “Bakkar”, “Desi Jugaad” and “Karyashala” tracks:
Free Accommodation for 3 nights
Travel (One way or Return depending on the Sponsorships 🙂 )
What: “Financing Your Startup” Startup Saturday Pune event with Indian Angels Network and Ganesh Natarajan When: Saturday, Sept 11, 3pm-6pm Where: MDC Hall V. 1st floor, Auditorium Building, YASHADA, Baner Road. Registration & Fees: This event is free for all. Register here
Financing your venture – with Ganesh Natarajan / IAN
The Indian Angel Network (IAN) is the oldest angel network in India - and it has just recently started Pune operations. Click on the logo to see other PuneTech articles that reference IAN
Financing your venture is the most challenging tasks for a start-up. Itâs easy to get customers, employees, technologies but finance is tricky. 10 years ago, you could have gone to a VC. Today that is not an option. So how do you finance your start-up?
Thankfully there are lots of other options. Funds are available from friends and family, angel investors, government bodies like MSME, SIBRI, NMITLI, incubators and angel Investorâs networks.
To throw light on this subject, we are getting veterans who have been there, done that for Startup Saturday Pune 10. Mr. Ganesh Natrajan, Chairman of NASSCOM and Global CEO, Zensar, will give the keynote address. He wears various hats. Here he will represent the Pune chapter of “Indian Angel Network”
Tentative Agenda
3:00 – 3:15 Introduction
3:15 to 3:45 Key Note address by Mr Ganesh Natrajan, Chairman of Nasscom and Global CEO of Zensar Technologies.
3:45 to 4:00 Funding schemes from Government of India, by Kaushik Gala, NCL Venture Center 4:00 to 4:15 Crowd funding as an option by Satish Kataria, Grow VC
4:15 – 4:30 Lightening pitches from three promising startups
4:45 – 5:00 Closing Remarks
5:00 – 6:00 Networking and Snacks (On the House)
About IAN – Indian Angel Network
The Indian Angel Network(IAN) is India’s first angel investment network and looks to invest up to US$ 1 mn, though their sweet spot is between US$ 200K to 400K. Apart from funding, the Network also seeks to provide mentoring, strategic thought leadership and leverage the Network’s network for the investee companies. The Network has met with early successes and has already invested in 22 companies across multiple sectors.
Indian Angel Network(IAN) currently has over 125 members drawn from across the country and some from overseas, including leading lights from diverse sectors . Members include people such as Jerry Rao, Saurabh Srivastava, Pramod Bhasin, Raman Roy, Rajiv Luthra, Pradeep Gupta, Sunil Munjal, Arvind Singhal and institutions such as IBM, SIDBI, Spice Televentures, Intel, etc.
Startup Saturday Pune is a once a month meeting where startups pitch to a panel of experts and investors. Anybody can attend these meetings. Click on the logo to see info about previous Startup Saturday meets
About Startup Saturday
Startup Saturday, Pune, is a forum aimed at deepening the skills of startup community in Pune to make more successful startups coming out of the city through creation of a vibrant innovation ecosystem. As with other cities, SS Pune will also be held on second Saturdays of the month.
A SS session is about rich-discussions on topics of interest to startups in the city. A typical session would have only about 25% of time devoted to talk/presentation and rest of the time time dedicated to freewheeling discussion as that is where, in our experience, the audience makes the best use of the available expert.
(This information is mostly taken from the website of Ozran Academy. Although we at PuneTech don’t really know anybody at Ozran personally, but the courses look interesting enough, and it appears that they could be useful to many freshers, and best of all it’s free. We’re publishing this information in the hope that students find it useful.)
Ozran Academy is a web development company that is offering five courses to freshers in IT/Arts/Maths for free. Click on the logo to see their website.
Ozran is a small Dutch company that has a development center in Pune. They are providing five free courses targeted towards freshers in IT, Arts or Maths, with the intention of developing skills that industry is interested in and identifying talented individuals. Each course consists of 6 evening classes (2-1/2 hours each) and one exam on a Saturday afternoon. The whole thing is free, and a certificate is given to each participant who attends all classes, and passes the exam. Talented participants who demonstrate the ability to quickly learn and apply the concepts taught in the Ozran Academy courses may be offered a paid traineeship or job.
