Resume

Vaibhav Narula

484-250-3523

narula.vaibhav@gmail.com

http://tutorialsparadise.blogspot.com

OBJECTIVE:
 

To work in a challenging environment that demands strong ‘IT’ technical skills in the areas of Network, Virtualisation, Unix , Linux and  Windows server - automation, security, Oracle DBA & VOIP management & R&D of product development. In a company that is process driven, and where ample scope for learning and organizational skills is encouraged.

Summary

±  A technocrat with 10 years’ of insightful experience in Data Centre IT Infrastructure & Service Management, Service Delivery, Networking & System and Server Administration.

±  Planning and setting up of total IT infrastructure and security for the organisation. (includes planning of  structured cabling, servers configuration and IT security implementation as per the standards of ISO 17799 & ISO 27001 & Sarbox Standards)

±  Expertise in designing and handling of Complex network solution using Cisco & Juniper products. Product Implementation Cisco series 3700, 4900, 5500,6500 ,IPS etc.

±  Expertise in Load balancer F5 Product Bigip 1600 series, F5 ASM , Kemp ,HAproxy.

±  Experience in Hosting designing, Data centre Architecture Solution, Open Cloud, Open Stack, Cloud stack, AWS etc.

±  Expertise knowledge of and experience with major internet routing protocols BGP and OSPF.

±  Development Expertise in  OpenStack , Cloudstack , vmware API &SDK,

±  Expertise  in Storage  solution on Netapp, EMC and HP

±  Responsible for planning and implementation of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans of the organization.

±  Planned & virtualized large & medium organisation on VMware.

±  Developed standard procedures and policies for operation and maintenance of IT department.

±  Deft at analyzing information system needs as per the business vision and prepare IT strategy for approval from management with appropriate solutions.

±  Architected and led upgrades for the maintenance of IT infrastructure for optimum performance.

±  Design and implemented monitoring, documentation & alerting.

±  Design portal , Single Sign on Solutions

±  Automation Experience of 4 years in Puppet and chef.

                                                                                                                                                         

EDUCATION:

M.C.A (Integrated B.C.A (65%)) from IGNOU

10+2 from Scholars Home, Dehra Dun, April 2000. (70%)

10th from Scholars Home, Dehra Dun, 1998. (75%)

Strengths:

Extensive experience in Network and Network Security ,Cloud  based Solutions, Virtualization, Cisco ,Juniper & SonicWALL Firewall Management , Open stack and Cloud Stack, Cisco IPS Security management   ,Blade/UCS Server management , SAN ,Linux\Unix\Solaris\AIX\Windows Servers management , DNS,Active Directory management , performance tuning, shell scripting , portal management , running Application servers   ,patching and building Optimized kernel, building open source software under Linux or FreeBSD, such as KDE, Mozilla, XFree86, Apache for Intel or Alpha. Competent in deploying remote administration,Kickstart deployment of servers including network Proxy & firewall with security. Experience in Handling & administration of Oracle & PeopleSoft server on Unix & Windows Platform.Automation design with puppet and chef  for virtualized and physical environment. Puppet automation design over open stack, cloud stack, VMware and application services.

EXPERIENCE:
The Hackett Group (Answerthink) (https://www.thehackettgroup.com)

Sr. Associate (Dev Ops Engineer) Jul 2012 – Till Date
reporting To: Sr. IT Operations Director
Data centre Responsibility: US, Europe & India

Profile: My responsibility involves handling Network and network Security.  Blade Servers, Production Unix/Linux Servers, VMware, Storage and Clustered Application, Spam & email monitoring.Linux/Solaris/Windows/SAP/Oracle/Virtual Servers architecture, maintaining WAN & LAN Networks with SOX ,BS7799 & ISO29001 standards, handling of Firewall, Web servers, VOIP Devices, Windows & Linux Patch & Antivirus servers and backup of all servers. Other Responsibility includes providing new research solutions to the company for internal and external projects. Handling the Oracle and PeopleSoft Servers for Internal DBA functions. Providing L4 support for all implementations projects for SAP & Oracle.Automation design for virtual environment and Vmware instance. Automation design using puppet and chef  for whole  virtual and  physical infrastructure.

