Weekend..!! The first thing that comes to my mind when weekend approaches is, "Wassup, wassup for weekend". I start looking for visiting new places, treks, temples on top :)
If nothing works or no one accompanies, i always have DR plan, thats Sinhagad, the lion fort. I have been to Sinhagad Fort more number of times than all my other trips combined, and also Sinhagad was my first trek after i moved to Pune. I don't get bored because of its charming whether, the trek, kanda baji, pitla bakri available on top.
Its better to start in early hours, to avoid the crowd.
Drive: on the way, one gets to see Khadakwasla Dam. Many resorts are adjacent to Khadakwals river. Travel, to top : By ghat road, approximately 10kms, there are many jeeps plying between base village Donje and Sinhagad fort.
Trek : The trek to sinhagad top will be very nice in monsoons, its not too difficult. On a scale on 1-5[diffucult], i rate it somewhere around 2.5. On the way to trek you find many small vendors selling tea, lemon water, water, biscuits,etc. Many people trek, do cycle to sinhagad. Some for fitness, some for fun. See the pics below,i recommend everyone nearby pune to visit Sinhagad atleast once.
Virtualization, the buzz word which we hear most these days in IT.
Virtualization, in computing, is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as a hardware platform Why Virtualization.?
Reduce the number of physical machines, thus reducing power consumption.
Increase space utilization efficiency in your data center.
Isolate environments but share hardware
Make better use of existing capacity
Virtualize Network and SAN interfaces to reduce infrastructure needs.
Ultimately save on maintenance and leases
Types
Full Virtualization
Para Virtualization
Hardware Assisted
The Hypervisor
The role of the Hypervisor is supporting Guest Operating Systems on a single machine.
Before going into Virtualization, there is one more concept which needs to be known, that is Security or Protection Rings in OS
Security / Protection Rings
Protection rings is a mechanism to protect data and functionality from faults.
Computer operating systems provide different levels of access to resources.
Special gates exist between rings to allow outer ring to access inner rings resource is a predefined manner.
E.g. : A spyware program in ring 3 is not allowed to start web camera which is in ring 0.
Full Virtualization
In Full Virtualization Guest OS doesn’t know that it has been Virtualized, thinks it fully ‘owns’ the Hardware.
Uses a combination of binary translation and direct execution techniques.
Non-virtualizable instructions are translated into new sequences which have same intended effect in Virtual Hardware.
Guest OS is completely abstracted (decoupled) from under lying hardware by Virtualization layer.
Eg. VMWare ESX.
User Level code is directly executed on the Processor for high performance.
OS level sensitive calls are trapped by VM and executed.
Virtual machine monitor provides each Virtual Machine with all the services of the physical system, including virtual devices and virtualized memory management.
Para Virtualization
Also know as OS assisted Virtualization
Here the Guest OS knows that it has been modified to support Virtualization.
Non-virtualizable instructions are replaced by hyper calls that communicate directly with virtualization layer.
It is relatively easy to modify guest OS to enable virtualization than to develop more sophisticated Full Virtualization.
E.g. :Xen
Installation Screen of SUSE Linux, asking to choose Server
Hardware Assisted Virtualization
Virtualization support is provided by Processors.
A privilege ring below “Ring 0” is added to support Virtualization.
All sensitive calls are set to automatically trap to the hypervisor, removing need for Full and Para Virtualization.
VMWare - Architecture
KVM - Architecture
Kernel Virtual Machine - KVM
KVM is relatively a new comer in Virtualization, but has changed the landscape of Virtualization.
Each guest OS is a single process of Host OS
A user-space program uses the /dev/kvm interface to set up the guest VM's address space
The approach that KVM takes is to turn a Linux kernel into a hypervisor simply by loading a kernel module.
The kernel module exports a device called /dev/kvm, which enables a guest mode of the kernel (in addition to the traditional kernel and user modes)
Supports Live Migration
A VM can be migrated from one Host to other in no time.
Guest is not involved.
Almost unnoticeable downtime.
VM image should be available on shared storage.
KVM introduces new process mode guest to existing user and kernel used for execution of guest OS code.
Guest mode exists to execute guest operating system code but only for code that's non-I/O.
Within guest mode are the standard two modes, so that a guest operating system runs in guest mode but supports the standard kernel and user modes for its kernel and user-space applications.
KVM mainly consists of two modules, KVM and QEMU.
KVM requires Intel-VT / AMD-SVM processor.
KVM
KVM module is used for Memory Virtualization.
Each guest operating system has its own address space that is mapped when the guest is instantiated.
The physical memory that is mapped for the guest operating system is actually virtual memory mapped into the process
QEMU
QEMU is used for I/O Virtualization.
QEMU is a platform virtualization solution that allows virtualization of an entire PC environment (including disks, graphic adapters, and network devices).
