This Blog is intended to collect information of my various Intrests,pen my opinion on the information gathered and not intended to educate any one of the information posted,but are most welcome to share there view on them
As much as I think the fax technology should finally give up the ghost, it will probably last longer than I do. The fax is as ingrained into the world of business as the company meeting, middle-management, and khaki. But just because your company (and other companies) make use of ancient technology doesn't mean you can't work with that technology using your modern devices.
Thanks to a free app called FaxFile, you can now send either PDF or doc/docx files to any fax number in the US or Canada (and some international numbers). With FaxFile, you can fax to contact numbers or enter a fax phone number. There isn't a monthly subscription cost, but each fax will cost you fax credits (which are bought through an in-app purchase within the Google Play Store). Fifty credits is $2.49, and each fax to US and Canada costs 10 credits. That's pretty easy math and well worth the cost, considering how easy faxing becomes while on-the-go.
Let's install FaxFile and put it to use.
Installation
As you might expect, installing FaxFile is quite easy. Just follow these simple steps:
Open the Google Play Store on the device
Search for FaxFile
Locate and tap the entry by Actual Software Inc.
Tap Install
Read through the permissions listing
If you're okay with the permissions, tap Accept
Allow the installation to complete
Once it's installed, tap the launcher on the home screen (or from within the app drawer) and read through the intro.
Usage
FileFax works like so:
From the main window (Figure A), add at least one document
Tap Recipient Fax to manually enter the Fax number or tap the pick contact button and select the recipient from your contacts
Tap the continue button
Figure A
FaxFile running on A Verizon-branded HTC M8.
At this point, you may receive a message that the chosen contact is not labeled as a fax number. You are given two choices: 1) Return to setup or 2) Send the fax. If you tap Send the fax, you'll then be prompted to add your name and your Fax/Phone number (Figure B).
Figure B
Including your name with the fax.
To complete the fax process, you must now buy credits. In the next window (Figure C), tap Buy Credits and walk through the purchase. After this step, the Send button will be made available and you can tap it to send your fax.
Figure C
Time to purchase credits for sending faxes.
You can also buy credits by tapping the overflow menu button and selecting Buy Credits. From that same menu, you can access your Billing History, view the Status Screen, and look at International Rates.
If you happen to need a cover page, you can add one one by following these steps:
From the main window, tap the overflow menu button
Tap Add Cover Page
If prompted, tap Install for FaxCover (this is also free)
Walk through the process of installing FaxCover (if necessary)
Enter the desired information for the cover page (Figure D)
Tap Continue
Proof the cover page
If the page is good, tap Save
Figure D
Entering information for a cover page.
After the cover page is saved, it will show up in the file listing for the fax as a .pdf document.
If you're looking for one of the easiest means of faxing word documents, PDFs, and images on the go, then look no further than FaxFile. For those who still cling to ancient faxing technology, this handy app can really simplify your modern on-the-go life.
When you're a road warrior without a consistent, reliable connection for your device, how do you work with your Google Drive documents? Simple -- you install Google Docs and Google Sheets on your Android device and make them available offline. Of course, it's not quite that straightforward. Fear not, all of the instructions you need for this process are here. After going through this post, you should be working with documents, sans a network connection, like a champ.
What you'll need
Here are the requirements:
An Android device (preferably updated to the latest release available)
Google Docs and Google Sheets installed
Your Android device associated with your Google Drive account
Installation
If you don't already have Docs and Sheets installed, here are the steps:
Open the Google Play Store on your Android device
Search for Google Docs
Locate and tap the official Google app
Tap Install
Read through the permissions listing
If you agree with the permissions listing, tap Accept
Allow the installation to complete
Repeat the above steps for Google Sheets.
Once you have everything installed, it's time to start working with a document offline.
Usage
Because of the cloud-nature of Google Drive, all of your documents are not automatically available offline. In fact, you have to manually configure each document you want to use offline -- so, this is best done on a per-document basis. Of course, you'll want to make sure to set those documents for offline use before you need them. Should you find yourself without a connection and needing one of those documents, you'll be out of luck.