CampusEAI http://www.campuseai.org

Lead Hosted System Engineer Feb 2011- June 2012
Profile: My responsibility involves managing data center, architecture design & implementation of Cloud based solutions , monitoring design and implementation, handling Servers, Production Unix/Linux/Windows Servers, Vmware, Storage and Clustered Application. Server’s architecture, Windows & Linux Patching, backup’s & Load balancing design and implementation. Other Responsibility includes providing new research solutions to the company for internal and external projects . Multiple onsite  projects with US university on Moodle, Blackboard, Datatel, Casification ,Single Signon Portal solution and Network and Monitoring Solution . Automation design for virtual environment and Vmware instance.Full automation of hosted  design using vmware and openstack using puppet and  openstack API .System Deployment and release design implementation using puppet.

Kronos Solution India Pvt Ltd. ( http://www.kronos.com)

Lead Hosted System Engineer Sep 2010- Feb 2011
Reporting To: Manager, Hosted System
Profile: My responsibility involves handling Blade Servers, Production Unix/Linux Servers, Vmware, Storage and Clustered Application. Server’s architecture, Windows & Linux Patching, backup’s & Load balancing design and implementation.

The Hackett Group (Answerthink) (https://www.thehackettgroup.com)

Team Lead IT (Data Centre Operations) Jul 2005 – Sep 2010
Team Size: 8   Servers Handled: 2500+
Reporting To: Sr. IT Operations Director, CIO, India Operation Director
Data centre Responsibility: US, Europe & India

Profile: My responsibility involves handling Blade Servers, Production Unix/Linux Servers, Vmware, Storage and Clustered Application, Spam & email monitoring.
Linux/Solaris/Windows/SAP/Oracle/Virtual Servers architecture, maintaining WAN & LAN Networks with BS7799 & ISO29001 standards, handling of Firewall, Web servers, VOIP Devices, Windows & Linux Patch & Antivirus servers and backup of all servers. Other Responsibility includes providing new research solutions to the company for internal and external projects. Handling the Oracle and PeopleSoft Servers for Internal DBA functions. Providing L4 support for all implementations projects for SAP & Oracle.

IIRS (Indian Institute of Remote Sensing)    Dehra Dun

(Part of National Remote Sensing Agency)

Research Associate Trainee (Voice Development & Network Security Module) Jan 2005 Jun 2005

Total Team: 5 Servers Handled: 40 Staging

Reporting To: Scientist ‘D’

Profile: My responsibility involves development of VOIP software development with   Server Security measures and logging GIS Reports in oracle & DB2 with pixel design system Using Arc View. Internal Oracle Server DBA functions. Handling the cluster of 1 TB Oracle Internal Database on LINUX LVM. Managing the Internal Oracle HRMS Application.Research Report on VOIP & Bandwidth Monitoring. White Paper on Oracle 10g on Linux Cluster

SOFTCORETECH   (http://www.softcoretech.net)          

Jr. Network Administrator & Programmer (Data Center Operations) August 2003 October 2004

Total Team Size: 12 Servers Handled: 70
Reporting To: Country Manager, IT Director (Canada & Uruguay)   

Profile: My responsibility involves maintaining WAN & LAN Networks with handling of Routers, Mail Servers, Web Servers, Remote Servers, Database & billing Server and Gateways & Dial Up with Security on Servers. As a Programmer I had the responsibility of implementing of internal automation & Research software’s.
Oracle 8i & PeopleSoft 7 Internal DBA functions, increased company’s main application performance - runs 8 times faster. Leaded the team for the Kiosk E-governance Design system.

VISA Status :

Currently on L1b  only authorize to work for current company and would require Sponsorship to work for other Company.

Hotplug CPU in Linux

Today playing with a VM machine i tried to hotplug a CPU in linux . Awesome feature handy when troubleshooting cpu load or process cpu scheduling .
First List the cpu Status
# grep "processor" /proc/cpuinfo

To disable cpu1 do the following
# echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online

To enable cpu1 do the following
# echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online

F5 Virtual edition

Sorry guys i have been out for a long time but i have lots of pending posts but due to shifting to Delhi cannot complete them will be arriving at your Inbox soon.

I found this F5 vmware appliance which can be very helpful in understanding the F5 working design

LINK

Create a account on F5 site and it will generate license keys for you to use .

Difference between Virtualization and Cloud Computing

Difference between Virtualization and Cloud Computing Here is a great article on the same
Link

Learn Oracle RAC with Netapp Simulator

Posting here as one of my lovely friend Felix asked about Oracle RAC .
If you want to learn how Oracle RAC works here is a great tutorial of setting it up posted by Sachin Garg.