The five courses being offered this year are:
For HTML coders – Advanced HTML/CSS techniques and concepts, includes a primer in HTML5
For Programmers – Adobe ColdFusion for rapid construction of dynamic web applications
For Artists and Graphic Designers – Web Design European style
For Number Crunchers and Marketing Geniuses – Optimizing website conversion with marketing and analytics
For Artistic Programmers and Programming Designers – Replacing Flash with the jQuery JavaScript library
There are different cut-off dates for applications, and for the start of the actual course, and unfortunately, we believe one of the courses is already over. But check the Ozran Academy Page for full details of the courses.
What: Pune Java Meetup When: Saturday, Sept 11, 5:30pm Where: ThoughtWorks Technologies, Tower C, Panchshil Tech Park, Yerwada Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Register here. Group Page:Pune Java Meetup Group
Details
The Pune Java Meetup Group hopes to bring together Java professions in Pune for a meeting every 2nd Saturday. Click on the duke to see all PuneTech articles related to Java. Image via Wikipedia
The Pune Java Meetup group hopes to meet on the second Saturday of every month. This group is a free/open group. Anybody interested in Java can join the group. Anybody can propose a meeting.
This month’s meetup, on Saturday, will feature Kiran Narasareddy talking about his experiences with Modeling Frameworks – specifically their (bad) experiences with the EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework), and good experience with JaXB. The talk will also cover the various different plugins available for JaXB, and what all you can achieve using them.
After that Atul will talk about using struts unit testing framework. It is a very effective way to decouple the Action Layer from the Business Layer – No need to wait for UI development to test your code. Very appealing – and addicting.
(Pune based serial entrepreneur, Ajit Shelat, passed away yesterday. This article and photo are by flickr user drona and are taken from this page. They’re reproduced here under the terms of the Creative Commons (BY-NC) license under which that page is published.)
My friend Ajit Shelat passed away today. He was driving on the Mumbai-Pune Highway, and had an accident at about 530pm September 1, 2010.
He was a fellow alumnus and contemporary of IIT-Mumbai.
Trained entirely in India, he was perhaps the first Indian engineer who designed and developed a very complex LAN security chipset at Nevis Networks, entirely based out of Pune, India.
He was a co-founder of RIMO technologies, Switch-on Networks(with Moti Jiandani), and Nevis Networks. Switch-On Networks was sold to PMC-Sierra for $300M+.
He supported a wide variety of environmental causes and an avid hiker and naturalist. A prolific entrepreneur himself, he generously gave his time and money to his favorite causes: The environment, education and entrepreneurs.
Said Yatin Mundkur, a venture capitalist at Artiman Ventures, who used to work for Ajit at Godrej Industries, in the mid-eighties: “I am who I am today, because of Ajit. And a lot of us who reported to him at Godrej would gladly say that.”
I will fondly remember the many hikes I took with him, and particularly the many discussions I had with him during the early X Window System days.
He is survived by his wife Radha Shelat and daughter Arundhati, and mother and sister.
Pune’s IndicThreads, which organizes a number of tech conferences in Pune, put out a call for speakers for its next two conferences – their flagship Java conference, whose 5th edition will be held in December 2010, and a new conference on mobile technologies, whose first edition will be in November 2010. The call for speakers for both conferences is still open (until 31st August) and represents a good opportunity for techies in Pune to get visibility for their work, and a chance for networking with like-minded people without having to pay the hefty conference fees.
Why bother? Here are the reasons:
IndicThreads organizes a numbers of good conferences in Pune every year. The call for speakers is a good opportunity for techies to highlight their achievements, get some visibility, and networking. The call for speakers is open until 31 August. Click on the logo for more PuneTech articles about IndicThreads
The annual indicthreads.com java technology conference is Pune’s best and possibly one of India’s finest conferences on matters related to Java technologies. I looked forward to attending the same and was not disappointed a bit.
He has written a fairly detailed post, including overviews of the sessions he attended, which is worth reading.
Here is a PuneTech article about the IndicThreads Java conference 2 years ago.
