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Distributed Systems

Code: 44212 ECTS Credits: 6
2024/2025
Degree Type Year
4313136 Modelling for Science and Engineering OT 0

Contact

Name:
Miquel Àngel Senar Rosell
Email:
miquelangel.senar@uab.cat

Teachers

Miquel Àngel Senar Rosell
José Eduardo Cabrera Díaz

Teaching groups languages

You can view this information at the end of this document.


Prerequisites

It is recommended to have a basic knowledge of programming languages like Python and basic skills of any Linux distribution.


Objectives and Contextualisation

The objectives of the module:

-Solve data analysis problems with open source tools

-Understand tool data management limitations and learn criteria to select suitable tools for a specific problem

-Learn data query methodologies related to each technology

-Use Cloud Computing providers to solve data analysis problems

-Apply a data analysis methodology to solve practical problems

By the end of the lectures and practical labs students should have enough knowledge to understand the requirements of typical large data analysis problems in industrial and academic contexts. They should be able to pick some combination of tools and design a solution for a given large data analysis problem. This subject is oriented to develop data problem solving skills. Languages, tools and techniques are described in a data analysis context and students will solve a list of data problems applying the technology described at every chapter.


Competences

  • Analyse and evaluate parallel and distributed computer architectures, and develop and optimise advanced software for these.
  • Communicate and justify conclusions clearly and unambiguously to both specialised and non-specialised audiences.
  • Continue the learning process, to a large extent autonomously.
  • Integrate knowledge and use it to make judgements in complex situations, with incomplete information, while keeping in mind social and ethical responsibilities.
  • Solve problems in new or little-known situations within broader (or multidisciplinary) contexts related to the field of study.
  • Take part in research projects and working groups in the field of information engineering and high-performance computation.
  • Use acquired knowledge as a basis for originality in the application of ideas, often in a research context.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Apply the knowledge acquired in the design of distributed storage systems to designing intensive data and computation applications.
  2. Apply various techniques for processing and analysing data in order to prepare these analyses in distributed systems.
  3. Choose both the distributed platform and the most appropriate language when formulating a solution to a distributed computation problem.
  4. Communicate and justify conclusions clearly and unambiguously to both specialised and non-specialised audiences.
  5. Continue the learning process, to a large extent autonomously.
  6. Integrate knowledge and use it to make judgements in complex situations, with incomplete information, while keeping in mind social and ethical responsibilities.
  7. Know the characteristic techniques of data distribution and management and their cost implications in distributed environments.
  8. Solve problems in new or little-known situations within broader (or multidisciplinary) contexts related to the field of study.
  9. Use acquired knowledge as a basis for originality in the application of ideas, often in a research context.

Content

T1: Introduction to Distributed Systems and large data processing systems (2 hours)

T2: Cloud computing (2 hours)

  • Introduction to cloud computing
  • Data analysis with a cloud computing provider: AWS / Azure

T3: Cluster and supercomputer infraestructures (14 jours)

  • Principles of job execution under batch queue systems (SLURM).
  • Advanced control of jobs: array jobs, dependencies, process binding, heterogeneous resources (GPUs)
  • Creation of large jobs and workflows
  • Virtualization and environments

T4: Cloud Networking and Virtual Private Clouds (8 hours)

  • Intro to VPC
  • Build our VPC and launch a web server tutorial
  • VPC Lab  

T5: Fault tolerance systems (4 hours)

  • Availability zones
  • Load balancing and autoscaling tutorial
  • ELB Lab

T6: Database Cloud project: relational and DynamoDB implementations (8 hours)

  • Intro to RDS and DynamoDB
  • Build a database server tutorial
  • Distributed database Lab

T7: Serverless services and Lambda (2 hours)

  • Intro to Lambda services and serverless computing
  • Lambda tutorial
  • Lambda Lab

Activities and Methodology

Title Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Type: Directed      
Laboratory 24 0.96 2, 1, 4, 8, 5, 9
Lectures 38 1.52 2, 1, 7, 6, 8, 3, 9
Type: Autonomous      
Practical exercise development 62 2.48 2, 1, 8, 5

The development of the subject will be based fundamentally on the concept of "learning by doing". There will be initial theoretical sessions for each topic, in which the teacher will present the key concepts and students will be provided with complementary study materials (books, online teaching resources, articles and other technical documentation). With this information, students will work in practical sessions solving exercises and small projects individually or in groups of two people. Students will prepare written reports on the practical work carried out in each topic.

Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.


Assessment

Continous Assessment Activities

Title Weighting Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
ELB Lab 20% 6 0.24 2, 7, 6, 4, 8, 5
Infrastructure lab 30% 6 0.24 2, 7, 6, 4, 8
Lambda Lab 10% 4 0.16 2, 1, 7, 4, 8, 3, 9
RDS Lab 20% 6 0.24 2, 1, 7, 6, 8, 3, 9
VPC Lab 20% 4 0.16 2, 1, 6, 8, 5

Evaluation will come out from the combination of work developed in the lab sessions and the corresponding reports. 


Bibliography

Martin Kleppmann. "Designing Data-Intensive Applications". O'Reilly, 2017.

A. Wittig, M. Wittig. "Amazon Web Services in Action", Manning, 2nd Edition, 2018.

G. Coulouris, J. Dollimore and T. Kinderg, "Distributed Systems. Concepts and design ", Addison-Wesley, 5th edition, 2012.

Bell, Charles; Kindahl, Mats; Thalmann, Lars. "MySQL High Availability". O'Reilly, 2010.

Chang, Fay, et al. "Bigtable: A Distributed Storage System for Structured Data." OSDI, 2006

Dewitt, David, and Jim Gray. "Parallel Database Systems: The Future of High Performance Database Processing." Communications of the ACM 35, no. 6 (1992): 85-98

Schwartz, Baron; Zaitsev, Peter; Tkachenko, Vadim; Zawodny, Jeremy D.; Lentz, Arjen; Balling, Derek J. "High Performance MySQL", O'Reilly, 2008.

Seyed M. M. "Saied" Tahaghoghi and Hugh E. Williams. Learning MySQL. O’Reilly, 2006

Nathan Haines. “Beginning Ubuntu for Windows and Mac Users”. Apress 2015. Available as electronic resource at UAB library

William E. Shotts. “The Linux Command Line”. Second Internet Edition. 2013. http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php

Dan C. Marinescu. “Cloud Computing. Theory and Practice”. Morgan-Kaufmann. 2018.

R. Buyya, R. N. Calheiros, A. V. Dastjerdi. “Big data. Principles and paradigms”. Morgan-Kaufmann. 2016.


Software

In the subject, we are going to use the last version of the following software platforms and tools

-Ubuntu Linux

-SLURM

-Linux development environment

 


Language list

Name Group Language Semester Turn
(PLABm) Practical laboratories (master) 1 English first semester afternoon
(TEm) Theory (master) 1 English first semester afternoon