Introduction to Cloud Computing Concepts, Part 1 (00:03:50)

From the Cloud Computing Concepts Course (University of Ilinois) on Coursera

Hello everyone,

I want to thank you
for, uh, joining me

on this, uh, journey through
Cloud Computing Concepts.

This is the first part

of the Cloud Computing
Concepts course,

which is a two part course.

Uh, this course here

is about the internals
of cloud computing.

This means that
we'll go underneath the hood

and look at the distributed systems concepts,

and the distributed algorithms,

and the distributed techniques,

that underlie today's
cloud computing technologies.

This course is not about
how to write cloud systems

or cloud applications.

There is a separate course,

uh, that's coming up,
called Cloud Applications.

Uh, and, uh, this course
is not about networking either,

in the cloud.

There's a separate course

called Cloud Networking
that's coming up,

uh, that's about networking inside the Cloud.

Uh, both, uh, w-well all
of these courses,

the Cloud Computing
Concepts course, this course,

both parts, as well as,
the Cloud Applications course

and the Cloud Networking course

are part
of a Cloud Specialization,

which is being offered,
uh, to students.

What we'll discuss in this
cloud computing concepts course,

uh, both part one
and part two is, uh,

three things.

Uh, concepts

that underlie today's
cloud computing systems,

especially,
distributed systems concepts.

Uh, techniques, uh,
that are used, uh,

fairly widely, in a variety

of cloud computing
systems today.

And we'll also, uh,

while discussing concepts
and techniques, uh, look at, uh,

some facets and some aspects
of industry systems

including open source systems,

uh, like Hadoop and NoSQL storage systems and many others.

So the cloud competing
concepts course

is really a mix
of distributed systems, uhh,

er, with a mix
of distributed algorithms.

And both of these combined
as applied, uh,

to cloud computing systems
as they are today.

So what we'll discuss
in this first part,

the first five week, uh,

part of the Cloud Computing Concepts course.

Eh, first we'll have
an introduction to Clouds,

what they are,

why they are, the way they are.

Uh, we'll look at Mapreduce
and Key-value stores,

uh, two of the, uh, emerging, subareas of cloud computing.

Then we look at some
of the precursors,

previous generations
of cloud computing systems,

like Peer-to-peer systems
and Grids,

that, uh, are ancestors,

parents of, uh,
today's cloud computing systems.

Then we'll, uh,
go underneath the hood

and start to look at
widely used algorithms,

for Gossip, Membership,
Paxos for consensus,

uh, and also
classical algorithms, including,

Time and Ordering, Snapshots, and, uh, Multicast.

Along the way, uh,
in some weeks,

we'll have interviews
with leading managers

and researchers from industry, as well as, academia,

uh, and I hope these will be interesting to you, as well.

The, um, uh,

the course is structured so that you can learn as you move along,

uh, so there are two home works,

uh, spread throughout
the course,

uh, uh, as well as,
a programming assignment.

The programming assignment
is optional.

It involves, uh,
writing code inside an emulator.

In the first part of C3,
uh, course,

uh, you will be writing, uh,
a membership protocol

inside an emulator
that we will provide to you.

We'll provide you the template,

the C++ template
and you can write it.

Again, the programming assignment is optional.

The two required, uh,
portions of this course

are the two home works
and the one final exam.

Well, cloud computing is
an exciting area to be studying,

to be working in.

And, uh,

it is also a very dynamic
and continuously changing area.

And that's what, uh,

that's part of what
makes it exciting, as well.

I'm really looking forward
to working with you

and interacting with you

as this course
move al-moves along.

Uh, come join me as we start
our tour of the cloud computing

concepts landscape.