With that said, here's how you configure a document for offline usage.
Open up the app to be used (either Sheets or Docs)
Locate the file to be used offline in the file listing (Figure A) Figure A
Tap the information icon (on the far right) associated with the file
In the resulting window (Figure B), switch Keep on this device to ON by tapping the slider Figure B
The file is now available for offline usage. In order to open the file to edit offline, do the following:
Tap the overflow menu in the upper left corner
From the resulting sidebar (Figure C), tap On device Figure C
From the listing of documents, tap the document to be edited
Edit away
If you need to remove a document for offline editing, do the following:
Go to the file listing in the app (either Sheets or Docs)
Tap the information button associated with the file
Tap the Keep on this device slider until it is in the OFF position
Naturally, you can edit any document while connected to either 4G (3G, etc) or Wi-Fi. But when you do not have that connection available, the only means to edit files is when they're stored on your device. After you've edited those offline documents, the moment the device is back online, the changes will sync with your Google Drive account (there's no need to manually re-sync).
Editing Google Documents offline is not a difficult task -- you just have to get use to making the necessary documents available for offline usage.
What do you think? Is this system a workable solution? Or does Google need to rethink how documents are managed when a device is offline?
LinkedIn is more than a place to dump your resume and split. Here are some tips to build your image on world's largest professional network.
As a professional, people will search you.
"When someone is looking for you, there are a couple of places they go. First, they might start in LinkedIn directly... Or, they might search Google for your name -- which will likely also lead them to LinkedIn," said Hubspot founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah. "Either way, it's the de facto place people expect to find you."
That means making a little effort to make sure that your image is looking sharp on the largest social media platform for business professionals would be a wise move. Keep in mind that Linkedin is no longer about just finding a new job. It's also a place where colleagues and potential business partners and customers can look you up and connect with you.
"The most important thing to remember is that unlike other social-media sites where stupidity and silliness may be forgiven if not downright condoned, LinkedIn is all about your personal brand," said Canva's chief evangelist, and LinkedIn Influencer Guy Kawasaki.
So, save your cat pictures for Facebook, and leave the mayfair-filtered ham sandwiches on Instagram.
Here are some more tips on building and maintaining a strong personal brand on LinkedIn.
1. Have a complete profile
Each chance to fill out a piece of your professional image - where you went to school, where you've worked - offers the chance to show what you could do in the future, said Shah, who is also a LinkedIn Influencer. Completing your LinkedIn might sound obvious, but Gartner analyst Jennifer Polk said there are still plenty of professionals who haven't even uploaded a profile picture.
"Completing the LinkedIn profile is one of those things that requires one-time effort - but provides gains on an ongoing basis. There are not that many things in life like that - take advantage of them," Shah said.
2. Treat LinkedIn like more than just a resume
Though the initial step in creating a LinkedIn is to enter resume-style information, that doesn't mean users can post a CV and walk away. Polk said to treat it more like a synopsis of who you are and what you do. Also, because the platform is relationship-driven, she said it's important to remember that other professionals use it scope you out. "It's an individual one-to-one system for vetting people you're doing business with," Polk said.
3. Watch your opinions
Think about what you post on LinkedIn in terms of what would be safe and appropriate to say in a workplace, or to an employer. "Obviously, folks should avoid expressing beliefs such as women should not have equal rights--don't laugh, I've seen this done," Kawasaki said. "The general mindset that's necessary is, 'Don't say or do anything that you wouldn't do in a job interview for a job that you want.' Every post and every comment is like a job-interview question on LinkedIn." When you post, be professional.
4. Be active
"You wouldn't not answer your desk phone," Polk said. Keeping up with and responding to things like InMail, comments, or requests show that you've actively engaged with your LinkedIn profile, and well as the wider community.
