This is an optional course for advanced under-graduate or graduate students on the fundamentals, models and architectures of large computer systems, focusing on Cloud environments and services. We also cover Data Centers and storage, networking and computational technologies. Students will gain hands-on experience solving relevant problems (e.g., Big Data) through projects using either the department´s infrastructure or existing public clouds.

Knowledge

• Understand the fundamentals of Cloud computer systems
• Understand data center infrastructures (storage, networking and computational) and resource virtualization techniques
• Learn different Cloud service models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). Examples, characteristics and implementation
• Understand programming models used to develop applications that benefit from Cloud environments.

Skills and competences

• Identify the classes of applications that benefit from Cloud computing systems.
• Create solutions that take advantage of Cloud services and resources.
• Evaluate solutions developed for Cloud platforms.

1- Introduction and motivation: target applications and their requirements. Support systems characteristics: components and service models.

2- Infrastructures and Data Centers. Historical perspective. Computing, network and storage infrastructures.

3- Resource virtualization for elastic infrastructures. Hardware virtualization technologies. Resource management, orchestration, partitioning and sharing.

4- Cloud services for distributed applications support and on-demand computing and storage. Concepts and implementation. A discussion on costs, elasticity, performance, availability, management and privacy.

5- Programming models and operation of common platforms. Case studies: Google AppEngine, Amazon AWS and Big Data processing using Elastic MapReduce.

Cloud Computing: Theory and Practice, Dan C. Marinescu, Morgan Kaufman-Elsevier, 2013.

The Datacenter as a Computer: An Introduction to the Design of Warehouse-Scale Machines, Luiz André Barroso, Jimmy Clidaras, Urs Hölzle, Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture, Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2013.

Selected conference and/or journal papers.

The student should have taken first/intermediate-level courses the following subjects: Operating Systems, Computer Networks and Distributed Systems.