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RSEG 176
Cloud Computing
The data center is increasingly virtual In this class, students will explore “cloud”-based services, ranging from specific, internet-based software suites such as Google Docs or Salesforce.com (“Software as a Service,” or SaaS), through platform-based systems such as Microsoft’s Azure environment, to cloud-based infrastructure such as Amazon’s Web Services.
While cloud-based services are especially well-suited to Agile development, and to exploring new SaaS products and services without committing to Enterprise installations, there is virtually no part of the Enterprise not affected by these new paradigms
We will explore a wide variety of services, focusing on where they are familiar, where they differ from the familiar, and how to work in a heterogenous world with both. We will talk not just about how new ways of working are enabled, but how some valued current ways of handling security, not to mention version control, backup, security, and disaster recovery are changed—usually, but not always—for the better.
Students will learn how to evaluate the various cloud-based services and how to communicate that evaluation to decision-makers in the organization.
There will also be a hands on practicum using Amazon Web Services (AWS) and exploring the most common features of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and how IaaS, overall, differs from older paradigms of systems management and program architecture.
At the end of the course, students will be able to:
• Describe the major categories of cloud-based services and the major trends in cloud computing and be able to explain the impact of cloud computing on the role of corporate IT;
• Assess specific services, evaluate whether or not they are appropriate to specific challenges, and plan their implementation, where relevant;
• Evaluate security challenges (and affordances), and understand current best practices;
• Successfully address identity and access management in the cloud;
• Meet the challenges in monitoring and maintaining cloud services;
• Successfully carry out backup, system imaging, disaster recovery;
• Understand legal issues relating to cloud computing;
• Successfully set up a reasonably complex web-based service on Amazon Web Services (the course practicum).
Course Requirements
Students should be sufficiently familiar with very basic systems administration, programming, and the command line so as to complete the practicum. Students are free to use any operating system supported by AWS. These include a wide variety of Windows and Linux environments, as selected by the student. Code examples are provided in PHP, but may be implemented in any language useful to the student’s preferred work environment.
> Direct link to course prerequisites.
> Buy your textbooks and other required course materials online from the Brandeis Bookstore ,or visit the bookstore in the Shapiro Campus Center.