Link

The tutorial Lack the netapp Filer installation you can proceed using the below
Link


Below are more links about Oracle RAC

Oracle RAC Introduction Link

If you Need more info the given link got a lot of links for RAC References:
Link

Best Way to Kill Java Program

ps -ef | grep java | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9

PowerShell Script to Create Visio Diagram of Your Aggregates, Volumes, and LUNS!

Want to Visio your Netapp Filer for Aggregates, Volumes, and LUNS!. I found a great article on it explaining the whole process .

Netapp LinK

Blog Link

Migrating Printers In windows

Migrating Printers In windows
A friend ask me how he can migrate a number's of printers from one SAP server to other .

Here is the tool provided by Microsoft to do so Link

Zenoss Grouping Alerts

Zenoss misses this feature of group alerts , i wanted a alert email showing me all the devices having issue when i start my work so based on the priority wise i can start working on there resolution .
Below is the script which full fill my wish and i add it to cron or you can place it in the apache web folder and use it by commenting the mail paramter with print $message . You can add more parameters to it to narrow device type like add eventtype<>-1 if you donot want to see alerts which are acknowledged ( currently don't have a zenoss system access but will correct it if its wrong .


Download the script from this Link

Check Snapshot on VMware

Check Snapshot on VMware

To find the snapshot on the VMware ESX host use the below script . I found this on Nagios Exchange :


Add the following to your ESX server in the /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf and restart the snmpd deamon
exec .1.3.6.1.4.1.6876.99999.2 snapshots /etc/snmp/snapshots.sh


snapshot.sh should contains these lines.
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/find /vmfs/volumes/ -name '*delta*.vmdk' -printf %f' '%s'\n'

make sure it's executable by using the following command
chmod a+x /etc/snmp/snapshots.sh

Add a datastore in zenoss of snmp type and call this from there :

snmpwalk -v 2c -c $community $device .1.3.6.1.4.1.6876.99999.2.101 |\
grep vmdk | awk {' print $4,$5 '} |\
sed 's/ /_size:/g' | sed 's/\"//g'`

Common Sense - Not so Common

We all believe in this quote but how many of us can differentiate Knowledge with Common Sense. Not Many of us...My post today elaborates on how we improve our Common Sense.
Many of us feel that our technical skill is not a part of our common sense, for us common sense is analytical, logical and aptitude based...this is a myth. Common sense can be anything, be it technical or behavioral.
Then how does Technical ability amount to be a part of Common Sense? An individuals understanding of how a thing works and putting it into practice is ability. Eg.: driving a bike, coding, PC Management. Not all people are experts at it but if you see some people do it and you do it the same way, you are able to do it.
From repeated practice of an ability amidst different conditions, situations and variable resources we become skilled. Eg.: Coding different Reports, Troubleshooting PC issues etc., and when you become skilled, you don't know different things, you just know different ways of doing things.
There is a science or a logic or an area of study behind every skill, this is not independent. Knowledge is dependent on various other disciplines. for a human mind, this knowledge can be mapped to a cloud in the sky or a water droplet on a floor.Interconnecting these little water droplets will give you Knowledge. Eg.: Understanding Electronics will enhance Computer Hardware Troubleshooting. This is Knowledge.
Knowledge cannot be static, it is dynamic and it needs to be put into practice. We do it through correlating our skill with other disciplines. Correlation takes your skill to next level. this next level is called competence. At this level, you are able to understand the problem based on the symptoms or error messages and you maintain a mental checklist of things you should be checking. Eg.: You approach a mechanic and say that your bike does not start, he has a invisible checklist. He checks the Petrol first, cleans spark plug, checks the spark, cleans the air filter, checks the electricity circuit to the engine and so on. He has a predetermined method of approaching the problem. This is Competence.
Now by virtue of putting Competence to practice in your day to day life, it gets ingrained into your thought process. Every time you see something, you know if it is running good or if there is some problem with the whole set up. This is Common Sense.
Here is a detailed example in the Software Engineering Lingo for our readers

Coding - Ability
Application Development - Skill
Application Troubleshooting - Knowledge
Performance Tuning - Competence
Planning an application development Document - Common Sense

One last line, you don't forget riding a bicycle if you don't ride one for 10 years, you don't forget the numbers and alphabets even if you don't use them regularly. The reason is that they are ingrained in your common sense.