5. Add value, not ridiculousness
You can now post updates on LinkedIn, similar to Twitter and Facebook, but be wise about doing it. According to Kawasaki, adding value to LinkedIn comes in three forms: information, analysis, and assistance. This is a good trio to keep in mind when deciding what to post. "If you want to act stupid, do it somewhere else. Instead, you should always be adding value to people's feeds to build a good personal brand on LinkedIn," he said.
Shah said by sharing useful content, you're making sure people understand your areas of interest and expertise. And if you're looking for a source for content to share, he suggested following LinkedIn's Influencers.
6. Don't indiscriminately amass followers
Speaking of followers, Shah thinks that one of the biggest mistakes users make on LinkedIn is trying to rack up as many connections as possible. "What it does is makes both an individual's social graph and the overall network as a whole noisy and thereby less useful," he said. Shah connects with people with whom he has worked, or at least who are in his circle of associates- they're actual intersections. "Your connections are a reflection of you," he said.
SpeedOf.me and TestMy.net and SpeedCheck.org Your ISP may be delivering slower download and upload speeds than it promised when you signed up, but wide variations in test results could leave you scratching your head. SpeedOf.me's HTML5-based network speed test recorded the fastest download rate of dozens of tests run at different testing sites.Screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly/CNET
Are you getting all the network bandwidth you're paying for? Good luck trying to find out.
As Rani Molla reported recently in the Wall Street Journal, some ISPs are delivering download speeds up to 41 percent slower than they advertise. The figures were compiled by speed-test service Ookla, which owns Speedtest.net.
According to Ookla's figures, the folks in Idaho Falls, Idaho, realize only half the download speed their ISPs claim to provide. Internet users in London, Ky.; Huntington, W. Va.; and Odessa, Texas, don't fare much better: all receive information over their network at speeds far below what their ISPs promise.
The slowest download speed test result from DSLReports.com was a fraction of the rate promised by my ISP.Screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly/CNETRerunning the DSLReports.com download speed test generated a result more than 10 times faster than earlier tests.Screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly/CNET
When I tested more than a half-dozen network speed calculators, the results varied by a factor greater than 10: the lowest reported download speed was a snail's-pace 783Kbps usingDSLReport.com's Flash-based test. Another test using the same service resulted in a download speed reading of 11.237Mbps.
The highest download speed test result I recorded was 13.06Mbps using the HTML5-based test at SpeedOf.me (shown at the top of this post). However, the same test generated a download speed of 4.87Mbps on the connection two days later.
(For the record, my ISP promises download speeds up to 12Mbps. I ran the tests in both Firefoxand Google Chrome on a Windows 8.1 laptop; many of the services also test phone network speeds, but I didn't run any of them.)
A subsequent download speed test at SpeedOf.me recorded a much slower rate than a test conducted days earlier.Screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly/CNET
Conversely, the results of the upload tests at the various services were consistently at or just under 2Mbps. The exceptions were upload-test results at DSLReports.com, whose testing was so inconsistent I ended up discarding all of the service's results.
I ran the tests at DSLReports.com about a dozen times: three times the download results were under 1Mbps, five times they were between 1Mbps and 4Mbps, twice they were around 8Mbps, and three times the download speed the test reported topped 10Mbps.
Does the type of speed test make a difference?
Many experts claim HTML5-based speed tests are more accurate than tests that use Java and Adobe Flash. Others point out that multithread tests such as those used by Ookla (Speedtest.net and branded by many ISPs) don't represent real-world network traffic as well as single-thread tests.
The most consistent test results were recorded at Speakeasy's Flash-based Speed Test and atTestMy.net's HTML5-based tester. Of course, the services' tests may be consistently wrong. After running several tests over a span of days, all of Speed Test's download results were within a few kilobits of 11.5Mbps. TestMy.net's download scores in both its single- and multithread tests exhibited a bit more range than those of Speakeasy's Speed Test, but they averaged about 11.2Mbps.
