Important details
- This schedule listed above may (and is highly likely) to change during the semester.
- Enter your EECS user ID/password to access the "Pre" and "Post" lecture slides.
- You must read the required readings by the day they will be discussed in class. If there are multiple required readings for a lecture, you only need to submit discussion posts on Canvas for the first one in the required column.
- The first summary is due with Lecture 3. It is due the day of the lecture just before class. Starting with Lecture 5, summaries are due a few days prior to lecture. So, if the reading is listed for a Wednesday, it is due the previous Monday at 11:59pm. If it is listed for a Monday, it is due the previous Friday at 11:59pm.
- You need to be connected to a Tufts network to access some of the readings. You can connect to a Tufts network directly while on campus or via this VPN while off campus.
1 - Class introduction & important background
| Lec | Date | Topic | Lecture slides | Student pres | Required Readings | Optional readings | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | W, 09/03 | Intro to Cloud Computing and use cases | Pre, Post | Ambrust10, NIST Definition'11 | GE Health Cloud, Obama & the cloud | HW0 out on Gradescope (due same day) | |
| 2 | M, 09/08 | OS concepts: processes, threads, concurrency, IPC | Pre, Post | Operating systems: the three easy pieces, processes, threads (pages 1-6) | |||
| 3 | W, 09/10 | Distributed concepts: basics and RPCs | Pre, Post | Birrell81 (pages 39-45 only), Operating systems: the three easy pieces, distributed systems (Section 48.5 only). | HW1 out, due 09/25 11:59PM Eastern Time (Gradescope). Summaries due for required readings starting with this lecture. Summary only due for Birrel81. We will pick one random unlucky group to present first for Lecture 5. | ||
| 4 | M, 09/15 | RPCs continued | See lec 3 | ONC RPC demo code | |||
| 5 | W, 09/17 | Dist. systems concepts: logical & vector clocks | Pre, Post | Group 1 | Baquero'16 | Lamport'78 | |
| 6 | M, 09/22 | Logical clocks & vector clocks continued | Pre, Post | HW1 due Th 09/25, 11:59PM Eastern Time (Gradescope). HW1 Solutions out. | |||
| 7 | W, 09/24 | Fault tolerance & atomic commit protocols | Pre, Post | Group 2 | 2PC - Kleppmann, Chapter 9, Section on Introduction to atomic commit and two-phase commit | Kleppman 2PC | Proj1 out, due 10/15, 11:59PM Eastern Time (Gradescope) |
| 8 | M, 09/29 | Fault tolerance & consistency protocols | Pre, Post | Group 3 | Ongaro'16, Raft visualization | ||
| 9 | W, 10/01 | In-class Quiz / Q & A | Pre, Post | ||||
| 10 | M, 10/06 | Video | Pre, Post | TBA |
2 - IaaS technologies
| Lec | Date | Topic | Lecture slides | Student group | Required Readings | Optional readings | Notes |
| 11 | W, 10/08 | Building a Tufts cloud | Pre, Post | Group 4 | The Datacenter as a computer (chapter 2 only) & Datacenter as a computer video, | Sotomayor'09 | HW2 out. HW2 due on 10/22 11:59PM Eastern TIme (Gradescope). HW2 Solutions. |
| N/A | M, 10/13 | No class, Indigenous people's day | |||||
| 12 | W, 10/15 | Virtual machines & containers | Pre, Post | Group 5 | Soltesz'07, Bernstein'14 (no sumamry required for Bernstein), | Proj1 due on 10/15 11:59PM Eastern TIme (Gradescope). | |
| 13 | M, 10/20 | Virtual machines & containers II | Pre, Post | Barham'03 | Readings from now on are more technical. You are only responsible for the topics i present in class. You may wish to refer to the papers for more details and alternate explanations about the topics I present. | ||
| 14 | W, 10/22 | Distributed storage systems | Pre, Post | Group 6 | HW2 due on 10/22, 11:59PM Eastern Time (Gradescope). Solutions. HW3 out, due 11/10 at 11:59PM (Gradescope). Proj2 out, due 11/19 at 11:59PM | ||
| 15 | M, 10/27 | Distributed storage systems, part II | Pre, Post | Group 7 | Ghemawat03 | A Peek Behind Colossus | |
| 16 | W, 10/29 | Databases (DBs) 1 | Pre, Post, | Group 8 | Designing Data-intensive applications, pages 221-235 (First part of Chapter 7, Transactions) | ||
| 17 | M, 11/03 | Using Git: *Guest lecturer: Peter Portante, Red Hat* | Post | ||||
| 18 | W, 11/05 | DBs 2 *Guest lecturer: Tony Astolfi, Mathworks/PhD* | Post | Group 11 | Chang06, ACID (Wikipedia) | Proj2 Hints out | |
| 19 | M, 11/10 | Cloud Schedulers *Guest lecturer: Max, PhD student*' | Post | Group 12 | Verma'15 | HW3 due on 11/10 at 11:59PM (Gradescope) - Solutions. Note that Kubernetes, the industry-standard cloud scheduler, is based on Borg | |
| 21 | M, 11/17 | In-class quiz / Q& A (NOTE DATE, comes after map-reduce!) |
EVERYTHING BEYOND HERE SUBJECT TO CHANGE
3 - PaaS technologies
| Lec | Date | Topic | Lecture slides | Student group | Required Readings | Optional readings | Notes |
| 20 | W, 11/12 | Map Reduce intro | Pre, Post | N/A | |||
| 22 | W 11/19 | Map Reduce Architecture | Pre, Post | Group 13 | Dean04 | Zaharia12 | |
| 23 | M, 11/24 | Work on projects in class | Slides | Proj3 out, due 12/16, 11:59PM (Gradescope) | |||
| N/A | W, 11/26 | **No class, Thanksgiving** | - | - | - | - | - |
4 - Debugging
| Lec | Date | Topic | Lecture slides | Student group | Required Readings | Optional readings | Notes |
| 24 | M, 12/01 | Class Q & A / Work on projects in class | Group 14, Please bring questions about course content | ||||
| 25 | W, 12/03 | Analyzing the great AWS failure of October 2025 | Slides | AWS Outage Summary, ThouandEyes Analysis | NeuralNikitha | No summary due. Project 2 due on 12/03 at 11:59PM | |
| 26 | M, 12/08 | In-class quiz (map reduce only) / Q& A |