12/31/2017

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2017 last post of the year

This year has been an amazing year with a lot of challenges. I became father for first time and I also moved to live to another country.

I want to say thank you to all my readers from the US, Rusia, Peru, Spain, Ucrania, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Israel and the world, that shared with me, all my thoughts and hobbies.

I wish you the best !!!

Best Regards

Rodolfo

11/25/2017

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ITIL Foundation Mindmap

I have always been a visual person and that's why mindmaps and tools like flashcards have been my friends during all my student life (an endless life by the way).

I want to present you a mindmap with some content to prepare the ITIL Foundation exam, the main idea is that you could review the main concepts.

I will try to keep this mindmap updated with some goodies like ITIL software too (CMDB, Help Desk, etc).

This is a preliminary version, so any feedback, comments, will be great

https://atlas.mindmup.com/rmondion/itil_v2/index.html

Have fun !!

Rodolfo

11/04/2017

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Euler OS - Huawei Enterprise Linux

I've seen during this years that Huawei has grown a lot in the DataCenter and the Cloud sector, promoving different types of technologies like OpenStack, Software Defined Networks (SDN) and the Internet of things (IoT).  From a previous post about cloud technologies, I was redirected to the Huawei Development Network.

I decided to create an account and take a look of the products and technologies offered, once I logged in I started to explorer and I found an interesting project, called Euler OS.

This is a fork of a Centos distribution, planned to be used as a Server OS, for the Huawei line of servers. More details about the OS, can be found here.

I didn't see so much info about this distro from Google, besides Huawei standard documentation, so I decided to write about it (installation, first impressions, etc).

1. DOWNLOADING ISO IMAGE

This part of the process was kind of funny because I tried to download the image several times, using different methods (web browsers like chrome, firefox, opera) and even using wget and failed in all of them. For some reason when I was trying to download the iso file, I was always getting stuck at 1.2 GB and then was receiving a network connection warning or download abort error.

The main issue is that I was able to download information from several sites, including other Linux ISOS, without any issue, so I assumed that something was going on from Huawei's side.
The download page can be found here.

After this event I decided to open a ticket (pretty straightforward and simple from Huawei Development Network page, nice job !), then it took like 4 business days when I received some feedback from support team, they asked me to test with another link, to try download the file.

The second link was the lucky one, so I was able to download the file (4.1 GB approx). I choose in my case the EulerOS-V2.0SP2-x86_64-dvd-RC1 ISO.


2. OS INSTALLATION

 If you have installed Centos in the past, the experience should be the same, the same installer (Anaconda) and basically the same steps of a standard Centos 7.X installation. For testing purpose I will use my good old friend VirtualBox.

You can see here some screenshots, for the installation


The OS only has support for English and Chinese language.

From the security perspective, I can see that there're different options that can be chosen:


In my case, I choose the default profile and also the base installation, without the GUI option


I choose automated partitioning, the path of my virtual disk and I started the OS installation. I also defined the user and root account as usual.


The installation takes a couple of minutes and I can log in now, to my Euler box.

ssh rmondion@192.168.1.16
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.1.16' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
rmondion@192.168.1.16's password:
Last login: Thu Nov  2 23:37:35 2017

Authorized users only. All activities may be monitored and reported.
[rmondion@eulerOS ~]$
[rmondion@eulerOS etc]$ more /etc/system-release
EulerOS release 2.0 (SP2)

3. OS REVIEW

We can see some things from this distro

[rmondion@eulerOS etc]$ uname -r
3.10.0-327.53.58.73.h2.x86_64

[rmondion@eulerOS etc]$ more /etc/euleros-latest 
eulerversion=EulerOS_2.2.RC3
compiletime=2017-06-27-22-06-13
kernelversion=3.10.0-327.53.58.73.h2

We can see an updated Kernel and also their package repositories

[rmondion@eulerOS etc]$ cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
[rmondion@eulerOS yum.repos.d]$ ls
EulerOS-base.repo
[rmondion@eulerOS yum.repos.d]$ more EulerOS-base.repo 
[EulerOS-base]
name=EulerOS-base
baseurl=http://developer.huawei.com/ict/site-euleros/euleros/repo/yum/2.2/os/x86
_64/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://developer.huawei.com/ict/site-euleros/euleros/repo/yum/2.2/os/RPM-
GPG-KEY-EulerOS

We can search for standard software from our  Euler repository

[rmondion@eulerOS ~]$ yum search wget
EulerOS-base                                             | 4.2 kB     00:01    
(1/3): EulerOS-base/group_gz                               |  15 kB   00:06    
(2/3): EulerOS-base/updateinfo                             |  56 kB   00:09    
(3/3): EulerOS-base/primary_db                             |  12 MB   01:59    
============================== N/S matched: wget ===============================
wget.i686 : A utility for retrieving files using the HTTP or FTP protocols
wget.x86_64 : A utility for retrieving files using the HTTP or FTP protocols

[rmondion@eulerOS ~]$ yum search docker
============================= N/S matched: docker ==============================
docker-compose.noarch : add compose tool
docker-engine.x86_64 : The open-source application container engine
docker-engine-selinux.noarch : SELinux Policies for the open-source application
                             : container engine

[rmondion@eulerOS ~]$ yum search lxc
=============================== N/S matched: lxc ===============================
libvirt-daemon-driver-lxc.x86_64 : LXC driver plugin for the libvirtd daemon

Basically, we can see the same type of usage, from a Centos/Red Hat distribution.

4. CONCLUSIONS

- I think Huawei is having a great relationship with the Opensource community, contributing in many projects, especially in areas like SDN, OpenStack and now server OS, like Euler.

- If you are having some issues downloading the ISO image, you can follow the link mentioned before or try with the Huawei Chinese site.

