41891/42891 Cloud Computing Infrastructures Spring 2024 Assignment 2

Graduate Attributes

1. Identify, interpret and analyse stakeholder needs. (A.1)

2. Apply principles of sustainability to create viable systems (A.4)

3. Design components, systems and/ or processes to meet required specification (B.2) 4. Manage own time and processes effectively by prioritising competing demands to achieve personal goals (Manage self) (D.1)

5. Communicate effectively in ways appropriate to the discipline, audience and purpose. (E.1) 6. Work as an effective member or leader of diverse teams within a multi-level, multi-disciplinary and multicultural setting (E.2)

7. Be aware of global perspectives (needs, rules/regulations, and specifications) (F.4)

Assignment Requirements

A group of 4 students will specify, design, architect, develop and implement a major infrastructurebased project.

Assignment Specification

As you already know that web films and videos are everywhere on the net, SmartV is one of these online video companies who provides online video services, including video searching, video streaming and delivery, video editing, transcoding and adaptation. Actually, for video applications and services over the Internet, there are strong demands for cloud computing because of the significant and scalable amount of storage and computation required for serving millions of Internet users at the same time.

Recently, due to the significant increased number of SmartV users, the company decides to move their IT infrastructure to cloud.

Part 1: Design a cloud infrastructure for them to satisfy some basic requirements as follows.

1) Considering video services requiring a significant amount of storage, please design a proper storage plan for SmartV.

2) In order to support video searching, streaming, editing and transcoding, SmartV demands high computational power.

3) Consider future development, SmartV requests for a scalable solution.

4) Network virtualization needs to consider providing high bandwidth for video delivery related applications.

5) Some other basic cloud implementation/management requirements, such as high availability, DRS, resource control, updating, etc.

6) Postgraduates can consider trying different virtualisation platforms, e.g. OpenStack. Discussions on different virtualization platforms should be included in the report.

Advanced requirements can be further considered by postgraduates (and undergraduates who want to add extra features to their cloud for higher marks):

1)    Security node (e.g. e.g. VMware NSX, VyOS, SOPHOS or any similar implementation can be done using trial version)

2)   Backup issues (e.g. Veeam Backup & Replication (trial version can be used))

Part 2: Implement a small prototype to demo your proposed cloud infrastructure.

1)    In your demo, you need to have more than 2 hosts implemented in your demo. In this case, you need to create at least one ESXi host on your own.

2)   Please feel free to use your own laptop for assignment 2.

3)    In Part 1, a proper solution should have been designed. The implementation in Part 2 is only for a demonstration purpose. Therefore, please use as minimum resources as possible, e.g. max of 30GB.

Part 3: Develop a specification report for your designed cloud infrastructure.

As minimum, the design report should include the following:

1)   Business requirements:

The group needs to clearly analyse what the business requirement would be, i.e. specify the target client and the business case scenario for a cloud computing infrastructure.

2)    Cloud architecture and design:

The group needs to have a detailed architecture design, including diagrams of the  proposed infrastructure and components. This part needs to include implementation platform choices, tooling to be used or developed. Cost analysis also needs to be included. Postgraduates are expected for more detailed analysis on virtualization platform comparison.

3)    Considerations and challenges:

You need to summary what you feel are some of the key issues or challenges in the  cloud infrastructure design, and what tools, design patterns and other supports are available to simplify these issues or challenges.

4)   Evolution of technology:

You need to discuss the role of backup and high availability that has evolved over the past decade and the way that the supporting technologies have evolved with the changing business needs. Select at least 3 alternatives for Backup and high availability as well as  Security and compare them. Contrast them and make a recommendation for which one you would include in your architecture and why.

Postgraduates should also include the comparison and recommendation of the different virtualization platforms.  5) References:

In order to finish Assignment 2, the group is expected to have some research on cloud architecture, design,  and implementation. You need to reference research sources appropriately using UTS Harvard style.

Overall, the report should make it clear as to which team member wrote which section. This can either be done in a separate section of the report, or identified throughout the report. In writing the report, take care to correct reference all sources of information that you use, as described in the section on "Academic Standards" below. In particular, note that you should not cut-and-paste significant blocks of text from any other source (including web pages). Short quotes are acceptable, as long as they are clearly identified as quotes, and include an appropriate citation.  Paraphrasing text with a citation included is also acceptable. Failure to properly acknowledge your sources may be regarded as plagiarism.

The overall report body should be around 3000 words in length, excluding the cover page, statement of contributions, etc. (around but no more than 1000 words per person).

Submission

The implementation must be demonstrated in person to your tutor in the lab class in Week 11 and Week 12. All members of the team must be present for the demonstration. During the demonstration, the tutor will ask a variety of questions about the design and implement of the project.

Please submit your report by the due date. The softcopy needs to be submitted through Canvas with plagiarism detection. No hardcopy is needed. Do NOT email your report.

Late Submission

A late penalty of 20% per working day will apply for late submissions; if more than seven days late, the student will receive zero marks. Special consideration for late submission must be arranged by Week 9 with the Subject Coordinator. Formal documentation must be provided.

Further information

1. Both implementation and report are compulsory. For the total 40% weighting, 20% will be marked for the implementation and 20% will be marked for the report.

2. Reports must be submitted in soft copies via Canvas.

3. All presentation slides must be submitted through Canvas.

4. During presentation, each student is required to answer individual question(s). Within the same group, the marks for group members might be different (depend on their contributions to the project and answers to individual question(s). A group work peer assessment tool, such as Group Assessment Sheet will be used for this project.

5. Postgraduate students are expected to provide more analysis, comparison, and discussion based on the understanding of existing cloud computing outside of the formal material presented in this subject.