I/O alignment in VMWare ESX

In Many cases, VMDK partitions can become misaligned, leading to performance degradation.So before deploying your virtual machine check these recommendation for Netapp

VMDK partitions need to be aligned at both the VMFS and guest OS levels. For example, you can align the partitions at the VMFS level by selecting the vmware LUN type when creating your LUNs. By doing so, the partitions are aligned to sector 128 or sector 0, depending on whether you use VirtualCenter or vmkfstools to create the VMFS. Regardless, the partitions will be aligned as both are multiples of 4KB, thereby fulfilling the WAFL read/write requirements.

However, because of the 63-sector offset implemented by the Windows and Linux operating systems, the partitions will still not be aligned at the guest OS level. Therefore, you must manually align the .vmdks at the guest OS level for VMFS and NFS datastores.

Cause of this problem

Partial writes occur when using VMFS filesystem or NFS based VMDKs on ESX.

This issue is not unique to NetApp storage. Any storage vendor or host platform may exhibit this problem. You can determine if partial writes are occurring by looking at the wp.partial_write setting in perfstat. wp.partial_write is a block counter of misaligned I/O. In Data ONTAP 7.2.1 and subsequent 7G versions, read/write_align_histo.XX and read/write_partial_blocks.XX are also available in the stats stop -I perfstat_lun section of a Perfstat

Aligning your partitions to a 4K boundary in both the VMDK and the LUN is a recommended bast practice (see TR3428 for this and other ESX on NetApp Best Practices).

RDMs are not affected by partial writes as long as the LUN type is set to the RDM OS type.

IF you need more details and fixing this issue using mbralign
NETAPP Knowledge Base

NETAPP Knowledge Base

Performance Tunning Your Application Server

Instruction to performance tune OS for JBOSS/Tomcat/WebSphere/Oracle AS

First, you need to set the kernel parameter for shared memory to be at least as big as you need for the amount of memory you want to set aside for the JVM to use as large page memory. Personally, I like to just set it to the maximum amount of memory in the server, so I can play with different heap sizes without having to adjust this every time. You set this by putting the following entry into /etc/sysctl.conf:

Set the kernel Parameter for Shared memory in /etc/sysctl.conf to maximum amount of memory in the system so u don’t have to worry about the heap sizes adjustment .


kernel.shmmax = n for 4 GB server use 4294967296

where n is the number of bytes.

Set a virtual memory kernel parameter of how many large memory pages you want


vm.nr_hugepages = n

where n is the number of pages, based on the page size listed in /proc/meminfo for
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB

So, I wanted to set this to 3GB. I set the parameter to 1536, which is (1024*1024*1024*3)/(1024*1024*2). Which is 3GB divided by 2MB, since 2048 KB is 2MB.

Set another virtual memory parameter, to give permission for your process to access the shared memory segment. In /etc/group, created a new group, called hugetablespace let suppose guid is 1501

Put that group id in /etc/sysctl.conf as follows:
vm.hugetlb_shm_group = 1501

This GUID should be attached to the same user as that with which JBOSS is running .

/etc/security/limits.conf as follows:
jboss soft memlock n
jboss hard memlock n

where n is equal to the number of huge pages, set in vm.nr_hugepages, times the page size from /proc/meminfo, , 1536*2048 = 3145728. This concludes the OS setup, and now we can actually configure the JVM.

The JVM parameter for the Sun JVM is -XX:+UseLargePages use the same large pages /proc/meminfo

Monitoring NetApp

Below are some basic OID's you should be monitoring on your Netapp Filers and always better to enable the snmptrap on it so you are aware of the system generated threshold . Use these OID's to create datasource on zenoss and you can generate graphs out of these. I will writing more on how you can trouble shoot issue's on a SAN environment in my next article next month.