- It's good to know that Centos is supported in the Huawei line of servers, sharing some space with the well known players (Red Hat, Suse Enterprise and Windows Server ).

5. ADDITIONAL LINKS

- Huawei Server OS Installation Guides

Thanks for visiting !!

Cheers

Rodolfo

10/22/2017

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Guide to the Open Cloud

I found a good reference for beginners, about latest open source technologies related to the cloud (CI/CD, SDN, IAAS, PAAS, etc). This work is done by the Linux Foundation, you can download/view this report here .

In this report you'll learn:

      - The most useful, influential and promising open source cloud projects.
      - How trends in containers, microservices, and more shape cloud computing today.
      - What the open source cloud is.
      - What it means to be cloud-native.
      - Why the open cloud is important and much more.

 Have fun !!!

Rodolfo

10/18/2017

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Docker running on VMware VSphere

Vmware has been the big player in the virtualization field for several years, leading in many aspects and also promoting different types of technologies and IT solutions.

After the appearance of docker and several container types of technologies (LXC/LXD, CoreOS, etc), Vmware had to think about how to coexist with this new neighbors and think about how to create a long-term relationship with them.

In this post, I will try to show you how to run Docker inside a Vmware Virtual machine in order to take advantage of nested virtualization and all the benefits of both technologies.

For this entry, I will use as a reference my laptop running Ubuntu 16.10 and a second box running Vmware VSphere 6.

1. DOCKER MACHINE

According to Docker's Web Page, Docker Machine is a tool that lets you install Docker Engine on virtual hosts, and manage the hosts with docker-machine commands. You can use Machine to create Docker hosts on your local Mac or Windows box, on your company network, in your data center, or on cloud providers like Azure, AWS, or Digital Ocean.

Using docker-machine commands, you can start, inspect, stop, and restart a managed host, upgrade the Docker client and daemon, and configure a Docker client to talk to your host.

To install this tool in our host, we just need to download it and follow the installation instructions.

We can find the CLI commands for the vmware driver in the following link 

The options used will be:

--vmwarevsphere-username: required vSphere Username.
--vmwarevsphere-password: required vSphere Password.
--vmwarevsphere-vcenter: IP/hostname for vCenter (or ESXi if connecting directly to a single host).

#docker-machine create --driver vmwarevsphere --vmwarevsphere-username=user --vmwarevsphere-password=SECRET  --vmwarevsphere-vcenter ip address vm_name

For the purpose of this post, we will use default values for VM disk size, virtual cpus and memory allocation.

--vmwarevsphere-memory-size = default value 2GB
--vmwarevsphere-cpu-count = default 2  vcpus
--vmwarevsphere-disk-size = default 20gb

What we do with this instruction, is to install a lightweight Linux distro called Boot2Docker , that has already installed docker on top of it.

So i ran the following command

 rmondion@E570ubuntu:~$ docker-machine create --driver vmwarevsphere --vmwarevsphere-username=root --vmwarevsphere-password=mypasword --vmwarevsphere-vcenter 192.168.1.8 vmtest

Running pre-create checks...
Creating machine...
(vmtest) Default Boot2Docker ISO is out-of-date, downloading the latest release...
(vmtest) Latest release for github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker is v17.09.0-ce
(vmtest) Downloading /home/rmondion/.docker/machine/cache/boot2docker.iso from https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/releases/download/v17.09.0-ce/boot2docker.iso...
(vmtest) 0%....10%....20%....30%....40%....50%....60%....70%....80%....90%....100%
(vmtest) Copying /home/rmondion/.docker/machine/cache/boot2docker.iso to /home/rmondion/.docker/machine/machines/vmtest/boot2docker.iso...
(vmtest) Generating SSH Keypair...
(vmtest) Creating VM...

Everything was looking fine when I got this error

Error creating machine: Error in driver during machine creation: ServerFaultCode: Current license or ESXi version prohibits execution of the requested operation.

Looking for some information about this issue I found this link. According to this, the tool communicates directly with VCenter to create the Virtual Machine and not with the ESxi host. In my case I have not installed this management tool, so won't be able to continue with this process.

2. INSTALLING YOU OWN FAVORITE LINUX DISTRO

We can see that from docker-machine command, a small Linux distro (in our case Boot2Docker), it's installed in a brand new virtual machine, this VM will be hosting our container images

We can find several Linux distributions that can be chosen for running Docker. I think one of the things that we need to search in our implementation scheme, is to keep a lightweight OS, installing just the necessary software to run Docker.

There're several small Linux distros, used for this purpose that I will mention right now:

Alpine

This is a pretty small distro (106 MB), and offers a basic functionality. It's often used in docker containers and we can find a lot of Docker images based on this distro in the Docker Marketplace.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu offers a minimal iso (58 MB), that install the minimal packages and offers a netinstall installation to install more software if required.

Centos

 From the installation wizard, we can choose to install the minimal version, you can find here a small tutorial

Suse

Like the Centos OS, you can download the DVD image and choose server or minimal installation, you can find here also a tutorial for this purpose.

Once we have installed our Linux Distro, we can install Docker, either from a repository (yum, apt-get, zypper, etc), or download the binary from the Docker Web page.

3. PHOTON OS

 This Linux distribution it's an initiative from VMware, to build a Docker ready OS. More details about this distro can be found here.

It offers several ways to install (as an ISO, OVA file, etc).

From PHOTON OS web page:

Photon OS™ is a minimal Linux container host, optimized to run on VMware platforms. With the 1.0 release, we have greatly expanded the library of packages that are in our repository, making Photon OS™ more broadly applicable to a range of use-cases. We invite partners, customers, and interested community members to collaborate on both running containerized applications in a virtualized environment and the potential of an operating system tightly coupled to underlying virtual infrastructure.

