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Active Endpoints is a provider of cost-effectively and flexibly use all of the web services infrastructure that has been installed in companies over the last few years to create composite applications.

Active Endpoints is the world’s first all-in-one, standards-based visual orchestration system.

Active is the only SOA-based process orchestration and business process management (BPM) system that allows enterprises and developers to:

1. Automate business processes
2. Collaborate across IT and business boundaries
3. Control the overall state of the business
4. Adapt rapidly and easily to change

Ok, so what’s SOA? What’s BPEL? What is Business Process Management?

SOA – Service Oriented Architecture provides enterprises a design framework to deploy new application in a more faster and economic way. You can say that SOA is a bunch of different business services that can communicate with each other.

Web Services Business Process Execution Language(BPEL) – Web service interactions can be described in two ways. Executable business processes model actual behavior of a participant in a business interaction. Abstract business processes are partially specified processes that are not intended to be executed. An Abstract Process may hide some of the required concrete operational details. Abstract Processes serve a descriptive role, with more than one possible use case, including observable behavior and process template. WS-BPEL is meant to be used to model the behavior of both Executable and Abstract Processes. ( taken from Wikipedia )

Business Process Management, well in short it’s a process where organizations satisfy their clients by studying and enhancing their products or services.

Now Active Endpoints let’s you do all these three things. There’s a free trial, you can download it at http://www.activevos.com/download-trial.php by filling out some forms.

If you opt to purchase the software, they give you two options:

1. You buy the software for Development Environment. ActiveVOS is $5,000 per CPU socket.
2. You buy the software for Deployment Environment. ActiveVOS is $12,000 per CPU socket when the Deployment licenses are ordered with a first-time purchase of Development licenses. Subsequent ActiveVOS deployment purchases are $25,000 per CPU socket.

Support is given at annual fee of 20% of total license fees. If you need training,  a 5-day skills transfer program geared specifically to your project teams needs. Includes 5 days on site for $10,000 plus travel and expenses.

You can follow them via their online blog at http://www.vosibilities.com/

I wish I did go to the first Barcamp in KL but unfortunately I couldn’t make it for some reason. However, I will be attending Barcamp in Johor Bahru(JB) in 6th-7th December 2008.

For those who don’t know much about Malaysia, the capital of Malaysia is Kuala Lumpur(KL). And Johor Bahru is like 5 hours drive from KL. Yeah, so for me that’ll be another journey to that side of the country. Lately I’ve traveled to Singapore twice and Singapore is just opposite of JB.

Barcamp Johor Baru 2008

So I went to their website and checked out the sessions. Here’s the ones I liked:

• Azure, Cloud computing from Microsoft.
• MSC Malaysia pre-seed fund.
• Microfinancing(?) from Kiva
• Drupal
• Enterprise PHP

For the final sessions and tracks please check back at their website http://barcamp.org/BarCampJB

So see you at Barcamp JB 2008!

Update:
It’s Johor Bahru. New Johor

Amazon has this services where you can use virtual servers, either your custom or prebuilt publicly shared server images. The key point here is that Amazon has a lot of servers that can be used at any time.

So let’s get started. The first thing to do is sign up at Amazon EC2. I’ll be using Ubuntu on this.

You need Java JRE, do:

apt-get install sun-java5-jre

vim .bashrc

# Amazon Ec2
export EC2_HOME=~/.ec2
export PATH=$PATH:$EC2_HOME/bin
export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=~/.ec2/pk-VGKIRWAKVSIEXEPVFQ2NSVQ4APUMYAC3.pem
export EC2_CERT=~/.ec2/cert-VGKIRWAKVSIEXEPVFQ2NSVQ4APUMYAC3.pem
export JAVA_HOME=/usr
type bash to reload your bash_rc

cd ~/.ec2

Amazon has this services where you can use virtual servers, either your custom or prebuilt publicly shared server images. The key point here is that Amazon has a lot of servers that can be used at any time.

So let’s get started. The first thing to do is sign up at Amazon EC2. I’ll be using Ubuntu on this.