CacheAge : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.2.2.23.0
cifsops : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.7.3.1.1.1.0
cifsopsHigh : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.2.2.7.0
cifsopsLow : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.2.2.8.0
cpuBusyTimePerCent : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.2.1.3.0
diskFailedCount : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.6.4.7.0
envOverTemperature : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.2.4.1.0
failedFanCount : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.2.4.2.0
failedPowerSupply : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.2.4.4.0
fcHighops : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.13.0
fcopslow : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.14.0
fcpHighReadBytes : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.4.0
fcpHighWriteBytes : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.6.0
fcpLowReadBytes : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.3.0
fcpLowWriteBytes : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.5.0
lunHighErrors : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.15.1
lunHighOps : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.9.1
lunHighOtherOps : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.26.1
lunHighReadBytes : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.11.1
lunHighReadOps : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.22.1
lunHighWriteBytes : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.13.1
lunHighWriteOps : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.24.1
lunLowErrors : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.16.1
lunLowOps : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.10.1
lunLowOtherOps : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.27.1
lunLowReadBytes : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.12.1
lunLowReadOps : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.23.1
lunLowWriteBytes : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.14.1
lunLowWriteOps : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.17.15.2.1.25.1
miscHighDiskReadBytes : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.2.2.15.0
miscLowDiskReadBytes : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.2.2.16.0
nfsops : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.2.2.1.0
nfsopsHigh : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.2.2.5.0
nfsopsLow : 1.3.6.1.4.1.789.1.2.2.6.0
sysUpTime : 1.3.6.1.2.1.1.3.0

NetApp Storage Commonly Used Commands

NetApp Storage Commonly Used Commands

Below are the list of commands that will be mostly used and will be helpful when managing or monitoring or troubleshooting a Netapp filer.

sysconfig -a : shows hardware configuration with more verbose information
sysconfig -d : shows information of the disk attached to the filer
version : shows the netapp Ontap OS version.
uptime : shows the filer uptime
dns info : this shows the dns resolvers, the no of hits and misses and other info
nis info : this shows the nis domain name, yp servers etc.
rdfile : read contents of text files/.
wrfile : Creates/Overwrites a file.
aggr status : Shows the aggregate status.
aggr status -r : Shows the raid configuration, reconstruction information of the disks in filer
aggr show_space : Shows the disk usage of the aggreate, WAFL reserve, overheads etc.
vol status : Shows the volume information
vol status -s : Displays the spare disks on the filer
vol status -f : Displays the failed disks on the filer
vol status -r : Shows the raid configuration, reconstruction information of the disks
df -h : Displays volume disk usage
df -i : Shows the inode counts of all the volumes
df -Ah : Shows "df" information of the aggregate
license : Displays/add/removes license on a netapp filer
maxfiles : Displays and adds more inodes to a volume
aggr create : Creates aggregate
vol create : Creates volume in an aggregate
vol offline : Offlines a volume
vol online : Onlines a volume
vol destroy : Destroys and removes an volume
vol size [+|-] : Resize a volume in netapp filer
vol options : Displays/Changes volume options in a netapp filer
qtree create : Creates qtree
qtree status : Displays the status of qtrees
quota on : Enables quota on a netapp filer
quota off : Disables quota
quota resize : Resizes quota
quota report : Reports the quota and usage
snap list : Displays all snapshots on a volume
snap create : Create snapshot
snap sched : Schedule snapshot creation
snap reserve : Display/set snapshot reserve space in volume
/etc/exports : File that manages the NFS exports
rdfile /etc/exports : Read the NFS exports file
wrfile /etc/exports : Write to NFS exports file
exportfs -a : Exports all the filesystems listed in /etc/exports
cifs setup : Setup cifs
cifs shares : Create/displays cifs shares
cifs access : Changes access of cifs shares
lun create : Creates iscsi or fcp luns on a netapp filer
lun map : Maps lun to an igroup
lun show : Show all the luns on a filer
igroup create : Creates netapp igroup
lun stats : Show lun I/O statistics
disk show : Shows all the disk on the filer
disk zero spares : Zeros the spare disks
disk_fw_update : Upgrades the disk firmware on all disks
options : Display/Set options on netapp filer
options nfs : Display/Set NFS options
options timed : Display/Set NTP options on netapp.
options autosupport : Display/Set autosupport options
options cifs : Display/Set cifs options
options tcp : Display/Set TCP options
options net : Display/Set network options
ndmpcopy : Initiates ndmpcopy
ndmpd status : Displays status of ndmpd
ndmpd killall : Terminates all the ndmpd processes.
ifconfig : Displays/Sets IP address on a network/vif interface
vif create : Creates a VIF (bonding/trunking/teaming)
vif status : Displays status of a vif
netstat : Displays network statistics
sysstat -us 1 : begins a 1 second sample of the filer's current utilization (crtl - c to end)
nfsstat : Shows nfs statistics
nfsstat -l : Displays nfs stats per client
nfs_hist : Displays nfs historgram
statit : beings/ends a performance workload sampling [-b starts / -e ends]
stats : Displays stats for every counter on netapp. Read stats man page for more info
ifstat : Displays Network interface stats
qtree stats : displays I/O stats of qtree
environment : display environment status on shelves and chassis of the filer
storage show : Shows storage component details
snapmirror intialize : Initialize a snapmirror relation
snapmirror update : Manually Update snapmirror relation
snapmirror resync : Resyns a broken snapmirror
snapmirror quiesce : Quiesces a snapmirror bond
snapmirror break : Breakes a snapmirror relation
snapmirror abort : Abort a running snapmirror
snapmirror status : Shows snapmirror status
lock status -h : Displays locks held by filer
sm_mon : Manage the locks
storage download shelf : Installs the shelf firmware
software get : Download the Netapp OS software
software install : Installs OS
download : Updates the installed OS
cf status : Displays cluster status
cf takeover : Takes over the cluster partner
cf giveback : Gives back control to the cluster partner
reboot : Reboots a filer

