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Unit 3 · Cloud systems

Back to the city-builder game. Your city needs water and electricity. You could build your own water plant and your own power station, pay for them up front and repair them yourself. Or you could sign a contract with a utility company: it runs the plants, you open the tap and pay the bill at the end of the month. Most companies today do the second thing with their computers. That is the cloud. In this unit you learn what exactly you can rent, who owns it, what it is used for, how much it costs, why some decisions still have to be taken in local substations near the neighbourhoods (edge, fog and mist), and why it matters in which country the utility keeps your data.

Learning outcome Hours Term
RA3 — Identifies cloud-based systems and their influence on the development of digital systems. 5 2nd

What you will learn

  • Explain what the cloud is and tell the three service models apart: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS
  • Publish a real web page with GitHub Pages and say which service model it is
  • Tell the deployment models apart (public, private, hybrid, multicloud) and name the main functions of the cloud
  • Read a provider's pricing calculator and produce a dated monthly cost estimate for a real system
  • Decide what a real plant processes at the edge, in the fog, in the mist and in the cloud, and why
  • Find out where a real service keeps its data and what that means for data sovereignty
flowchart TB
    subgraph CLOUD["<b>Cloud</b> (the utility's big power station)"]
        C["Store, analyse,<br>coordinate"]
    end
    subgraph FOG["<b>Fog</b> (the district substation)"]
        F["Join the data<br>of a whole plant"]
    end
    subgraph EDGE["<b>Edge</b> (the transformer on the street)"]
        E["React at once,<br>even offline"]
    end
    subgraph MIST["<b>Mist</b> (the meter in each house)"]
        M["Tiny decisions<br>inside the sensor"]
    end
    M --> E --> F --> C
    C -- "new rules,<br>updates" --> E

Lessons 1 and 2 are about the top box: what you rent and what it costs. Lesson 3 is about the boxes below it. Lesson 4 asks whose power station it is.

Lessons

# Lesson What it covers
1 Cloud and service models What the cloud is, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, who manages what; your first site on GitHub Pages
2 Deployment and functions Public, private, hybrid and multicloud; what the cloud is used for; a real estimate with a pricing calculator
3 Edge, fog and mist Latency measured in the browser; edge computing and the cloud; fog and mist in a wind farm, a water utility and a hotel
4 Advantages and sovereignty What the cloud brings to connected systems, its risks; where data live and which law applies
5 Deliverable 3 · Cloud architecture What you hand in, who writes what, the group's website, how it is assessed, the defence

What you are graded on

The five assessment criteria of the unit's learning outcome, the lessons that train each one, and the part of Deliverable 3 where you show it.

Criterion Official wording, in English Lessons Deliverable 3
a) The different levels of the cloud have been identified. Cloud and service models Section A
b) The main functions of the cloud (data processing, information exchange, running applications, among others) have been identified. Deployment and functions Section B
c) The concept of edge computing and its relationship with the cloud has been described. Edge, fog and mist Section C
d) The concepts of fog and mist and their areas of application within the whole have been defined. Edge, fog and mist Section C
e) The advantages provided by the use of the cloud in connected systems have been identified. Deployment and functions · Advantages and sovereignty Sections B and D

There is no exam. The unit is assessed through Deliverable 3 (70%: your own section, your defence and the group part) and the class activities handed in on Classroom in sessions 10 to 13 (30%). The rules are on the course project page.