Earlier this month, IndicThreads had the first edition of their new conference on upcoming technologies, this one being focused on cloud computing. You can see PuneTech’s coverage (also see this article), the report by Janakiram, a senior technical architect at Microsoft, and this one by Arun Gupta, a technical evangelist at Sun (aka Oracle). That should give you an idea of the kinds of talks that go into IndicThreads’ conferences.
Here are some other reasons I had given earlier as to why you should apply for a speaker spot. The reasons are still valid today, so I’ll simply cut-n-paste here:
If you’re accepted as a speaker, you get a free pass to the conference.
Become famous: being a speaker at a national conference is good for visibility, and all engineers should strive for visibility. It’s very important. Almost as important as being a good programmer. (Maybe more?)
Help out a good Pune initiative. More submissions will improve the quality of the conference, and having a high quality conference in Pune improves the overall stature of Pune as an emerging IT powerhouse.
And finally, I also said this:
I’m willing to bet that many people reading this will think – but I am not an expert. Not true. If you’ve spend a couple of years working on some specific aspect of testing, chances are that you’ve acquired expertise that you can present and add value to the understanding of others. You don’t have to have done groundbreaking research. Have you adopted a new tool that came out recently? Talk about it, because others will not have experience with its use. Have you used an old tool in a new way? Definitely submit a proposal. The others in this field would love to hear of this new wine in an old bottle.
(Disclaimer: In the past, a couple of times, PuneTech has received a complimentary pass from IndicThreads (sort of a “press pass”) for attending their conferences. There are no strings attached to this – and we try to be objective in our coverage of the conference. As per PuneTech policy, we don’t promote the actual conference on the PuneTech blog, since it’s a paid event, but we do promote the call for speakers, since that’s free, and we do reporting of the event itself whenever possible, since a significant fraction of it ends up highlighting technology work being done in Pune.)
(This is a live-blog of a talk given by Kalpak Shah, at the Indic Threads Conference on Cloud Computing, held in Pune on 20/21 Aug 2010. Since it’s being typed in a hurry, it is not necessarily as coherent and complete as we would like it to be, and also links might be missing.)
Kalpak Shah is the founder and CEO of Clogeny, a company that does consulting & services in cloud computing. His talk is about the various choices available in cloud computing today, and how to go about picking the one that’s right for you.
These are the slides that were used by Kalpak for this talk. Click here if you can’t see the slideshow above.
Kalpak’s definition of a cloud:
If you cannot add a new machine yourself (i.e. without making a phone call or email), then it’s just hosting, not cloud computing
If you cannot pay as you go (i.e. pay per use) it is not cloud computing
If you don’t have APIs which allow integration with the rest of your infrastructure/environment, then it is not a cloud
Kalpak separates out cloud infrastructure into three parts, and gives suggestions on how to choose each:
Infrastructure as a service
Basically allows you to move your local server stuff into the cloud. Examples: Amazon EC2, Terremark vCloud, GoGrid Cloud, Rackspace Cloud
You should check:
Support and Helpdesk. Is it 24×7? Email? Phone?
Hardware and Performance. Not all of them are the same. Amazon EC2 not as good as Terremark.
OS support. Which OS and distributions are supported. Is imaging of server allowed? Is distribution and re-selling of images allowed? Not everybody allows you to save the current state of the server, and restart it later on a different instance.
Software availability and partner network. Example, Symantec has put up their anti-virus software for Windows on EC2. How many such partners are available with the provider you’re interested in? (EC2 is far ahead of everybody else in this area.)
APIs and Ecosystem. What APIs are available and in what languages. Some providers don’t do a good job of providing backward compatibility. Other might not be available in language of your choice. EC2 and Rackspace are the best in this area.
Licensing is a big pain. Open source software is not a problem, but if you want to put licensed applications on the cloud, that is a problem. e.g. IBM Websphere clustering is not available on EC2. Or Windows licenses cannot be migrated from local data center to the cloud.
Other services – How much database storage are you allocated? What backup software/services are available? What monitoring tools? Auto-scaling, load-balancing, messaging.
Kalpak has put up a nice comparison of Amazon AWS, Rackspace, GoGrid and Terremark on the above parameters. You can look at it when the PPT is put up on the IndicThreads conference website in a few days.
Platform as a Service
This gives you a full platform, not just the hardware. You get the development environment, and a server to upload the applications to. Scalability, availability managed by the vendor. But much less flexibility than infrastracture-as-a-service. You are stuck with the programming language that the PaaS supports, and the tools.
