Teaching Cloud Computing using Project-based

Learning
Linh B. Ngo
Computer Science Department
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
West Chester, PA, USA
lngo@wcupa.edu

Abstract—Typically, cloud computing courses focus on the per- work are to select two performance evaluation tasks from the
spectives from Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a- above list and repeat the experiment. Similar to the customer-
Service (PaaS). We present a project-based learning approach to based projects, they can choose to work with containers or
teaching cloud computing from a system perspective with an em-
phasis on Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Besides fundamental VM, but they also need to compare their selected platform
concepts of cloud computing such as the essential characteristics, against the baseline bare-metal.
service models, and deployment models and the various aspects There is only one option for the provider-based project,
of system virtualization, students spent a significant portion of whose primary task is to augment the default CloudLab
lectures in hands-on activities on a large public academic cloud. OpenStack profile with Zun [2] to support deployment of
They are designed to support students’ class projects, which are
designed from the perspective of cloud consumers (IaaS), cloud Docker containers. This work is open-ended and requires
providers, and cloud researchers. The two offerings of the course Students are free to form teams and select topics.
received positive feedback from students.
Index Terms—cloud computing, project-based learning, cloud- V. P ROJECT O UTCOMES AND S TUDENT F EEDBACK
lab VI. C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE W ORK
R EFERENCES
I. I NTRODUCTION
[1] W. Felter, A. Ferreira, R. Rajamony, and J. Rubio, “An
II. C OURSE OVERVIEW updated performance comparison of virtual machines and
III. C LOUD C OMPUTING E NVIRONMENT linux containers,” in 2015 IEEE international symposium
IV. S TUDENT P ROJECT T OPICS on performance analysis of systems and software (IS-
PASS). IEEE, 2015, pp. 171–172.
There are three themes for the students’ course project. The [2] “Zun documentation,” 2020. [Online]. Available:
goal is to provide student with three different perspectives on https://docs.openstack.org/zun/latest/
cloud infrastructures: providers, customers, and researchers.
Customer-based projects ask students to assume the roles
of an entity that is interested in utilizing IaaS to deploy in
the cloud. While teams can propose any service, the proposed
work needs to have at least two components to be deployed
in separate virtual computing entities. The choice between
containers or VMs is available. It is up to individual team to
balance the trade-off. Containerization can be lightweight and
more portable but requires more in-depth understanding of the
proposed service’s components to set up the containers. VMs
are similar to traditional Linux boxes, which enable straight
forward installation and configuration of software components.
On the other hand, it takes longer to setup and requires more
storage space. Furthermore, container development requires
less computing resources than VMs, which can be an issue
for students with older laptop/PC.
Researcher-based projects are based on a performance eval-
uation comparing Docker, KVM, and bare-metal machines.
This work measures CPU performance, memory stream, ran-
dom memory access, network bandwidth and latency, block
I/O, and database access [1]. The scope for this project type
is smaller. Given time and skill limitation, teams taking up this