VMware Database Purging

Below are Kb for VMware Database Purging

For VirtualCenter 2.x -- Link

For vCenter Server 4.x --Link

Structuring Ideas

Our communication should be consistent with our ideas. Our ideas should be congruent with our thought process. Thought process is an unstructured mechanism through which thoughts flash across your mind in no particular order. Being the master of your mind, you should be able to structure them in a manner that does not confuse the person who is reading or listening to you.

A situation where you are talking to a person about what you like on your breakfast table and talking about the idly and suddenly jump to another discussion about how your dog chased a thief the other night. "I like idly sambar for break fast and i am amazed at the way how the little idiot chased the thief across our garden that night" Ideas should be congruent, communication depends a lot on how you put one idea after the other with out missing the previous idea.

I always suggest speakers or writers to follow the clouding method to put the ideas across. At the center of the group of clouds you are creating is your core idea or thought. From that cloud, you create another cloud which is the priority one among the different ideas, then cloud two then cloud 3 and so on. in each cloud again will have some smaller clouds which could be further ideas on the smaller cloud. This was you will end up with a mind map of what you want to talk about and what are the points which come after each one important issue. This helps you not only structure the ideas but also give completeness to the whole issue.

People follow various methods like bullet points on the issues or asterisks to create a structure but a pictorial representation in the mind of the points which you would like to talk would make retrieval of ideas easier than the bullet points. Our mind identifies patterns and pictures easily than notes. If you have seven points to talk about in an idea, you imagine a heptagonal cloud bone and you are sure that you have 7 points to talk about in this issue. This keeps you away from the tension of putting the points by heart.

Structure gives identity and recall to ideas and thus makes your presentation or speech easy to recall and remember.

Automating Various Application Server

Hey All i am going to write how you could automate your full environment with various application Server in few days but just wanted to post so you guys are aware.

I will take sometime to write on this topic as i want cover all aspects .

How do I improve my Vocabulary

Ideas are immense and infinite but when one has ideas and not enough packaging to support it, the idea looks vague and ineffective.

Vocabulary is a strong tool to effective communication. It is a double edged weapon as usage of flamboyant vocabulary often puts the reader off and using multiple words to express an idea makes the reader beat round the bush. For Example, look at this statement "The Metropolitan had the mechanism to control the flow of automobiles on either side of the road with specific indicators that the operators of the automobiles follow in order to avoid confusion and accidents on the streets" and read the next statement - "The city had Traffic Signals that the drivers follow to avoid traffic congestion on the streets". Excessive vocabulary can be dangerous and inadequate vocabulary will be boring. In the above sentences, the idea is the same but packaged in different styles, one of them definitely is confusing.

An average educated person has at least 400 - 500 words in the vocabulary but ideally it is good to have at least 1000 words for effective communication. It becomes all the more important for the individuals to understand the utility of each of the word.

Moving on with our understanding of Vocabulary, it is important to understand what is a poetic expression and what is a layman's language, what is a scientific language and what is a common parlance. While it is important to understand the reader before choosing the expression, we should also keep in mind that the idea should be universally appreciated. The quality of our communication reflects in the choice of words. Expressions and choice of words vary from country to country, culture to culture. Using slang, colloquial terms should be in sync with the reader or if the writer is not sure, such expressions should be avoided.