We will import the ova file (Photon OS, Version 1.0 - OVA with virtual hardware v11) to our VSphere environment and will give a quick test.

We go to Create VM --> Select creation type --> Deploy VM from ova/ovf file



We choose a name and the ova file


We complete selecting the datastore and accepting VMware license.

Once we have completed the info we are ready to deploy and finish installation


The process takes a couple of minutes and we can see that our VM is active and that we can access to console.



We use the default credentials for the first login (user: root, pass: changeme) and the system will ask to change the default password


By default the docker service is not enabled, so we need to enable it.


We saw right now how to install docker inside a VM, in our case using a project sponsored by VMware.

CONCLUSIONS

- There're several ways to install docker inside VMware VSphere, we can choose a sponsored solution by the same company like Photon OS, or choose our favorite Linux distribution, install from scratch and then install docker on top of it.

- docker-machine is a helpful tool, but in the case of the VMware driver, we must consider that the vCenter solution must be installed in order to be able to communicate with the tool.

- There are other solutions like Photon, that provides a docker ready OS, such as Rancher OS or Atomic Project, that you can take a look too. I will try to write some posts about this appliances too.

- Here's an interesting post about container ready OS, that will be complementary to this article.

 Thanks for visiting !!!!

Cheers

Rodolfo

9/07/2017

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Automatizando tus aplicaciones y redes sociales - Parte 2/2


Aplicación que sigue la tónica, de las anteriores. No cuenta con templates de conexión y ofrece un numero menor de aplicaciones a conectar.

Veo que las aplicaciones son un poco mas específicas , posee conexion para algunas aplicaciones más populares, pero tal vez el foco puede estar orientado a nichos mas especificos (Puntos de venta, contabilidad, etc). 

Posee un periodo de prueba de 7 dias y una interfaz un poco mas básica, comparada con las herramientas anteriores. Su precio parte desde los 29US, mensuales.


Tal vez una de las aplicaciones que más he usado y me siento familiarizado, junto con Zapier. Ofrece una interfaz amigable. Tiene mas de 300 aplicaciones para conectar y no ofrece mayor tipo de restricciones para su uso con la cuenta que creamos, no hay un periodo de prueba y en general la recomiendo ampliamente. 
Posee templates como el resto de las herramientas , asi como tambien categorias que hacen que su uso sea mas fácil de aprender.



Una de las herramientas con más aplicaciones para conectar (mas de 800), ofrece una cuenta gratuita que cuenta con 5 zaps (conexiones entre aplicaciones). Su precio parte desde los 18US mensuales.
La principal diferencia con cuentas pagadas es el acceso a ciertas aplicaciones premium. Funciona de la misma manera que las herramientas anteriores.

Posee una interfaz intuitiva y amigable 


Interesante propuesta de Microsoft, posee bastantes aplicaciones para conectar, pero mayoritariamente con enfoque de la corporación  (suite office, azure, sql server, etc). Al igual que Zapier ofrece una cuenta gratuita, que tiene  acceso a un buen numero de aplicaciones y una cuenta pagada que ofrece acceso a aplicaciones premium . Los planes de pago empiezan desde los 5US.
Al igual que IFTTT, ofrecen categorias, que permiten entender y aplicar de mejor manera el uso de las conexiones.  

CONSIDERACIONES IMPORTANTES

Sea cual sea la aplicación que usemos, es importante tomar ciertas precauciones, sobre todo con aplicaciones que se encuentren en producción. Recomiendo ocupar cuentas de testing o duplicar información , de tal manera de testear las conexiones entre aplicaciones y cerciorarnos que se cumpla la automatización que queremos lograr. Una vez que hemos corroborado esto, podemos correr nuestras conexiones sin mayor problema.

CONCLUSIONES FINALES

- Cada aplicación tiene su potencial nicho de uso. Existen aplicaciones con mas enfoque corporativo como Workato, que posee conexiones con aplicaciones empresariales. Si se dispone de un presupuesto , creo que es una buena opción a considerar.

- Para el usuario común , que quiere adentrarse en este mundo, creo que IFTTT, Zapier, Automate.io y Microsoft flow , son muy buenas alternativas, que ofrecen muy buenas funcionalidades a partir de su versión gratuita.

-  Pude ver que Linkedin no estaba presente en muchas de estas herramientas. Me hubiera gustado ver una conexión del tipo, agregar contacto nuevo de Linkedin a mi CRM, creo que esa sería una integración muy interesante.

- Como comentaba anteriormente, siempre testear las conexiones con información que no sea sensible, no queremos ensuciar los datos de nuestro CRM, o llenar nuestras redes sociales de "hola mundo", "test" o "probando".

- Me parece interesante lo que hace IFTTT , al agregar muchos servicios IOT (Internet of things ), así como también distintos dispositivos de este tipo. Es interesante ver como podemos capturar infomación acerca de los mismos, para posterior análisis.

- Me encontré con muchas aplicaciones que no conocía y creo que sería un buen material para un próximo post, analizar algunas de estas aplicaciones.

Espero les sirva la información

Saludos!!!

Rodolfo


8/27/2017

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Audiolibros - Entre Ocio y Aprendizaje

Una de las cosas que me ha llamado la atención, es que en muchas de las biografías de empresarios exitosos y personas de renombre , se menciona que uno de los hábitos primordiales era la de la lectura. Muchos renunciaban a la televisión y a las noticias , para convertirse en asiduos lectores de libros que les ayuden a potenciarse a sí mismo o les ayuden a pensar "out of the box".