The results of the HTML5-based speed tests conducted at Bandwidth Place ranged from 5Mbps to 11Mbps, those at Toast.net exhibited a similar range, and the Flash-based tests at ZDNet's Broadband Speed Test recorded speeds from 5.8Mbps to 11.4Mbps.
Not surprisingly, the highest consistent speeds were reported when I ran the tests offered by my ISP, AT&T. The company's speed tests are provided by Ookla, as are the tests at many other network providers. (Note that the Java-based network tester at the FCC's Broadband.gov runs on the Measurement Labs platform, which doesn't support the Safari, Google Chrome, or Opera browsers. The FCC's test also requires that you supply your street address.)
With only one exception, all the download tests I ran at theAT&T Internet Speed Test and at Ookla's Speedtest.net indicated speeds of 11.5Mbps or greater. One of the dozen-or-so tests recorded a download speed of 10.4Mbps, and several of Ookla's Flash-based test results exceeded 12.5Mbps for downloads.
After conducting more than 100 network speed tests from many different providers over the course of several days, I'm confident my ISP is delivering speeds approximating -- and perhaps exceeding -- those it promised when I signed up for the service. Whether any of the speed tests I tried truly represent real-world network traffic is debatable.
HTML5-based speed tests such as those offered by SpeedOf.me and TestMy.net seem to have an advantage in that they require no additional software. If you suspect you're paying for more bandwidth than you're actually getting, you needn't trust your ISP's test results to make your case -- especially if you happen to live in one of your service's dead zones. Hello, Pocatello!
The internet speed test is your go-to tool that will help you through the process of measuring and troubleshooting your internet speed. The speed test can tell you the exact speeds that you’re getting at a particular time, which is the first step in telling what issues may be affecting your internet. Performing speed tests is easy with Speedcheck, and the records of each test you perform will be conveniently stored so you can review them all later.
This book will introduce
Nagios to readers who are interested in monitoring their systems. All the
concepts in the book are explained in a simplified manner, presented in an
easy-to-understand language with lots of tips, tricks, and illustrations.
This book is great for
system administrators interested in using Nagios to monitor their systems. It
will also help professionals who have already worked with earlier versions of
Nagios to understand the new features of Nagios 4 and provides usable solutions
to real-life problems related to Nagios administration. To effectively use this
book, system administration knowledge is required. If you want to create your
own plug-ins, knowledge of scripting languages like Perl, shell and Python is
expected.
The following topics
covered in this Book
· Install and configure
Nagios to administer your network and system
· Deploy agents and
plug-ins, and monitor assets with advanced features of Nagios
· Notify users of current
and future incidents to protect the availability, performance, and security of
monitored assets
· Configure and work your
way around the Nagios web interface
· Pass service and host
check results over the network using NSCA
· Set up a working and
usable distributed monitoring system using NSClient++
· Develop custom plug-ins
responsible for performing checks and analyzing results
· Use the web interface to
manage scheduled downtimes for hosts and services
· Implement adaptive monitoring
to modify various check-related parameters
· Make use of SSH and NRPE
to perform remote checks
· Use SNMP to retrieve
information from a device, set options, and also cover means for a device to
notify other machines about a failure.
This Delhi Traffic Police Application aims at increasing public engagements and providing them with easy access to information about traffic situation in Delhi.
The vision is to enable public to avail information about traffic and to utilize e- services provided by Delhi Traffic Police in future. Currently the services provided included:-
+ Information about traffic alerts and advisories.
+ Fare and distance calculator while using auto-rickshaw, taxi and radio cab
+ Lodging complaints against autos, taxi in case of harassment, overcharging and misbehave.
+ Locating nearest pit for vehicles towed away by Traffic police when parked illegally.
+ Direct calls to emergency numbers in case of exigency.
+ FAQ about Delhi Traffic Police and the provided services.
