CS5412: Cloud Computing (Spring 2014)
Tuesday/Thursday 10:10-11:25, Hollister B14

Prof. Ken Birman, 435 Gates Hall, x5-9199

 

Syllabus, Slides, other Course materials: click here.   Project info: here

Newsgroup for posting questions: We haven't yet decided if we will use EdX or Piazza -- EdX has better support for MOOC materials and working on projects semi-independently, while Piazza is very robust and friendly but rather limited.  Until we do, you can post questions to Piazza, here.

Synopsis: Cloud computing has become a major commercial area for Internet product development and activity.  The term has many uses: we use the cloud whenever we search the web, post a photo to Facebook, or use the mobile version of Google Maps for driving directions.  Cloud computing enables a new kind of computation in which staggering amounts of data can be culled from sensors world-wide and then employed as the basis for problem solving in new styles that need to also be massively parallel, since the data ends up spread over large numbers of machines, with no single machine having more than a "shard" of the big picture.   Many users think of the cloud as the ultimate "rent-a-machine" computing solution: as many virtual computing nodes as you might care to pay for, on demand.  Finally, computing evokes a new kind of social phenomenon, namely the penetration of computing systems into society at every level, and a diversity of privacy, security and even legal issues tied to those developments.

CS5412 will focus on the technology of the cloud.  This is a narrow focus: entire courses could be constructed around such topics as the social and legal impact of cloud computing.  Indeed, we'll be even more narrow:  because CS5320  explores database and information management aspects of the cloud, we avoid overlap with that class.  Accordingly, in CS5412 we'll concentrate primarily on the architecture of today's cloud computing client systems, the evolution of the Internet to support the cloud, the architecture of modern cloud data centers, and the technologies used within them.

Of particular interest in spring 2014 will be the first and second tier cloud components that focus on elasticity, amazing scalability, instant responsiveness and the form of security needed to support web transactions such as credit-card purchases.  By the end of the course, participants will have not just a deep picture of how all this works, but also a sense of the underlying theory, the current set of research and engineering challenges, and even some cloud computing technology options that work in the lab but have yet to enter wide practice in the field.

Prerequisites:  This course assumes a sound background in operating systems and computer architecture: CS3410 and CS4410.  It is not necessary to have taken the Cornell versions of those courses, but it is important to have the required background.  We do not require any direct hands-on exposure to cloud computing, but all students should be proficient in a programming language such as C# or Java or Python as used on an operating system like Windows or Linux.  You'll be expected to write a fair amount of code for your project.

Level of the Course:  CS5412 is aimed at students in the CS or ECE MEng program, CS undergraduates who have taken the required 3xxx and 4xxx courses and done well in them, and PhD students.  We should caution that because the course isn't really wasn't developed as a research course for PhD students, the coverage of material is mucht more practical in emphasis than in a typical Cornell PhD course, where we would dive deeper into the theory and read current research publications.  On the other hand, Professor Birman is an active researcher in this area, and he couldn't teach a shallow cloud computing "engineering" course if he tried.  So even our non-PhD attendees may get a bigger exposure to research topics in the area than they would normally expect, and PhD students should feel welcome! 

Grading:  Grading will be based on surprise in-class quizzes, which will count for 0-20% of credit depending on how many we decide to do (e.g. we might not use quizzes at all, if attendence is good, or we might decide to have plenty of them if people stop coming to class or show up but then seem to be playing World of Warcraft or engaging in other non-class related activities).  There won't be any prelim exams or final.  The main part of your grade will be based on your course project (80-100%), which can be undertaken in small teams or individually.  We use the grades to make a curve, and then award letter grades based on your ranking on the curve.  Generally about half the class gets an A+/A/A- and about half a B+/B/B-.  We avoid giving grades in the C-F range, and that won't happen to you if you come to class and work hard on your project and have something cool to demo by the end of the semester.