La agenda laboral o de estudios, mas la vida familiar, nos hace un poco díficil tomar el ritmo de un "asiduo lector" y mas bien debemos tratar de buscar alguno que otro tiempo muerto para tomar un periódico, revista o tratar de "terminar" algún libro.

A continuación les presento algunos sitios para poder escuchar descargar audiolibros y sobre todo algo que me parece muy interesante, son los resumenes ejecutivos de libros de negocio (ya sea marketing, emprendimiento, liderazgo, coaching ,etc). Estos ultimos nos ofrecen la posibilidad de acceder a información de alto valor, sumado a la comodidad y versatilidad que nos ofrece el audio digital, que puede ser escuchado ya sea en la web o en un dispositivo de audio personal o celular.

SERVICIOS DE PAGO


Este servicio pertenece a Amazon y si ya tienes una cuenta con ellos , puedes acceder a este servicio también. El catalogo debo decir que es buenísimo, tiene miles de libros y ofrecen un periodo de prueba de 1 mes, despues el servicio es de 14,95 US mensuales. La verdad es que si eres de pasar un buen tiempo manejando , ocupando tiempos muertos o de escuchar contenido mientras hacer deporte, creo que este servicio es una muy buena opción, para escuchar un buen libro.

Posee un buen numero de libros en español, pero el mayor numero de libros se encuentra en Ingles.

Podemos descargar la aplicación para escuchar los libros ya sea para android o IOS.


Posee un servicio similar a Audible, una buena aplicación para gestionar tus libros también. A diferencia de Audible, no cuenta con una colección tan grande, pero si cuenta con una cantidad razonable de titulos que puedes encontrar. A nivel de precio, ofrece planes de 5US mensuales, bastante mas economico que Audible, vale la pena probarlo.

SERVICIOS GRATUITOS


Página web en español con un buen numero de titulos disponibles ya sea para escuchar a través del portal o descargar.


Página web en Inglés con un catalogo variado de libros, todos disponibles para escuchar y descargar.

RESUMENES EJECUTIVOS

SERVICIOS PAGADOS

Este tipo de servicio, como lo comentaba anteriormente, me parece muy interesante y podemos encontrar varios opciones dentro del mercado tecnológico.


Ofrece un numero variado de resumenes de libros de muchas categorias (emprendimiento, tecnología, management, ocio, etc). Ofrece una cuenta gratuita, pero que permite acceder a un numero reducido de titulos. Para acceder al catalogo completo debemos upgradera a la version pro, que cuesta 79US y permite acceder ya sea la version escrita del resumen del libro, tanto como su audio.


Tuve la oportunidad de probar este servicio por un buen tiempo, como una subscripción proporcionada por un ex-empleador. Debo decir que el nivel de los libros y audiolibros que se pueden encontrar ahi es alto y totalmente recomendable. Su costo es de 99US anuales y los audiolibros pueden ser descargados en formato mp3.

SERVICIOS GRATUITOS 


En este sitio podras encontrar resumenes ejecutivos de libros enfocados en el emprendimiento , clásicos como los 7 habitos de la gente altamente efectiva, lean startup, padre rico padre pobre, etc.

Espero que este resumen les haya servido, les dejo también otros link que les pueden ser de utilidad

 Quora: What are the best book summary websites? 
Audiolibros gratis, como grabarlos y conseguirlos

Un Saludo

Rodolfo


8/26/2017

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Automatizando tus aplicaciones y redes sociales - Parte 1/2

He estado probando ultimamente una serie de herramientas utilizadas para conectar distintas cuentas de nuestras redes sociales, con el objetivo de automatizar ciertas tareas que muchas veces hacemos de manera manual. 

Existe una oferta variada de herramientas , algunas gratuitas y otras de pago. El objetivo de este post es mostrarle su funcionamiento a grandes rasgos , asi como tambien lo bueno, lo malo y lo feo :) .

Buscando en internet , encontré este post interesante de Quora, donde hablan acerca de estas herramientas , asi que decidi tomar esta información, como base de mi estudio.

FUNCIONAMIENTO GENERAL

Para hacer funcionar la mayoría de estos servicios debemos enlazar 2 aplicaciones (significa conectar y permitir que estos herramientas accedan a nuestras aplicaciones ).

Tenemos una aplicación que dada una acción (hacer un post de facebook), generará un determinado comportamiento en nuestra segunda aplicación (postear el mismo post en nuestro muro de linkedin).

A continuación les cuento un poco acerca de cada servicio


Segun su sitio web, "PieSync keeps your contacts in sync between your favorite cloud apps, 2-way and in real time. Just set it and forget it. It takes only 5 minutes to setup your first sync". La herramienta hace su trabajo, te permite sincronizar tus contactos entre multiples servicios. Esto significa que cada vez que por ejemplo, agregue un contacto en google, se me agregue a podio o cada vez que actualice un campo (por ejemplo numero telefonico), se actualize en ambas aplicaciones

Tiene una interfaz amigable y sencilla y dispone cerca de 80 servicios para conectar y relacionar.

La escala de precios va desde los 5US hasta los 99US. Para ser honesto me parecio un poco caro en general para el tipo de servicio ofrecido. De todos modos ofrecen un periodo de prueba de 2 semanas el cual extendi en total a un mes (un asistente de piesync me contacto por correo para hacer seguimiento y ofrecerme la extensión del periodo de prueba, nice ...).


En general esta aplicación hace lo que cumple, que es mantener sincronizados nuestros calendarios con nuestras actividades (google calendar, outlook, odoo calendar,etc). Para esto debemos loguearnos y agregar los calendarios que queremos se mantengan sincronizados. Posee una interfaz sencilla y en general no hay mucho mas que comentar.

El precio es razonable y un poco mas barato que Piesync (3 euros mensuales).