For example, Google AppEngine. Which is available only for Python and Java. Or Heroku for Ruby + Rails.
PaaS is targeted towards developers.
Software as a Service
This gives you a consumer facing software that sits in the cloud. You can start using the software directly, or you can extend it a bit. A business layer is provided, so you can customize the processes to suit your business. Good if what is provided fits what you already want. Not good if your needs are rather different from what they have envisoned.
Examples: Sales Force, Google Apps, Box.net, Zoho
Storage as a Service
Instead of storing data on your local disks, store it in the cloud. Lots of consumer adopton, and now enterprise usage is also growing. No management overhead, backups, or disaster recovery to worry about. And pay either flat fees per month, or by the gigabyte.
Examples: Mozy from EMC. Amazon S3. Rackspace CloudFiles. Carbonite. DropBox.
Comparing PaaS and SaaS
Some choices automatically made for you based on development language and available skill sets. Python + Java? Use Google AppEngine. Ruby on Rails? Use Heroku. Microsoft shop? Use Azure.
Other ways to compare are the standard ones: size of vendor and ecosystem maturity. Tools, monitoring, connectors, etc. e.g. AppEngine has a Eclipse plugin, so if your developers are used to Eclipse (and they should be!) then this is very good. Another question to ask is this – will the vendor allow integration with your private cloud? Can you sync your online hosted database with your local database? If yes, that’s great. If not that can be very painful and complicated for you.
Interesting Private Cloud Platforms
These are some interesting private cloud platforms
Eucalyptus: open source IaaS cloud computing platform.
VMWare Cloud: Partnered with Terremark. Expensive but worth it.
Appistry: Allows installing of the platform on Amazon EC2, or in your private data center. Allows application deployment and mgmt, various services across the stack IaaS, PaaS, SaaS. Integration with SQL Azure, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM. Visual Studio development and testing. Supports multiple development languages.
Database in the cloud
You can either do regular relational databases (easy to use, everybody knows them, scaling and performance needs to be managed by you). Or do NoSQL – non-relational databases like SimpleDB (Amazon), Hadoop (Yahoo), BigTable (Google). They’re supported and managed by cloud vendor in some cases. Inherent flexibility and scale. But querying is more difficult and less flexible.
Business Considerations
Licensing is a pain, and can make the cloud unattractive if you’re not careful. So figure this one out before you start. SLAs are around 99.9% for most vendors, but lots of fine print. Still evolving and might not meet your standards, especially if you’re an enterprise. Also, if SLA is not being met, vendor will not tell you. You have to complain and only then they might fix it. Overall, this is a grey area.
Pricing is a problem – it keeps changing (e.g. in case of Amazon). So you can have problems estimating it. Or the pricing is at a level that you might not understand. e.g. pricing of 10 cents per million I/O requests. Do you know how many I/Os your app makes? Maybe not.
Compliance might be a problem – your government might not allow your app to be in a different country. Or, for banking industry, there might be security certification required (for the vendor) before the cloud can be reached.
Consider all of these before deciding whether to go to a cloud or not.
Summary
IaaS gives you the infrastructure in the cloud. PaaS adds the application framework. SaaS adds a business layer on the top.
Each of these are available as public clouds (that would be somewhere out there on the world wide web), or private clouds that are installed in your data-center. Private is more expensive, more difficult to deploy, but your data is in your premises, you have better (local) connectivity, and have more flexibility. You could also have a hybrid cloud, where some stuff is in-house and some stuff in the public cloud. And if your cloud infrastructure is good enough, you can easily move computation or data back and forth.
Kalpak Shah, CEO of Clogeny, gave a broad overview of the various options available in cloud computing infrastructure, platforms and software, and the questions you need to ask before you choose the one for you.
About the Speaker – Kalpak Shah
Kalpak Shah is Founder & CEO of Clogeny Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and guides the overall strategic direction of the company. Clogeny is focused on providing services and consultancy in the cloud computing and storage domains. He is passionate about the ground-breaking economics and technology afforded by the cloud computing platforms. He has been working on various cloud platforms including IaaS, PaaS and SaaS vendors.
