Oh dear, I’ve been so accustomed with Blogger that I find it easier to navigate and write blog post on Blogger instead of my own hosted WordPress blog. It has been a rough couple of months since my last blog post back in earlier January this year. After almost 5 years with the current salary, I recently took a month of unpaid leave and went on job hunting and finally landed a job offer where I then tendered a 2 weeks notice to start work next month. So it was all hectic and crazy the past several months for me.

It’s been a while since I last attended any events so last month I was invited to a Microsoft event and I jumped on it. The event was ‘Microsoft Malaysia TechDays IT Camp Best of MMS 2012′. Basically I was half-hearted to come because I had issues in my job hunting quest. It wasn’t too bad after all because during the event, I got a call to attend a job interview. Anyway, I love photos and more photos.

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

From Ashrufzz Dot Com

Basically what I’ve learned from this event is the difference between a private cloud and public cloud. It was quite interesting and was helpful enough during my job interview session 2 days after that.

This would be my first blog post in 2012. I have been concentrating on writing my Malay blog thus abandoning writing on this blog. However, I’ll try my best to update anything related to technology that I’ve personally experience so far. So last month I encountered an invitation through Facebook:

I’ve never been to a cloud computing summit before therefore I immediately registered myself to attend. The event was organized by iTrain Malaysia. The last event I’ve attended being organized by iTrain was like 5 years ago so things must have been really moving forward from then. I guess I’ll cut my blog post short and show you snapshots taken during the event:

During the event, there was an announcement that really surprised me. iTrain with support from the government will be doing a ‘Free Training for CompTIA Cloud Computing Certification’. Again, I registered myself for that one as well. Basically I’ve been playing around with the cloud for several years already except that during that time it wasn’t known as ‘cloud’ yet. Hopefully I’ll become the chosen 40 selected person to receive the training and qualify for the certification. I’ll update that in my blog if I get selected.

I’ve been a big fan of virtualization since the day I’ve discovered Windows Virtual PC somewhere back 5-6 years ago. At that time, my thought was its free, its convenient and it triggers a lot of new ideas for testing purposes. In 2005,my team (consist of me, my brother and my boss) had to handle a software upgrade for a very well known big multinational corporation.. Their technical team was kind enough to show us a software called VMware.

I first registered myself to VMware email subscription in 2008. VMware wasn’t really big during those days but I heard that they are getting stronger by the day. Earlier this year in July, I attended a virtual event conducted by VMware after receiving an invitation below:

I notice that such event utilized a lot of internet bandwidth. I had my network guy screamed at me for using most of the bandwidth during that time of the hour. I don’t really blame him, he maybe wasn’t equipped to handle such enormous request. Anyway, he left the company to pursue a better position. Enough about that, I find the virtual event to be quite dull since I can’t listen to any of the web conferences because of the bandwidth issue.

Last October, I received an e-mail invitation:

vSeminar Series 2011 – Online Registration is Now Open

Join us at vSeminar Series to discover the latest cloud infrastructure and management solutions to accelerate IT and your business, and learn how you can further leverage your virtualization investments to reduce capital and operating expenses and improve business agility.

vSeminar Series is a free one-day multiple track event where you will be able to hear from VMware and experts from our partner ecosystem as we share the latest technologies in enabling Your Cloud to meet your company’s specific business needs.

If you’re an IT professional tasked with virtualizing and managing your IT environment, or taking your organization to the Cloud, you won’t want to miss this opportunity to:

• Explore the latest technologies to aid your transformation to deliver a flexible, agile IT-as-a-Service delivery model
• Learn the latest infrastructure and management solutions that enable greater efficiency, agility and choice for IT organizations – including vSphere 5, Site Recovery Manager 5 and View 5
• Create a modern, user-centric approach to personal computing that delivers secure access to applications and data from any device, such as the iPad
• Experience technology demonstrations from the exhibition showcase by VMware and a broad range of technology partners
• Dive into operational best practices, performance, tuning and troubleshooting for your IT environment
• Learn how, by using VMware vSphere, you can increase the performance of mission critical applications and how your organisation can accelerate its transition to the cloud

Don’t miss the opportunity to acquire best practices tips and strategies for virtualization and learn how to develop a cohesive, secure and compliant cloud strategy in three core areas: infrastructure, applications and end-user computing.

Register now in the city closest you and don’t miss a seat. We look forward to seeing you!

Malaysia

Date: Tuesday, 15 November 2011 Time: 8:00 am to 6:00 pm Venue: One World Grand Ballroom First Avenue, Bandar Utama, City Centre 47800 Petaling Jaya Selangor Malaysia

 
I immediately register myself. At first, I thought the event wasn’t going to have so many people. I was so wrong. Just look at these photos I’ve taken:

This was at 8.30am! I couldn’t believe it. When the event started, the speaker told that there were a thousand people who had registered and come to event. I then realized, VMware is huge!

Check out my mega photo gallery I’ve taken during the event:

Since one of my role in the company is to suggest better ways to manage the IT infrastructure for both ourselves and also to our clients/prospects. Virtualization is definitely the way of the future. My team has been fiddling with Oracle VM Virtualbox to maximize the use of our development and test servers in the office. So far, the only restriction that we have is the shortage of physical memory for the hardware. The cloud wasn’t really a solution for us since we need to utilize what we have and keeping the cost down (although we have 2 virtual private servers running in the US for hosting purposes). Overall, virtualization has helped us in our IT deployment stage.

Back to the event, I must say that the event was way much cooler and more fun than any techno events I’ve ever been to and this was in Malaysia by the way. Kudos to the organizer and to all the sponsors for organizing such a wonderful event. Looking forward to next year’s VMware vSeminar Series if VMware decided to held one again next year.