Al igual que Piesync, ofrecen un periodo de prueba de 14 dias.

WORKATO

Esta aplicacion se ve bastante promisoria , posee un gran numero de aplicaciones que se pueden conectar entre si. La lista es de mas de 160, y posee una interfaz amigable de administración. En su pagina web muestra un estudio donde la posiciona como una de las herramientas mas utilizadas para automatizar / relacionar aplicaciones a nivel corporativo.

Al igual que muchas de estas aplicaciones, ofrecen un periodo de prueba. A diferencia de otras herramientas similares , creo que tiene un enfoque mas empresarial ya que incluye aplicaciones como Oracle E-Business Suite, SalesForce, Microsoft Dynamics,etc.

El precio es mayor que las 2 anteriores , empezando en 499US. Dado por el rango de precios y la naturaleza de la herramienta, creo que es una aplicación con enfoque completamente corporativo mas que de uso personal o pensada para una pyme o pequeña empresa.

AUTOMATE.IO

Esta aplicacón funciona de manera similar a las herramientas anteriormente expuestas, ofrece una version gratuita , que ofrece una cantidad de 5 bots y 250 acciones mensuales. Un bot se le conoce a la relación entre 2 aplicaciones.

Las acciones corresponden a las interacciones entre estas (actualizar contacto, mandar correo y subir un archivo a internet). Ofrece una lista de planes competitivos  a precios accequibles, sobre todo pensando tal vez en una pyme o usuario no corporativo.

Posee menos aplicaciones asociadas, comparado con Workato, pero mantiene las aplicaciones mas masivas y de uso común.

Creo que es una buena opción a considerar.

STAMPLAY

Posee solo 50 aplicaciones para relacionar, sim embargo a nivel de gestion de las mismas, dashboard y funcionalidades, creo que es una de las mas avanzadas.

Su funcionalidad esta basada en proyectos, cada proyecto involucra a 2 a mas aplicaciones que se
interrelacionan. Este proyecto recibe una URL, la cual puede ser accedida a través de Internet.

Posee una API, que puede consultar distinta información de nuestro proyecto. Posee un periodo de prueba de 14 dias y el plan basico de uso parte en los 149US.

BUILT.IO

Esta aplicación funciona de manera similar que las anteriores , dispone tambien de muchos templates disponibles ,conectando distintas aplicaciones, como el resto de harramientas anteriormente expuestas. Posee una interfaz ordenada y tambien ofrece un periodo de prueba de 14 dias.

La cuenta básica parte de 9US mensuales, y dispone de 78 aplicaciones para conectar.

Para no hacer tan extenso este tutorial , crearé otra entrada, para seguir revisando herramientas y terminar con algunas conclusiones acerca de este tipo de tecnología.

Muchas Gracias !!

Rodolfo












7/14/2017

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Aprendiendo a Aprender

Han pasado bastante años desde que terminé la Universidad y aún mas, desde que egresé del colegio.

Cuando pienso acerca de la cantidad de cosas que teníamos que memorizar antiguamente y su repetición frente al profesor (ya sea oral o escrita), me hacen pensar profundamente del actual rol del alumno. El avance de la tecnología ha contribuido profundamente al desarrollo de metodologías de enseñanza y herramientas educativas.

La neurociencia y el aprendizaje cognitivo han sido mis amigos este ultimo tiempo y debo decir que ha sido un descubrimiento personal increíble. Cambiar el paradigma del aprendizaje como algo tedioso y motivarse a ser un estudiante "motivado y autodidacta", me han abierto la puerta a un sin fin de oportunidades y vías de desarrollo personal.

Un día, revisando la variada oferta de cursos que ofrece Coursera, pude acceder a Aprendiendo a aprender (Learning how to learn). Siento que fue una gran coincidencia y les motivo a inscribirse en este curso, sin pensarlo, ya que te ayudará a comprender y mejorar las técnicas que estan usando para aprender.

Técnicas de estudio, fundamentos biológicos del cerebro (neurotransmisores y su relación con el aprendizaje), son algunos de los tópicos que trata el curso. Realmente es un tiempo muy bien invertido, asi que les invito a que puedan subscribirse.

Lo que quiero presentar a continuación es una especie de "Starter Kit", un conjunto de herramientas que ocupo en mi día a día y que les pueden ser útil, en este camino de ser un estudiante tiempo completo, pero sobre todo un estudiante feliz :) .Siento que junto con las técnicas expuestas en el curso Aprendiendo a aprender, pueden ser un gran aliado.

EVERNOTE

Para muchos esta herramienta no necesita presentación , pero para resumir brevemente su funcionalidad, es una aplicación que sirve para tomar notas y organizar tu información diaria (cuenta con la posibilidad de atachar a tus notas ,fotos, audios, guardar paginas web, etc). Yo personalmente lo ocupo para todo, desde lista de compras ,organizar mis apuntes de cursos, plantillas para proyectos, etc. Se encuentra disponible para Web, Android e IOS.

Existen muchos blogs y recursos acerca de esta herramienta. Aqui les dejo algunos links interesantes.

Thinkwasabi, excelente blog de productividad, en este caso con una categoria dedicada al uso de evernote.

Blog oficial Evernote, buen recurso para ver distintos usos de la herramienta, experiencias de usuarios y nuevas funcionalidades.

 Pagina web oficial

MAPAS MENTALES

Los ocupo desde hace mucho tiempo y en temas de elección de la herramienta para generarlos , hay un mundo de opciones. Empeze hace un buen tiempo atrás con Freemind, estuve usando tambien Mindmanager, Xmind, para luego llegar a Mindmup, que es la actual herramienta que llevo usando ya de manera mas continuada.