The Big Question is how do i improve my vocabulary? At an age where our learning abilities take a metamorphosis, the basic methods of learning vocabulary would seem primitive and ineffective. The best way to improve vocabulary for such an age group is to read topics on varied interests. Fiction, Non-Fiction, Current Affairs would be the basic topics which can be taken up and a cross reference of the same with a dictionary would be helpful. this exercise will have dual benefits - 1. it will refine your idea generation process and 2. it will enhance vocabulary. Self help Book like "Word Power Made Easy" should be used to understand the word origin and usage. One should not shy away from using the words in day to day communication however care should be taken about the reader group.

Every subject matter has its own set of words and our interaction with homogeneous groups should always include Subject Matter Vocabulary to enhance communication effectiveness. For Eg: what is High Blood Pressure to us is Hypertension to a doctor, for us there is power cut and for an electrician there is electricity trip down. So one of the key issues is that whenever we are communicating with a set of people out of our area of comfort, it is important that we understand and use their set of vocabulary.

This is a basic overview about improving vocabulary especially for people who would want to improve their levels of vocabulary to a manageable extent.

Trouble Ticket system

Trouble Ticket system

Many Small and medium sized companies are always struggling to find the best suited ticket system for them , if you have a budget constrain why to invest more on Expensive ticket system when you have open-source solution . I had to identify a open source ticketing and change management system , i had to go through many ticket system and review there feature. The best i found was OTRS Open source Ticket Request System , you can download the same from Here.

Below are the features of OTRS , there are lots of plugin's available to

Web-Interface:

• Agent web interface for viewing and working on all customer requests
• Admin web interface for changing system things
• Customer web interface for viewing and sending infos to the agents
• Webinterface with themes support
• Webinterface with Single sign on (e. g. HTTPBasicAuth or LogonTickets)
• Multi language support (Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Czech, Chinese, Dutch, Danish, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnam)
• customize the output templates (dtl) release independently
• Webinterface with multi attachment support
• easy and logical to use

Email-Interface:

• MIME support (attachments)
• PGP support
• SMIME support
• dispatching of incoming email via email addess or x-header
• autoresponders for customers by incoming emails (per queue)
• auto convert of incoming html only emails to text/plain (to get it easier searchable)
• email-notification to the agent by new tickets, follow ups or lock timeouts
• follow up check based on references and in-reply-to header

Ticket:

• custom queue view and queue view of all requests
• Ticket locking
• Ticket replies (standard responses)
• Ticket autoresponders per queue
• Ticket history, evolution of ticket status and actions taken on ticket
• abaility to add notes (with different note types) to a ticket
• Ticket zoom feature
• Tickets can be bounced or forwarded to other email addresses
• Ticket can be moved to a different queue (this is helpful if emails are for a specific subject)
• Ticket priority
• Ticket time accounting
• Ticket print view (PDF)
• Ticket pending feature
• Ticket responsible feature
• Ticket bulk feature
• Ticket hook divider
• Ticket event module layer
• Generic agent to do automatically actions on tickets (based on scheduled jobs)
• content fulltext search
• Ticket ACL support
• Ticket workflow feature

System:

• ASP (activ service providing) support
• Calendar / WorkingTime support for time calculations (SLA)
• Customer Source can be used from a SQL databases or LDAP (e. g. eDirectory, AD, OpenLDAP)
• TicketHook free setable like 'Call#', 'MyTicket#', 'Request#' or 'Ticket#'
• Ticket number format free setable
• database xml interface (driver for different databases including admin tasks like ALTER, CREATE, DROP, ... of tables)
• database layer, support of different SQL databases (e. g. MySQL, PostgeSQL, Oracle, DB2 and MSSQL)
• a stats framework
• utf-8 support for frontend and backend
• OTRS web package manager (to install applications like calendar or filemanager)
• agent authentication against database, ldap, httpauth or radius
• customer authentication against database, ldap, httpauth or radius
• creation and configuration of user accounts, groups and roles
• creation of standard responses
• creation of sub queue
• signature configuration per queue
• salutation configuration per queue
• email-notification of administrators
• email-notification sent to problem reporter (by create, locked, deleted, moved and closed)
• submitting update-info (via email or webinterface)
• deadlines for trouble tickets
• global TimeZone feature
• Web config editor
• Link support of objects link tickets, faqs, ...
• different levels of permissions/access-rights
• easy to develope you own addon's (OTRS API)
• easy to write different frontends (e. g. X11, console, ...)
• a fast and usefull application

Todo:

• API to other ticket systems like Peregrine
• XML interface