Any I/O requests a guest operating system makes are intercepted and routed to the user mode to be emulated by the QEMU process.
Place Type: Resort / Team Outings / Recreations for Kids [ perfect for a day trip with family friends / kids ] Distance : Approximately 35Kms from Pune. Best Time to visit : Anytime , Better in monsoons with lush green surroundings.
Location : Is located on side on Khadakwasla Waters. It is a nice place for a weekend with kids / family friends. One can have good activities there, with lush green surroundings, pool, etc.
In short : Its very nice, worth the visit, check below pics, speaks for themselves.
Food : Pure Veg food is served, was very nice. We are provided with morning snacks, Lunch, Evening Snacks
Activities: [ what i found onsite, not website ] Swimming Pool Baby Pool Karaoke Children Play Area Cricket Ground Tennis Court Pool Table Tennis Ice Hockey Carroms.
A view of Khadakwasla from Splendor Country
Pool
Children Play Area
Baby pool
Premises
Pool , Table Tennis
Children Play Area
Children Play Area
Add caption
Children Play Area
We carried couple of Foot balls, basket balls, shuttle racquets, some music instruments, had fun time.
Place Type: Trekking, Temple on top. Location : Bhor Taluka, Pune District. Distance : Approximately 85Kms from Pune. Best Time to visit : Monsoons with waterfalls, lush green surroundings and flower beds. Driving Directions : Check map below, this route has a TOLL.
Drive : The road till bhor village is very good as its highway, after the its a single road. Some patches of road are badly damaged. Uneven protruding bumps at the center of the road, which hit the car underneath.So better travel by 2 wheeler or by a SUV with high ground clearance We stopped on the way, to have some snaps of sunrise and surroundings, here are few pics.
On the way : After bhor village
On the way : After bhor Village
Kenjalgad : Kenjalgad is the guard point, from where one can keep eye on other forts.
A view of Kenjalgad from Raireshwar
Raireshwar : Chatrapati Shivaji took the oath of swarajya in Raireshwar Temple, so it holds prominent place in Maratha history.
A view of Raireshwar from Kenjalgad
Raireshwar is very good place to visit in monsoons, with lush green surroundings. It has very varities of flowers, which would be in full bloom in monsoons.
Trek :
Reached Korle village(kenjalgad base), had tea, breakfast, packed some snacks and started the trek. Korle has limited parking space, we parked our vehicle in nearby fields.
Parking space to Korle Village
Korle welcoming
Sign board towards trek
One can take road to Kenjalgad (under construction). The road ends at a village, after that we need to trek to reach top of Kenjalgad.
Road that take to Kenjalgad in monsoons
We started trek from Korle Village.
Please don't litter there,We keep our cities so clean. The piles of filth surrounding, now slowly proliferating the countryside, are SCARY! #SayNoToPlastic. If you carry plastics, please get them back and segregate properly.
#SayNoToPlastic
On the way to Trek : Just after start from Korle
Secret of healthy life
If you lose track, just catch an electric pole, trek path is parallel to these poles.
Flowers can be spotted on both sides on the way to top.
flowers on both side of the trek
flowers on both side of the trek
The whole trek was slippery, took lot much time to reach the top. In some places, its hard to find the path, fully covered with green grass and flower plants.
Stircase on top of Kengajgad
From there we started towards Raireshwar, it is a staright road ~7Kms(from Kenjalgad).
Road to Raireshwar, from Kenjalgad
You can see directions on the road towards raireshwar.
Sign board
On way to Raireshwar, you can see the beautiful back waters of Nira Deoghar Dam.
Beautiful view from Raireshwar
Check the below video of beautiful view.
After that you find a staircase to reach Raireshwar, some odd 350 steps to reach top.
Staircase to Raireshwar
Staircase to Raireshwar
Staircase to Raireshwar
On reaching top of Raireshwar, one feels like he's in heaven with flowers on whole plateu and a lake.
Flower on top, Raireshwar
Flowers on top, Raireshwar
Flowers on top, Raireshwar
Lake Gomukh on top, Raireshwar
On Raireshwar there are nearly 35 houses, wondered how these people make a living on such places.
Houses, Raireshwar
Place we stayed and had lunch
Suprised to houses there have Tata Sky, couches and all, the question that immediately popped my mind was "how did they carried all these here?" We had our lunch at Pujari's home, the Mahrashtrian Bhakri along with Pithla and Tak never tasted so good.
Mahrashtrian Bhakri along with Pithla
The Shiv Mandir, where Shivaji Maharaj took oath.
Shiv Temple, Raireshwar
Picture depicting Shivaji Maharaj taking oath
On the way down to base village Korle from Raireshwar is a plain road with green sorroundings and nice waterfalls.
Water fall, on the way down
This dog accompanied us all the time in Raireshwar