Los mapas mentales son una gran herramienta para esquematizar cualquier conocimiento o contenido. Permite ordenar el contenido de una manera jerárquica y lógica, logrando una mayor comprensión , sobre todo cuando trabajamos un tema o concepto extenso. Les dejo algunos link con un poco de teoría.

Que es un mapa mental y como hacerlos

El libro de los Mapas Mentales (Tony Buzan), creador del concepto de mapas mentales

FLASHCARDS

Llevo utilizando este tipo de herramientas desde hace algunos años y al igual que los mapas mentales, existen una oferta amplia de aplicaciones. Empezé con Kaka Flashcards (ya descontinuado), luego seguí con Anki, para luego llegar a Quizlet, aplicación que se ha transformado en mi favorita y la cual actualmente uso.

Resumiendo su funcionamiento, se trata de una tarjeta en la que en un lado se escribe una pregunta y en el otro la respuesta (en mi caso ocupo aplicaciones que simulan este comportamiento). Las flashcards pueden ser de vocabulario, datos históricos, química, matemáticas, literatura o cualquier materia que pueda ser aprendida por medio de preguntas y respuestas

La ventaja del uso de esta técnica es que favorece la memorización de conceptos.

Les dejo un poco de teoría y algunos link que les puede servir para adentrarse en este tipo de herramientas.

8 Better Ways to Make and Study Flash Cards

 Quizlet quick introduction

Flashcards en Kindle, les dejo un link desde mi blog, donde hablo del uso de una caracteristica dentro de la app de Kindle, muy útil para resumir información de un libro en forma de flashcard.

 CONCLUSIONES

Quise realizar una descripción básica de cada herramienta , con el objetivo de mostrar algunos fundamentos de cada una de ellas. Puede que algunas de las herramientas que usen no esten en este lista y me encantaría que comentaran acerca de su experiencia y compartir tips acerca de las mismas.

Espero que todo esta información les pueda servir

Fuente: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/aprendiendo-aprender-rodolfo-mondion



5/24/2017

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Evernote Templates

I've been using Evernote for a while and I could say that is a MUST in my daily routine.

One of the main benefits of this tool is the usage of templates, this is explained in the following Evernote how to .Basically you can create templates for everything:

- Note taking (templates for memorandums, CRM contact, grocery lists, etc)
- Project Management (WBS, Project Plan, and the thousand of documents that you can imagine :) )
- Agile Methodology (Product Backlog, Team Charter, User story, etc)
- Software Development (System Requirements Specification, User Requirement Specification, etc)

If you have already a document in a doc or xls file, you can templatize and use it in Evernote.

You can see also a couple of examples from the same evernote's web site.

I will dedicate future entries to upload some templates for different purposes (PMI, Agile, among others)

Thanks for visiting !!!

Rodolfo


5/20/2017

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DataCenter OS

I was searching on Internet, some information about RancherOS, when I found this interesting website http://datacenteroperatingsystem.io .

According to the website description:

"Orchestration platforms, DevOps tools, Distributed Schedulers, Cloud OS. Almost all of them in one place".

I think this is a good starting point, in order to review the latest container technologies :)

Thanks for visiting !!

Best Regards

Rodolfo


5/12/2017

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Safari Books review

I've been using Safari Books for a while and I'm pretty happy with their service. I started 4 years ago when my past employer paid me the annual subscription. I could say that it's a big resource of books and courses and that I completely recommend their usage. When I left my job, one thing that I REALLY missed was my SafariBooks account.

The monthly fee is 39 $US a month and 399 $US annual. I know that could seem a bit expensive, but if you are always studying and doing some research it's a fair trade. Imagine that monthly, you are taking a couple of Udemy Courses, downloading some books to your kindle (sometimes IT books can be a bit expensive), with this type of study habit, you could spend easily 30-40 $US.

When you purchase the subscription you have access to literally thousand of books and courses on the latest IT topics (Cloud, docker, machine learning, etc) and other subjects like economy, self-develop, marketing, etc.

If we compare with other services like Lynda (www.lynda.com), I think they are more technically oriented ( Lynda is pretty good giving some first entry courses and basic fundamentals), but if you want to find a book about deep learning algorithms or applied physics, safari book is the place.

The benefit of this platform is that you can have access to basic and more advanced material in lots of study subjects.

I think that purchase this type of service can be a benefit in cases where you are a researcher/teacher or you are constantly studying or interested in latest technologies. If you are a casual reader/student, probably is not a good choice.

The service can be used either via the web or through your cell phone/tablet. The application it's available for android and IOS. 

The application used is called Safari Queue and you can find it in IOS and Android marketplace. The old application was called  Safari to go, unfortunately, it's deprecated. Personally, I like more this old version, than the new one.

I can name some pros and cons of this new version:

PROS

Unlike the Safari to go version, you can download the books/videos in an unlimited way (you need to make sure that you have enough space in your cell phone/tablet because video courses tend to be a bit bigger). With the Safari to go version, you were able to download only 3 books, that can be read in an offline mode when you don't have internet access. Video download was not allowed

CONS

This couldn't be a problem for some people, but for me it is. The old version was able to create some categories in order to arrange your books and videos for a particular subject (IT, math, physics, economy, platforms, etc), also you were able to create a playlist with your favorite content and share it between Safari users. The latest version manages a big "queue", with all your videos and books, without any option of tagging or grouping the content.
Well, this was a small review of this platform, that I definitely recommend. You can find below some interesting links

- SafariBooks
- Safari Android & IOS app

Thanks for visiting !!!

Best Regards

Rodolfo


5/04/2017

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Oracle VM for X86 flashcard

I'm returning to write some posts. Has been really busy the last 2 months , because I came to live to Peru with my girlfriend and daughter , so you can imagine all the paperwork, and all the tasks related with the new home :) .

