Previous academic years

Introductory lesson: course presentation.

Historical hints; basic concepts and terminology; goals and benefits; risks and challenges. Lecture notes part 1, n. 1.

Roles and boundaries; fundamental characteristics. Lecture notes part 1, n. 2.

Presentation of the topics that will be illustrated during the semester by prof. Novella Bartolini

Cloud delivery models; Cloud deployment models. Lecture notes part 1, n. 2.

Cloud enabling technologies: Internet architecture; Data Centers; Virtualization. Lecture notes part 1, n. 3

Cloud enabling technologies: Multitenancy; Web standards; SOAP and REST based services. Lecture notes part 1, n. 3

Security in the cloud: threats, risks, attacks, risk management. Lecture notes part 1, n. 4

Basic cloud mechanisms: Logic network perimeter, Virtual server. Lecture notes part 1, n. 5

Basic cloud mechanisms: Cloud Storage Device, Cloud Usage Monitors, Resource Replication, Ready-Made Environment. Lecture notes part 1, n. 5

Specialized clod mechanisms: Automated Scaling Listener, Load Balancer, SLA Monitor, Pay-Per-Use Monitor, Audit Monitor, Failover System. Lecture notes part 1, n. 6

Lecture by Prof. Novella Bartolini: Damage assessment and recovery after massive network failures, part 1. Download lecture notes at bottom of this page.

Specialized cloud mechanisms: Hypervisor, Resource cluster, Multi-device broker, State management database. Lecture notes part 1, n. 6

Cloud management systems. Lecture notes part 1, n. 7

Cloud security mechanisms. Lecture notes part 1, n. 8

Fundamental cloud architectures: Workload distribution, Resource pooling, Dynamic scalability, Elastic resource capacity, Service load balancing, Cloud bursting, Elastic disk provisioning, Redundant storage. Lecture notes part 1, n. 9

Advanced cloud architectures: Hypervisor clustering, Load balanced virtual servers, Non-disruptive service relocation, Zero downtime, Cloud balancing. Lecture notes part 1, n. 10

Advanced cloud architectures: Resource reservation, Dynamic failure detection and recovery, Rapid provisioning, Storage workload management. Lecture notes part 1, n. 10

Specialized cloud architectures: Direct I/O Access, Direct LUN Access, Elastic Network Capacity, Cross-Storage Device Vertical Tiering, Intra-Storage Device Vertical Data Tiering, Load Balanced Virtual Switches, Persistent Virtual Network Configuration, Redundant Physical Connection for Virtual Servers, Storage Maintenance Window. Lecture notes part 1, n. 11

Cost metrics and pricing moldels. Lecture notes, part1, n. 12.

Lecture by Prof. Novella Bartolini: Damage assessment and recovery after massive network failures, part 2. Download lecture notes at bottom of this page (file talk1_ECN_extended.pptx, which includes slides from the lesson of oct. 13, 2017).

Introduction to data centers: operational areas, physical organization, data center tiers, real data center examples, modular data centers. Lecture notes part 2, n. 1

Data center network design goals; Ethernet protocol: basics, cabling evolution, hub vs bridge vs switch, collision domain vs broadcast domain; Data center network evolution: from campus networks to data center networks, design factors; Network topology models: core-aggregation-access model, leaf-spine model. Lecture notes part 2, n. 2

The lesson did not take place due to the presence of 5 students only, which were then allowed to attend the Workshop in honour of Janos Korner.

Data center network evolution: Server access models, Spanning tree protocol. Network virtualization benefits. Lecture notes part 2, n. 2

Network virtualization: Virtual LAN (VLAN); VLAN trunks; Routing among VLANs: Router on a stick. Lecture notes part 2, n. 3-0

Network virtualization: VLANS and IP subnets, Routing among VLANS: SVI and VRF; PortChannels; NIC teaming; Virtual PortChannels. Layer 2 Data center interconnection: highlights of WDM, EoMPLS, OTV. Lecture notes part 2, n. 3-0

Software defined networking: Fundamental characteristics, separation of Control plane and forwarding plane. Openflow: characteristics; Components of Switch agent. Lecture notes part 2, n. 3-1

Openflow data plane: ports, flow tables, flows, classifiers, actions. A simple Openflow example (file Openflow_example.pdf at bottom of this page). Lecture notes part 2, n. 3-1

Storage evolution: Disk arrays, Tape libraries. Block access, File access, Record access. Storage virtualization: RAID, Virtualizing storage devices, virtualizing LUNs, Virtual file system, Virtual SAN (VSAN). Lecture notes part 2, n. 4

Lecture by Prof. Novella Bartolini: Network tomography, part 1. Download lecture notes at bottom of this page (file ECN_3rd.pdf).

FiberChannel: levels, topologies, frames and sequences, service classes. Data center bridging: Priority-based flow control, enhanced transmission selection. FibreChannel over Ethernet. Unified fabric. Lecture notes part 2, n. 4

Load balancing: typical usage, general concepts; Predictors: Round-robin, Least-connections, Hashing, Least-loaded. Lecture notes part 2, n. 5

Lecture by Prof. Novella Bartolini: Network tomography, part 2. Download lecture notes at bottom of this page (file ECN_3rd.pdf).

Load balancing: layer 4 vs layer 7 load balancing. Connection management: stickiness table, active and passive cookies. Address translation and load balancing. Other usages: firewall load balancing, reverse proxy load balancing, server offload (SSl offload, TCP offload). Lecture notes part 2, n. 5

Server virtualization: virtualization levels (ISA level, HW abstraction level, OS level, library support level, user application level). x86 hardware virtualization challenges. Full virtualization with binary translation. Paravirtualization. Hardware assisted virtualization. HW supports to virtualization: Ring 0P for CPU HW support. Lecture notes part 2, n. 6.

HW supports to virtualization of RAM, Network, I/O devices. General characteristics of most relevant hypervisors (KVM, XEN, WMware EXSi, Microsoft Hyper-V). Lecture notes part 2, n. 6.

Introduction to CloudStack. Fundamental aspects. Hierarchical organization in zones, pods, clusters. Primary and secondary storage. Basic e advanced networking. Traffic types. Small-scale and large-scale deployment. Lecture notes part 3, n. 1.

CloudStack installation, configuration and deployment in the Colossus lab at Department of CS: Server, switch and firewall characteristics; Networking architecture. Download presentation at bottom of this page (file CloudSTack.pdf).

Lab activity on the Cloudstack platform, part 1:User interface; Usage as tenant: instantiating, launching, stopping and disposing of VMs.

Lab activity on the Cloudstack platform, part 2: Usage as admin: defining server, network, storage offerings for tenants.