You need Java JRE, do:

apt-get install sun-java5-jre

vim .bashrc

# Amazon Ec2
export EC2_HOME=~/.ec2
export PATH=$PATH:$EC2_HOME/bin
export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=~/.ec2/pk-VGKIRWAKVSIEXEPVFQ2NSVQ4APUMYAC3.pem
export EC2_CERT=~/.ec2/cert-VGKIRWAKVSIEXEPVFQ2NSVQ4APUMYAC3.pem
export JAVA_HOME=/usr
type bash to reload your bash_rc

cd ~/.ec2

Amazon has this services where you can use virtual servers, either your custom or prebuilt publicly shared server images. The key point here is that Amazon has a lot of servers that can be used at any time.

So let’s get started. The first thing to do is sign up at Amazon EC2. I’ll be using Ubuntu on this.

You need Java JRE, do:

apt-get install sun-java5-jre

vim .bashrc

# Amazon Ec2
export EC2_HOME=~/.ec2
export PATH=$PATH:$EC2_HOME/bin
export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=~/.ec2/pk-VGKIRWAKVSIEXEPVFQ2NSVQ4APUMYAC3.pem
export EC2_CERT=~/.ec2/cert-VGKIRWAKVSIEXEPVFQ2NSVQ4APUMYAC3.pem
export JAVA_HOME=/usr
type bash to reload your bash_rc

cd ~/.ec2

ec2-add-keypair arstan-keypair

Save those lines including  —–BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY—– and also  —–END RSA PRIVATE KEY—– lines.

sudo chmod 600 id_rsa-arstan-keypair

ec2-describe-images -o amazon This will show the server images that Amazon has for you. You can see ec2-describe-images -a to see all the server images you have access to.

ec2-run-instances ami-0459bc6d -k arstan-keypair

ec2-describe-instances will show you instances you are running.

One of the Dell Servers, Dell PowerEdge 2850, in our Cyber Jaya DC had hard disk issues, so I had to replace it. For some reason, I had a little bit of trouble setting up and configuring hardware RAID. Mostly because the terms used in the configuration menus and the menu itself is kinda confusing

So here’s a note to myself on how to make raid in dell servers:

1. While booting the server, enter PERC/CERC BIOS Configuration Utility by pressing Control + M key.
2. From the Management menu select Configure option.
3. Select Clear Configuration from the Configure menu, Select Yes when prompted. At this point we have deleted all existing arrays and/or logical drives. Pressing Escape button go to Management menu.
4. Go to Clear option in Management menu. Select drives by pressing spacebar and when you see READY status flashing you press F10 button. Select Yes and you will be reformatting those drives. This will take some time depending on your drive capacity. With my drives (2×73GB) it took around 1hour ++. When it’s done press escape and reboot your server
5. Repeat Step 1.
6. Select Easy Configuration from Configure menu. Make sure all drives are in GREEN and READY state.
7. Using arrow keys select the drives one by one and press spacebar. This will change drives status from READY to ONLINE A00-00. Repeat this step for as much hard drives you have.
8. If you want to make a hot spare, select a hard drive you wanna make hot spare and press F4.
9. Select all ONLINE status drives and press F10. This will bring you Select Configurable Array(s) dialog. Now pressing spacebar you get A-00 window, here you should get Span-1. Press F10 key to verify your logical drive settings. Here you will get options of RAID-0 and RAID-1. When you made your mind and set your RAID configs go to Accept option and press enter. When prompted select YES.
10. Now it’s time to make our logical drive bootable. In Configure menu go to Specify Boot Drive and select Specify a Logical Drive as BootDrive. The number in Logical BootDrive set to 0. (This will change according to your drive configs). And press enter.
11. Pressing Escape button you quit from the menus and go to Exit dialog. Reboot your server and you are set to install your preferred OS now!

This note is for RAID-1 with 2×73GB SCSI hard drives. For your case it might be slightly different but the overall process should be something like this.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: Here’s a snapshot of the PERC/CERC BIOS Configuration Utility

After almost 2 months of time, thanks Streamyx!, my internet line is up. No wonder they call it screamyx. You really wanna scream when using it, getting their lousy support and the best part in installation.

However, there’s not much choice in regards to broadband internet connection over here. Yes, I know about Celcom’s 3G, Maxis broadband and Jaring as well, but I think they aren’t yet ready to compete with Streamyx. It’s kinda monopoly.

On the positive note, the WiMAX is coming to Malaysia soon. So I hope it will make things get better at Telekom Malaysia, if it happens.

Streamyx = Screamyx!