We'll be providing a variety of computing tools but many students are likely to use the Isis2 system in these projects, or the Mica system.  Isis2 can be employed from C#, C++, Visual Basic, Iron Python and many other languages, although documentation is still under development for some of the less common options.  You can work on Windows or Linux, and will have access to real cloud resources as appropriate to your project.  Some projects will focus on the mobile side of the cloud, but the majority are expected to involve developing new cloud services that can be deployed into the first-tier on systems like Microsoft's Azure or Google's AppEngine.

We do not offer makeup quizzes, so if we do need to have quizzes, you need to be in class on the day of the quiz to take them, and otherwise are marked as a no-show for that quiz.

MEng project option:  After looking at the project list and rules for doing a project, you can pick one of the MEng-approved projects if you like.  In that case just sign up for 3 credits of CS5999 using Ken's CS5999 course code, in addition to CS5412.  He'll give you the identical grade in CS5412 and in the CS5999 section.

Speak to Professor Birman, Theo or Stavros if you would like to do an even more ambitious project or something of your own design.  You would still enroll for a maximum of 3 credits of CS5999, would still do the project during the spring semester and finish it on time, and would still use it as your class project too.  We are open to considering team MEng project proposals from groups of no more than 2.

Textbook:  We are using Ken's textbook, in the Springer Verlag "Guide to..." series:  Reliable Distributed Systems: Building High-Assurance Applications and Cloud-Hosted Services.  You can purchase this online, or in the campus store, or at the bookstore in CollegeTown.  However, the book is not required and we've put copies on reserve in the library for people who prefer not to own their own copy.  We may ask you to do some readings from the book, though, so if you don't plan to own it, do make sure you can access a copy.  We may also ask you to read some published papers from the cloud computing literature.  If we do end up having in-class quizzes, they would often be based on those assigned readings or on things covered in class on Ken's slides, copies of which are online in case you need to revisit them when trying to understand things better. 

 

MOOCs: We will not be using "videonotes" this semester, but there will be MOOC-style videos relating to using the Isis2 system and (we hope) the Mica system posted fairly soon.  Mica is owned by a PhD student who is currently on leave at Amazon in their cloud computing unit, however, so we can't be sure that it will be available to us this semester. We'll just have to keep our fingers crossed that Amazon gives him enough time to make that feasible. 

 

For people who decide to do Isis2 projects, Ken is recording an Isis2 MOOC video sequence now.  He can already give you advance access to the slides without the voice-over and demo content if you need to see that stuff asap.  However, the Isis2 programmer's manual on isis2.codeplex.com is pretty good, and people who want to use Isis2 should download it, as well as the online manual pages for the various Isis2 method.  To really work with Isis2 you'll want to either work from Windows with Visual Studio for .NET, or on Linux using Mono with the Mono development environment/debugger.  Both work pretty well.  This option works well for people comfortable with C# or IronPython, but would be more challenging for people who don't know either of those languages.  C++/CLI (a .NET version of C++) is probably the next best choice, for those who know C++.

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TA Support: CS5412 has two TAs: Theo Gkountouvas <tg294@cornell.edu> and Stavros Nikolaou <sn478@cornell.edu>.    Both are PhD students who do research right in the area of scalable cloud computing systems, but because the technology in this space is so varied and there is so much "stuff" out there, you may still need to track things down independentally if you focus on a specific tool or technology and need help.  There are thousands of open source options to work with and nobody knows the details of all of them.  So you can count on all of us, including Theo and Stavros, to give good suggestions, but you'll end up needing to be a "self-starter" to succeed.  In cloud computing, this is a good skill to develop! 

Office hours
Ken Birman
(Gates 435, 5-9199
Tues 1:15-2:15 Thu 1:15-2:15
Theodoros Gkountouvas
(Gates G11)
Fri 3:00-4:00 Sun 3:00-4:00
Stavros Nikolaou
(Gates G13)
Mon 3:00-4:00 Wed 3:00-4:00