I'm posting something that I wrote before and it's an Oracle VM flashcard that includes some information about this Oracle/Virtualization technology. This can be helpful to introduce some core concepts and features.

You can find here the link from Quizlet

Thanks for visiting!!

Rodolfo

3/21/2017

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SD cards and Android Phones

I'm the owner of a Asus Zenfone Max 2, and I'm pretty happy with it, because it has 3 things that are important to me: Dual Sim (i'm oftenly travelling , so i always carrying with me a couple of Sims), MicroSD slot and good capacity battery (5000 mAH).

I bought a 64gb MicroSD card to expand the storage capacity of my cellphone, but i started to have some issues:

- I found that bigger cards (64, 128, 256 gb), are formatted with the extfat filesystem, that sometimes is not recognized by some devices. Here's a nice post that explains the different types of filesystems for SD cards.

- There're some solutions that requires to enable root user in the phone, but I was not planning to do that, at least in the short period.

Searching on internet I found that a workaround for this issue, is to format the card with the FAT32 filesystems. The only disadvantage of using this option, is that the FAT32 doesn't support files bigger than 4gb. I was not planning to use files of that size, so the workaround is suitable for me :) .

By default if you are a windows user , the format utility will format the device either extfat or ntfs, so you need to download a 3rd party tool to do the trick. Here's the link to download the tool.

If you are Linux user like me, you can do the trick with the gparted tool, available in most linux distributions. You just need to choose the sd card in the menu, delete the partition (default extfat partition ) and create a new one, choosing the fat32 filesytem.

Now you should be able to use the card with your cellphone :)

PD (In both scenarios you need to connect the SD card to your computer/laptop using the microsd adaptor that comes with your card or a USB card reader).

Thanks for visiting !!

Rodolfo



3/06/2017

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OpenStack deployment Solaris 11.3 - Part 3/4

Now I will try to used a supported server for the kernel zone, in my case a T4-1 server (part of the T4 series, described as a supported platform)

root@t4-1:~$ prtdiag -v | grep System
System Configuration:  Oracle Corporation  sun4v SPARC T4-1
Sun System Firmware 8.9.5.a 2016/08/09 15:24

We can confirm also that kernel zones are supported

root@t4-1:~$ virtinfo
NAME            CLASS
logical-domain  current
non-global-zone supported
kernel-zone     supported
logical-domain  supported

Virtual CPU'S: 64

root@t4-1:~$ psrinfo | wc -l
      64

root@t4-1:~$ prtdiag -v | grep Memory
Memory size: 65024 Megabytes

root@t4-1:~$ more /etc/release
                            Oracle Solaris 11.3 SPARC
  Copyright (c) 1983, 2016, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.
                            Assembled 03 August 2016
root@t4-1:~$

root@t4-1:~# zoneadm list -cv
  ID NAME             STATUS      PATH                         BRAND      IP
   0 global           running     /                            solaris    shared

I will create a kernel zone and will assign more memory and vcpus (will try to give enough resource for vm/zones creation), following oracle documentation

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E65465_01/html/E57770/kzuar.html#scrolltoc

root@t4-1:~# zonecfg -z openstack
Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone.
zonecfg:openstack> create -t SYSsolaris-kz
zonecfg:openstack> select virtual-cpu
zonecfg:openstack:virtual-cpu> set ncpus=36
zonecfg:openstack:virtual-cpu> end
zonecfg:openstack> select capped-memory
zonecfg:openstack:capped-memory> set physical=40g
zonecfg:openstack:capped-memory> end
zonecfg:openstack> verify
zonecfg:openstack> exit
root@t4-1:~#

Now we can see installation process

root@t4-1: # zoneadm -z openstack install -a sol-11_3-openstack-sparc.uar -x install-size=60g

Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20170302T200621Z.openstack.install
[Connected to zone 'openstack' console]
NOTICE: Entering OpenBoot.
NOTICE: Fetching Guest MD from HV.
NOTICE: Starting additional cpus.
NOTICE: Initializing LDC services.
NOTICE: Probing PCI devices.
NOTICE: Finished PCI probing.

SPARC T4-1, No Keyboard
Copyright (c) 1998, 2016, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
OpenBoot 4.38.5, 40.0000 GB memory available, Serial #327404094.
Ethernet address 0:0:0:0:0:0, Host ID: 1383ca3e.

Boot device: disk1  File and args: - install aimanifest=/system/shared/ai.xml
SunOS Release 5.11 Version 11.3 64-bit
Copyright (c) 1983, 2015, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

### I saw some network warnings

Mar  2 20:06:44 auditd[15]: adt_get_local_address couldn't get 26 addrlist socket: Address family not supported by protocol family: Bad file number.
Mar  2 20:06:44 auditd[15]: adt_get_local_address failed, no Audit IP address available, faking loopback for  and error Network is down.
Remounting root read/write
Probing for device nodes ...

Mar  2 20:06:45 auditd[29]: getaddrinfo() failed[node name or service name not known].
Mar  2 20:06:45 auditd[29]: adt_get_local_address couldn't get 26 addrlist socket: Address family not supported by protocol family: Bad file number.
Mar  2 20:06:45 auditd[29]: adt_get_local_address failed, no Audit IP address available, faking loopback for  and error Network is down.
Mar  2 20:06:46 auditd[44]: getaddrinfo() failed[node name or service name not known].
Mar  2 20:06:48 auditd[44]: adt_get_local_address failed, no Audit IP address available, faking loopback for  and error Network is down.

and then unpacking the UAR file .....

