Friday, August 31, 2007

Oracle RAC Workshop with vmware virtual machines.

On Monday Estelio and i decided to start workshop at 2.00pm to 5.00pm it was acceptable for me because i got all the day to prepare myself for presentation, SISTAFE guys are very cool, they all wants to learn and i am having good time with them, we were expecting to finish workshop in three days but when we started with workshop we took a lot of time in discussion and on second day Estelio told me that we can take this workshop to full week, so i thought one week is more better as i will get more time to discuss things with them. But as we have selected VMware virtual machines and its shared disk features on Linux, i found many problems while working on the manuals for this workshop, some time very stupid behaviors, and at the end of the day i assume the error might be due virtualization :-D

But today which was suppose to be the last day of workshop strange things happened, when i started oracle clusterware on virtual machine it as initially showing me that installer is going to be launched but soon virtual machine turned off :-D i did my all tricks and tips but did't made it. so i though might be due to low RAM in machine which although 1GB, i asked Florencia to arrange 1GB more so that i can increased machine's memory and test whether installer lanches o not !

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Kingdom of Swaziland Trip.

I got Swaziland visa in April this year, but i was not getting chance to travel there, even though i have heard a lot about its peace and natural land scape, i was not getting enough chance , especially when Waseem went to Pakistan i thought i will never be able to visit Swaziland, my visit was closely associated with him as he has business in Swaziland and Mozambique so he is always traveling between these two countries, as it is almost 3 to 4 hrs. drive between two countries so he make a trip almost after every two weeks, this month he told me that you have to go with me, as i am very new in SISTAFE so it is really easy for me to get a day or two leave, so i told my team lead (Bernardo) about it and asked him to give me Friday leave so i will get a long weekend and will be able to travel Swaziland.

So on Thursday i left office around 1400hrs and came home, i and Waseem took lunch together, as it was planned that we will start traveling at 1500hrs and will reach Swaziland in evening, so that we will get full Friday and Saturday, while we were thinking to come back on Saturday evening so that we can play Cricket Match on Sunday and can take rest as Monday is Monday :D , but when i reach home to take lunch and start journey, i saw Liaqut is also at home, he is my best friend , he came to see off me !

After lunch we went to Tanveer Shah's money exchange office, we stayed there for about 30min. as waseem was trying to exchange some dollars against Rand (South Africa currency) which also used in Swaziland.

So it Begins:

We started from Maputo to Namasha Boarder (Swaziland), it is almost one and half hours drive from Maputo, while going to Namasha Boarder, one have to pass from many romantic places, when we passed out Maputo, and were driving on Motola highway, Waseem told me that he need to fill some petrol in car, he told me that there is almost three Rand/ half dollars difference in Mozambique and Swaziland Petrol Prices, Mozambique is expensive, so he just wanted to have around 5 litters in Motola, while he will full tank in Swaziland, now when we reached Petrol Pump Station, i went to inside shop and bought few juices and potato chips ;-) as soon as we started again, i thought we should change the music tape in car. Initially we were listening to Lata (Indian Legendary Singer), but her songs were very low mod songs, that was making me sad, which i never wanted to , because it was my first trip to Swaziland. So i asked Waseem about the decision and he agreed :-p , after then i have to select the tapes present in car, suddenly i came with movie songs , those were song my Udath (Indian Playback Singer).
what else i wanted at that time, i suddenly placed it in recorder and started listening him. It was then almost 16.00hrs and sun was going down, while we were driving in the hills of Namasha, so it was creating very very cool atmospheres, suddenly Waseem told me that this cassette was gifted by his Girl Friend, She is a Pakistani girl live in Gujrat, Pakistan and Waseem beside he is married he is dating her ;-) for too long, and this cassette gave him memories of his last date when he came here. Then he started telling me the details and events happened with them when he was on last date with her in Marry Pakistan. We were talking on different issue, when suddenly reached to Namasha Boarder, It was my first time on Swaziland boarder so i was a bit hesitated as the immigration people from Mozambique are mostly very problematic. We went in together to immigration people and started filling the departure form, the guy did'nt asked any thing and stamped our passport, Waseem ran to the next counter where he was about to make his car traveling documents. After which we entered to Swaziland immigration counter, where we filled again the form and i asked for a 5 days entry on visa, which they gave me without any problem, and then we started again !


Swaziland's roads are very well maintained we were driving fast in small hills, and while watching the romantic natural beauty of Swaziland, while listening Udath...! suddenly the area came where Swaziland Natural Park exists, where one can see Lion, Bulls, Cows Monkeys etc. I suddenly saw a very tinny monkey he was running from one tree to another, as it was a bit late and due to the dark we were unable to see much of the animals, Waseem was driving fast, as he told me we will get late if continue with this speed.

Soon we reached to Menzini the one of the two big cities in Swaziland, there we went first to Ijaz Shah house, took dinner and then went to meet Omar and Sahi saab, we came late at Ijaz Shah home, it was Friday night and we were very tired, so went to sleep quickly, then on Friday morning we went to meet few guys in Mbabane Capital of Swaziland, and came in after noon to Sahi saab house where we took lunch and i went to Menzini market where i was searching for some paint/shirts, but they quickly closed as 1800hrs is the closing time for all markets in Swaziland, after then we were wondering around while we took dinner at Ijaz Shah house, and we were talking each other till late night, while watching Dil Lagi movie with Imran and Wasif Shah, on Saturday Morning i decide to go back, but before that Waseem told me that i have to speak with Sahi saab regarding some business deal, so i went to market to buy some polo shirts and jeans while he went to speak with Sahi, then we both together went to Sahi saab house where we took lunch and started our journey for Maputo back.

It was really a fun to see the well organized small Kingdom of Swaziland.

Friday, August 17, 2007

New Job and Solaris + Jboss experience

Mrs, Anilza helped me to quit from www.cilix.co.mz, Anilza is very kind to me and even she was my Operational Manager she always helped me right from begging, i will never forget her, i was tired of being cilix's data center consultant, the post was very tense and non-technical, after working eight months in the company , finally one day i went to anilza and told her that i want to quit from this job, while Jutay already told me about SISTAFE (Ministry of Finance, Mozambique) is looking for Jboss cluster admin, i was thinking to move there, unexpectedly she told me that Nayyar i will help you to quit before contract finish with cilix, it was a green signal for me, i made a move with Miguel (IT Director, SISTAFE), on Jboss Admin post, finally within ten days i was able to join on 1st of August 2007, it was my first day, while my salary is now increased 100% and i am having fun working in a big setup with lots of cool system admins/ Java Developers.

Initially i was expecting Jboss Cluster Administration a very tough task but it was not that much, i have five node Jboss production cluster, running on Solaris 9, while i have same setup for testing and training environment, When i started working on the servers i came to know that Jboss is one of the Redhat owned product which is not properly documented, and there is alot to do in this domain, i think if redhat wants to get Jboss project really good, they need to work on its documentation, IRC's freenode channel is also almost dead channel, very few logins and they are not that alive there, by reading the features of Jboss, i am dam sure that it is the future of AS in linux/unix but the biggest threat might be the documentation.

I took Friday leave last week to visit Kingdom of Swazi Land, it was fun , i will blog it in my next entry, this week i was having savior pain in my eyes, and today when i met eye specialist he told me that you need to use glasses while working on computer, so from Monday i will start doing so. my eye side is a bit weak now, especially left one.