Schedule

Lecture: Monday/Wednesday 6:30 – 8:15pm, PHO210

Staff

Instructor

  • Yigong Hu
    Address: PHO335
    Email: yigongh AT bu DOT edu
    Office Hours: Wednesday: 2:00 - 3:00PM (or by appointment), PHO335

TA

  • Xiteng Yao
    Email: xtyao AT bu DOT edu
    Office Hours: Monday 3:00-5:00 PM, Thursday 10:00-12:00 AM, PHO305

Grader

  • Angel Amaya
    Email: aamaya3 AT bu DOT edu
    Office Hours: Monday 10:00-11:30 AM, Thursday 6:00-7:30 PM, Friday 10:00-11:30 AM, PHO305

  • Rayan Syed
    Email: rsyed AT bu DOT edu
    Office Hours: Tuesday 3:30-5:00PM, Wednesday 1:00-2:30 PM, Friday 5:00-6:30 PM, PHO305

For any questions, please post on Piazza first. If your question is private, please email the instructor and CC the TAs and graders.

Outline

This course provides an in-depth study of cloud computing systems, with a focus on the design, implementation, and operation of large-scale distributed infrastructure. The course combines lectures, guided discussion of classic and contemporary research papers, case studies of real-world systems, and a substantial team-based project mentored by industry practitioners or researchers.

The technical content covers core cloud abstractions and mechanisms, including distributed systems foundations, storage systems, data-parallel computation, fault tolerance, consistency, resource management, virtualization, and datacenter architectures. Building on these fundamentals, the course examines modern cloud challenges such as performance tracing, cloud failures, and the infrastructure supporting large-scale machine learning and LLM-based services.

A central component of the course is a semester-long project, completed by teams of 4-6 students. Each team works closely with a mentor, typically an industry engineer, researcher, or senior graduate student, on a realistic cloud or systems problem. Projects emphasize hands-on system building, experimentation, and evaluation, and often target real cloud platforms such as commercial public clouds or research clouds. Teams present regular milestone demos and culminate the course with a final project presentation and recorded demo.

By the end of the course, students will:

  • Understand the architecture and operation of cloud systems at the infrastructure (IaaS) and platform levels.
  • Gain practical experience with distributed systems concepts such as consistency, fault tolerance, and scalability.
  • Learn how cloud systems are monitored, debugged, and operated in the presence of failures and performance anomalies.
  • Produce a substantial system artifact that reflects real-world cloud engineering or research challenges.

There is no final exam; evaluation is based on project milestones, final project outcomes, and engagement with assigned readings and discussions.

Textbook

There is no textbook. Each week, we will cover on average two research papers and one practitioner paper or other instructional material. You will be expected to read and review a subset of these papers (see Grading below) and to actively participate in in-class discussion. These readings may require you to seek out and read additional background material to ensure full comprehension; do not underestimate the time required.

In addition, the course project represents a significant time commitment. You are expected to make steady progress throughout the semester, as a substantial portion of the project grade is based on in-class progress reports and demos.

Grading

Final grade will be based on the following weights:

Projects: 70%

  • Team members will initially receive the same project grade. However, before the final project evaluation, there will be an anonymous peer evaluation in which each team member assigns an involvement score to their peers based on their contributions to the project.

The involvement scores ranges are 50% to 150% with a minimum increment of 1%. These scores reflect each member’s relative contribution to the team effort. The sum of the involvement scores across all team members should be 100% on average. For example, if one member is assigned 60%, the remaining 40% must be distributed among the other team members.

These peer evaluation scores will be used to adjust individual final project grades accordingly.

  • 5%: project description
  • 30%: Three project demo, each demo can be done by at most 2 memeber and each member much demo once
  • 30%: Final project result and report
  • 5%: project quizzes (checking if you listened to your classmates’ presentations)

Paper quizzes: 30%

  • There will be around 14 in-class quizzes based on the assigned readings.
  • MS students must complete 12 out of 14 quizzes.
  • Undergraduate students must complete 10 out of 14 quizzes.
  • For each student, only the highest-scoring quizzes (up to the required number) will be counted toward the final grade.

In-class Questions: Bouns Point

  • There will be random, short in-class questions during lectures.
  • A correct answer will receive 0.5 bonus points, and a good or insightful answer will receive 1 bonus point.
  • If no one volunteers to answer, I may randomly select a student.
  • If a selected student is not present in class, a –1 point penalty will be applied.