Preparing image for use
Done mounting image
Configuring devices.
Hostname: solaris
Using specified install manifest : /system/shared/ai.xml

solaris console login:
Automated Installation started
The progress of the Automated Installation will be output to the console
Detailed logging is in the logfile at /system/volatile/install_log
Press RETURN to get a login prompt at any time.

20:08:22    Install Log: /system/volatile/install_log
20:08:22    Using XML Manifest: /system/volatile/ai.xml
20:08:22    Using profile specification: /system/volatile/profile
20:08:22    Starting installation.
20:08:22    0% Preparing for Installation
20:08:22    100% manifest-parser completed.
20:08:22    100% None
20:08:22    0% Preparing for Installation
20:08:23    1% Preparing for Installation
20:08:23    2% Preparing for Installation
20:08:23    3% Preparing for Installation
20:08:23    4% Preparing for Installation
20:08:24    5% archive-1 completed.
20:08:24    6% install-env-configuration completed.
20:08:26    9% target-discovery completed.
20:08:29    Pre-validating manifest targets before actual target selection
20:08:29    Selected Disk(s) : c1d0
20:08:29    Pre-validation of manifest targets completed
20:08:29    Validating combined manifest and archive origin targets
20:08:29    Selected Disk(s) : c1d0
20:08:29    9% target-selection completed.
20:08:29    10% ai-configuration completed.
..............
..............
..............
20:11:25    96% boot-archive completed.
20:11:26    Setting boot devices in firmware
20:11:26    Setting openprom boot-device
20:11:26    98% boot-configuration completed.
20:12:32    98% update-filesystem-owner-group completed.
20:12:32    98% transfer-ai-files completed.
20:12:32    98% cleanup-archive-install completed.
20:12:32    100% create-snapshot completed.
20:12:32    100% None
20:12:33    Automated Installation succeeded.
20:12:33    You may wish to reboot the system at this time.
Automated Installation finished successfully
The system can be rebooted now
Please refer to the /system/volatile/install_log file for details
After reboot it will be located at /var/log/install/install_log

[NOTICE: Zone halted]

[Connection to zone 'openstack' console closed]
        Done: Installation completed in 365.752 seconds.

Then I booted the zone and finished setup

root@t4-1-tvp540-i:/export/home/jack# zoneadm -z openstack boot
root@t4-1-tvp540-i:/export/home/jack# zlogin -C openstack
[Connected to zone 'openstack' console]
254/254
Configuring devices.
SC profile successfully generated as:
/etc/svc/profile/sysconfig/sysconfig-20170302-134943/sc_profile.xml

Exiting System Configuration Tool. Log is available at:
/system/volatile/sysconfig/sysconfig.log.320
Loading smf(5) service descriptions: 2/2
Hostname: openstack

openstack console login:

Once I logged in, I can verify that there're several OpenStack services installed

 root@openstack:~$ svcs -a | grep openstack | wc -l
      58

I also realized that there were some disabled services

root@openstack:~$ svcs -a | grep openstack

disabled       21:49:35 svc:/application/openstack/heat/heat-db:default
disabled       21:49:35 svc:/application/openstack/heat/heat-api-cloudwatch:default
disabled       21:49:36 svc:/application/openstack/heat/heat-api-cfn:default
disabled       21:49:37 svc:/application/openstack/ironic/ironic-db:default
disabled       21:49:37 svc:/application/openstack/ironic/ironic-api:default
disabled       21:49:37 svc:/application/openstack/heat/heat-api:default
disabled       21:49:38 svc:/application/openstack/swift/swift-container-reconciler:default
disabled       21:49:38 svc:/application/openstack/cinder/cinder-backup:default
disabled       21:49:38 svc:/application/openstack/heat/heat-engine:default
disabled       21:49:38 svc:/application/openstack/ironic/ironic-conductor:default
disabled       21:49:39 svc:/application/openstack/neutron/neutron-l3-agent:default

I assumed that they are not required for a basic OpenStack deployment, which is the purpose of this post.

To get access to the OpenStack login page we need to go to: http://your_kernel_zoneip/horizon

The user and pass are admin and secrete, as is described in this doc

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E65465_01/html/E57770/dashboard-access.html#scrolltoc




by

OpenStack deployment Solaris 11.3 - Part 4/4

We need to login to our OpenStack instance (http://ip_zone/horizon) with the credentials mentioned before.
User: admin, Password: secrete

After we login into the OpenStack Dashboard, we can see a couple of things:

From Systems -> Hypervisors, we can see the resources available that are the same that we define, when the kernel zone was created (capped memory, disk installation and virtual cpus).





The structure of OpenStack is based on Projects and Users. By default for this installation, we have the project Demo and the user Admin, member of this groups.

 Now that we have access to our OpenStack dashboard, we can proceed to create some vm's / zones



CONCLUSIONS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

 - There're several methods that can be used to deploy OpenStack on Solaris, your choice depends in what you will like to achieve and your resources (If you have a server where you can make a bare-metal installation it's OK, and if you can test this solution only as a zone, that's an option too).

- If you are planning to deploy Kernel zones, you need to make sure that your hardware (SPARC or X64), is able to support this type of technology.

USEFUL LINKS

 - Kernel Zones Solaris 11.2 Hardware requirements
- Kernel Zones Solaris 11.3 Hardware requirements
- Installing and Configuring OpenStack (Juno) in Oracle Solaris
- Configuring the Sol 11.3 OpenStack UAR - Tim Wort

Thanks for visiting

Rodolfo

INDEX

OpenStack deployment Solaris 11.3 - Part 1/4
OpenStack deployment Solaris 11.3 - Part 2/4
OpenStack deployment Solaris 11.3 - Part 3/4
OpenStack deployment Solaris 11.3 - Part 4/4


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