This mobile application facilitates hassle free lodging of report with Delhi Police for article/document lost in Delhi
The complainant has to provide the following details :
+ Complainant's Name, Father's/Mother's Name, Address, Mobile No, Email ID,Place of Loss in Delhi, Date of Loss, Time of loss (optional)
+ Lost Article(s) with Description (upto 10)
+ Brief of complaint.
+ On lodging of Lost Report (after clicking register button), complainant will get LR no. and other details prompt of lodging the report with Delhi Police with option of View/Download and Save/Exit.
+ In case saved, complainant can retrieve it in future by clicking the retrieve button.
+ On prompt complainant will also get link to generate and view the report.
Any agency or an individual has an option to verify the authenticity of the report, by entering the LR no by visiting the website of Delhi Police i.e. http://delhipolice.nic.in
To Access this application, users should have proper data / WiFi connection to
When Google revamped the look of Google Maps for iOS and Android, users were upset about the lack of traditional features. Some users were so upset, the option of reverting to a much older versionof the app was the answer.
With Google's announcement today, Google Maps is finally starting to gain some of the beloved features that were once left out. One such feature is proper Offline Mode. While there was a method forcaching offline maps in prior versions of Google Maps, it was less than intuitive.
The new version streamlines the process of not only saving a section for offline use, but for accessing said sections later when you're without a connection.
First, you'll need to install the update. The iOS version is now at 3.0, while Android is at 8.0. Android users who aren't seeing the update right away should keep checking back. Google likes to slowly release Android updates.
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
Once you have the updated version, launch the app and tap on the profile icon located next to the search bar. Then scroll to the bottom of the page.
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
There'll you'll find a new section dedicated solely to offline maps. You have two methods for saving a section for offline use. The first is here in the settings, or by typing "OK Maps" into the search bar at any time when viewing a map.
Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
After activating the save dialogue, you're able to zoom in and out of an area and save it to your device. If the area is too large, you'll be asked you zoom in, name the area, and save it.
Keep in mind any saved maps will only remain on your device for 30 days. Presumably, after that the app will purge a saved map to clear up space on your device.
Manage your time better than ever before. Say the Time will keep you on schedule by automatically announcing the date, time or both at specified intervals using a pleasant male or female voice. Keep track of important time commitments with fully-customizable appointment reminders. Manage ideas and information with colorful virtual sticky notes. Transform your boring taskbar time display into a colorful clock that can display both the date and the time. View the time in different parts of the world. http://www.saythetime.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKN3VXQ4Vb8
Chrome browser add-on to read text from images, comic strips or flyers memos
Project Naptha automatically applies state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms on every image you see while browsing the web. The result is aseamless and intuitive experience, where you can highlight as well as copy and paste and even edit and translatethe text formerly trapped within an image. http://projectnaptha.com/#signed_up
The leading configuration management and orchestration tools take different paths to server automation
Puppet or Chef? Ansible or Salt? Whereas Puppet and Chef will appeal to developers and development-oriented shops, Salt and Ansible are much more attuned to the needs of system administrators. Ansible's simple interface and usability fit right into the sys admin mindset, and in a shop with lots of Linux and Unix systems, Ansible is quick and easy to run right out of the gate.
Salt is the sleekest and most robust of the four, and like Ansible it will resonate with sys admins. Highly scalable and quite capable, Salt is hamstrung only by the Web UI.
Puppet is the most mature and probably the most approachable of the four from a usability standpoint, though a solid knowledge of Ruby is highly recommended. Puppet is not as streamlined as Ansible or Salt, and its configuration can get Byzantine at times. Puppet is the safest bet for heterogeneous environments, but you may find Ansible or Salt to be a better fit in a larger or more homogenous infrastructure.
Chef has a stable and well-designed layout, and while it's not quite up to the level of Puppet in terms of raw features, it's a very capable solution. Chef may pose the most difficult learning curve to administrators who lack significant programming experience, but it could be the most natural fit for development-minded admins and development shops.