It’s time for another workshop from Oracle. As usual, I receive a workshop invitation from Oracle:

Modern Enterprise Java Development

Dear Ashrufzz,

You are invited to attend the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) Java Workshop, a free, hands-on workshop that will focus on Java EE 6 and designed to enrich the development experience of enterprise Java developers.

• Gain a better understanding of Oracle WebLogic Server’s capabilities and a glimpse into Java EE 7 and cloud enablement
• Dive into the different layers of a typical Java EE Web application and learn how to implement them using the latest Java EE features
• Learn how the latest Java EE 6 features provide a modern, lightweight Java development experience
• Gain insight into why scaling web applications is challenging and learn some tips and tricks on how to deal with the issues involved
• Hear about the integration of Coherence and Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle GlassFish Server and the native capabilities of each servers for HTTP session state management
• Learn how to configure and use powerful Eclipse plug-ins to develop, build, and deploy with Maven and Hudson for continuous build integration
• Learn how to develop a simple Java console-based application to access, update and remove simple types of information from a Coherence-clustered cache

LAPTOP REQUIREMENT

General requirements		Software requirements
• Laptop with DVD Drive • Any operating system • 3.9 GB free disk space for VirtualBox appliance		• 2GB RAM+ • VirtualBox 4.1+ software • 9 GB of disk space for VirtualBox image

 

Agenda
8:30 a.m.	Registration
9:00 a.m.	Keynote: Modern, Lightweight Development with Java EE 6
10:00 a.m.	Technical Session: Developer Experience with WebLogic Server and the Cloud
11:00 a.m.	Technical Session: Exploring Java EE 6
12:00 p.m.	Lunch
1:00 p.m.	InstallFest
1:30 p.m.	Hands-on Lab: Total Oracle WebLogic Server Development with Eclipse, Maven, and Hudson
2:30 p.m.	Technical Session: An engineer’s introduction to in-memory data grid development
3:30 p.m.	Technical Session: In-memory session replication with WebLogic and GlassFish and Coherence
4:30 p.m.	Hands-on Lab: A Step-By-Step Guide to Oracle Coherence
5:30 p.m.	End

 

I arrived at Oracle’s HQ in Level 23, The Garden. I guess they are cutting down on cost so the only goodies I get is an Oracle folder, a few sheets of paper and an Oracle Linux CD. It’s okay with me since it’s kind of annoying to bring along my laptop back-pack along with a bunch of goodies especially when you take the train to come to MidValley.

The first session was presented by Cipto Wibowo Herlianto, OFM Solution Consultant-ASEAN. He is based in Singapore and I believe he is an Indonesian by the way his name is spelled. There was supposed to be another speaker but he came in late therefore Cipto had to cover for him.

Cipto’s topic was “Developer Experience with WebLogic Server and the Cloud” where he explained about Oracle WebLogic product regarding its features and many more things.

For me, the Oracle WebLogic is a fantastic tool to administer an enterprise application for a big scale environment. Of course the learning curve would be a bit steep especially for those who had never handled any big enterprise application before. For those who do, the features can be really helpful.

Cipto also showed the audience a hands-on view of how to deploy 2 applications where one is the new version and side by side replacing the old version with a new one without compromising the uptime of the application. A feature where high availability application demands most.

My knowledge in Java is quite limited so I couldn’t really understand what Java EE6 can do or could not do.

The second speaker is Chuk-Munn Lee where he talked about “Exploring Java EE 6″.

I really admire Mr. Chuk-Mun Lee because of his vast knowledge on Java. He was also unafraid to tell the audience the truth about Oracle and Sun (He claim he was from Sun) in terms of the product strength and weaknesses. Among some notes I’ve managed to collect:

• GlassFish Server V3 – Is free and most probably the most advanced web server application in the market
• JRuby – Is faster than the original Ruby
• WebXML – Format everybody loves to hate
• The use of annotation “” – If you have source code
• The use of XML – If you don’t have source code/file
• Multitenancy in Java EE 7
• Scaling application in thread – requires a lot of CPU
• Some overview of JRockit and how it can be used to manage application

I’ve never heard of GlassFish before eventhough one of the application my company is selling is using Tomcat and Jetty and based on Spring Framework. I think it’s time for my company to focus on Java instead of PHP. It was also the first time I’ve head of Maven and Hudson so it was an eye opener for me too.

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the materials being presentated was way beyond my IT knowledge so I had to pick up my pace on it using Wikipedia while during the talk. Again, I was fascinated by the dashboard showed by Mr Chuk together with his hands-on demonstration. How I wish I had the skills that he has. It was then time for lunch:

I could still remember the lunch I had during my last visit. It was fabolous. This time around, we were only served with packed lunch. Oh well, that’ll do.

The afternoon session was the “hands-on” approach. My laptop was running at peak performance causing my CPU fan to work extra hard. I was left with only 13GB of hard disk space (Total capacity-160GB) on my aging laptop. How I wish my company could provide me with an upgrade to my nearly 3 year old laptop eversince my own laptop died on me because of overheating I supposed.

Check out my laptop which barely meet the minimum laptop requirement:

General requirements		Software requirements		My Laptop
• Laptop with DVD Drive • Any operating system • 3.9 GB free disk space for VirtualBox appliance		• 2GB RAM+ • VirtualBox 4.1+ software • 9 GB of disk space for VirtualBox image		• Intel Core2 Duo CPU T5670 1.8GHz • 3GB RAM • WinXP SP 2 • 13GB of free disk space

There were 2 hands-on lab:

1. Oracle WebLogic Server Development with Eclipse, maven and Hudson
2. A Step-By-Step Guide to Oracle Coherence

I only managed to finish the 1st lab. By the time I was finished, it’s already time to leave.

Looking forward to another event (please invite me again ok?).

Thank you Oracle.