Orchestrators at a glance
Puppet 3.0
Chef 11.4
Ansible 1.3
Salt 0.17
Pros
Modules can be written in Ruby or a simpler, Puppet-specific subset of Ruby
Push commands let you trigger modifications immediately
Web UI handles reporting, inventorying, and real-time node management
Detailed and in-depth reporting on agent runs and node configurations
Cookbooks and recipes can leverage the full power of Ruby
Centralized JSON-based "data bags" allow scripts to populate variables during runtime
Web UI lets you search and inventory nodes, view node activity, and assign Cookbooks, roles, and nodes
Modules can be written in nearly any language
No agent required on managed clients
Web UI lets you configure users, teams, and inventories, and apply Playbooks to inventories
Extremely simple to set up and get running
State files can be simple YAML configuration templates or complex Python or PyDSL scripts
Can communicate with clients through SSH or through a locally installed agent
Web UI offers views of running jobs, minion status, and event logs, and lets you execute commands on clients
Extremely scalable
Cons
Requires learning Puppet DSL or Ruby
Installation process lacking in error checking and error reporting
Requires knowledge of Ruby programming
Currently lacks functional push commands
Documentation is sometimes vague
Lacks support for Windows clients
Web UI doesn't tie into an existing Ansible deployment automatically; inventories must be imported
Web UI is not as mature or complete as competitors
Lacks deep reporting capabilities
Pricing
Free open source version; Puppet Enterprise costs $100 per machine per year
Free open source version; Enterprise Chef free for 5 machines, $120 per month for 20 machines, $300 per month for 50 machines, $600 per month for 100 machines, and so on
Free open source version; AWX free for 10 machines, then $100 or $250 per machine per year depending on support
Free open source version; SaltStack Enterprise costs $150 per node per year, with volume discounts and site licenses available
Look to these automation, orchestration, and configuration management tools to keep your server farms running smoothly..
Clever cloud tools
Was it only a few years ago when deploying a single server was a big occasion? First we needed to unpack it, mount it, test it, and install the software. Then we could put it to work.
Today, we're asked to spin up 200 servers before lunch, configure them, crunch some numbers, and return them before the 1 p.m. staff meeting. Time is money, and servers are bought by the hour now.
That explains the explosion of interest in tools that let us manage hundreds of machines with a few quick clicks. Here's a list of some of the most intriguing new tools for making our server farms jump to attention in less time than it took to slice open the tape on a server box.
Ganglia
More than a dozen years ago, developers at U.C. Berkeley looked at the clusters of computers throughout the campus and realized they needed a way to keep track of them -- so they built and rebuilt Ganglia. Today, Ganglia is one of the most comprehensive sets of tools for monitoring a diverse cluster of machines. It collects statistics with a lightweight protocol and graphs them so that you can watch performance over time.
Distributed with the BSD license.
Graphite
There are hundreds of graphing libraries and visualization tools, but they're usually aimed at a fairly static collection of data. Graphite is designed to support real-time data from dozens of streams. The data goes in one side of the application, where it's stored in a real-time, scalable database optimized to handle the numerical streams of information. The system is designed to keep up with fast streams of data from multiple sources. There's even an elaborate caching system to make sure the graphs are up to date.
The back end is written in pure Python, and the Web app on top of Django. The graphing is done with the Cairo libraries. Orbitz built the software to handle internal monitoring, then released it with the Apache...
Tattle
Tools like Graphite and Ganglia may make it easier to monitor the state of the system, but they require someone to sit and watch the screen as the lines dance up and down. Tattle is designed to watch the graphs for you, then send off alerts if a line crosses over into some place it's not supposed to be. These alerts usually go out as text messages and emails, but you can configure them with a plug-in if you want special behavior like a warning siren and flashing red light connected to an Arduino controller.
Written in PHP for both Graphite and Ganglia.
Logstash
There are only three things that are certain for sys admins: death, taxes, and logs full of events. The earth goes 'round the sun, and the log files fill up with entries about visits to the websites and all of the random housekeeping around the stack.
Logstash is an open source package designed to put a pretty face on the endless streams of data. It parses the entries, segments them, and builds graphs so that you can drill down looking for items that need investigating, all through the Web interface. If you need to customize the system, you can write new filter plug-ins that fit into the flow of data.
Distributed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Kibana
Logstash may build elegant, rolling log files, but these can only be searched with basic queries. Kibana is glue between Logstash and Elasticsearch. It dumps Logstash log information into Elasticsearch so that you can write Lucene queries to find what you want. Not only can you use Boolean searches and wild cards to pick through the log files, but Kibana goes one step further by running these queries periodically and packaging the results into a dashboard that's also published with RSS and some other standards.
Available under the MIT license.
CloudVelocity
Everyone loves the idea of the cloud, but no one wants to let go of the security of owning the servers. CloudVelocitywants to ease companies into the cloud (specifically Amazon Web Services for now) by offering a hybrid that mixes the cloud machines with the private boxes. Moving data and operations between the two is meant to be as easy as possible, perhaps as easy as dragging some icons across a Web page. The company promises to let you test your operations with separate test rigs built by cloning existing machines. Now if only it would let us clone ourselves so we can get everything done that the management wants.
Ravello Systems
Another tool for easy cloud migration, Ravello is a layer that sits on top of the major clouds (Amazon, HP, Rackspace) and helps development teams deploy multitier apps into these clouds for testing. You upload the VMs into Ravello and use the drag-and-drop GUI to map out their relationships; Ravello spins them up in the cloud while preserving their network and storage configurations. It's one key feature lets you get several VMs running on just one cloud machine, a nice enhancement if you happen to have a bunch of lightweight VMs that don't need a full machine.
Vagrant
A long time ago, developing software was more straightforward. You had your favorite editor and the compiler. Your file either compiled or it didn't. Today, life is much more complex. There are libraries galore and extra tools for pre-processing or post-processing or housekeeping. All of these are updated periodically, ensuring that everyone on the development team ends up with diverging environments. Eventually, code will compile on some machines and not others, causing the developers to start pointing fingers.
Vagrant juggles all of the packages for all of the tools so that everyone is working with the same environment. It smooths out the differences and ensures that the libraries and dependencies are in sync, saving everyone the hair-pulling and blame-casting.
Available under the MIT license.
SaltStack
Keeping a cloud of machines working together is not so simple, especially if you want new machines to come and go on demand. Salt is an open source cloud management tool that offers a Python-based communications backbone that links together the "master" and "minion" nodes. The master issues orders, and the minions carry them out. SaltStack, a "branch" of Salt backed by professional support, boasts deployments of several hundred thousand managed machines.
Salt is developed under the Apache 2.0 license.
Ubuntu Juju
Ubuntu's Juju is a project that starts to hide the machines behind a wall of services. In Juju the façade is called a "charm," which is the packaging wrapped around the service. Behind the façade is a load balancer that can ask any number of machines to answer the request for data. If you need more power, you can add more machines to each charm without reconfiguring anything else. The load balancer inside the charm knows what to do with the extra help. Ubuntu already offers a number of standard charmsthat are ready to deploy, or you can customize them for your own needs.
Ubuntu Juju is released under the GNU Affero Public License.
Chef
Chef is one of the two big tools used for configuration management. If you like writing straightforward code in Ruby for installing the right packages for your new machines, Chef is the tool for you. You write the instructions for which packages should be installed in which order, then Chef does the work for you. There is a wide variety of plug-ins ready to install many common packages.
Puppet
The other major configuration management tool is Puppet. While many features are the same, the main language for specifying which packages are necessary is a bit different. Puppet asks you for a list of dependencies, then figures out how to install the right packages so that everything is ready to run. Puppet Labs maintains a large collection of plug-ins that simplify many chores.
