Over the past several years Cloud computing has both supplanted traditional methods of delivery and consumption of IT resources and helped create a variety of new applications (e.g., new approaches to large-scale data analytics). A key emerging trend in Cloud computing is that the core systems infrastructure, including compute resources, storage and networking, is increasingly becoming software defined: instead of being limited by the physical infrastructure, applications and platforms will be able to specify their fine-grained needs, thus precisely defining the virtual environment in which they wish to run; software, placed at key locations within the datacenter infrastructure, will implement the needed functionality, thus delivering hardware-like features to applications and services in the manner they desire. If done right, this makes the infrastructure easy to use, high-performance, resilient and secure, paving the way for even greater innovation.

The ultimate goal of this course is to develop sound approaches for architecting various aspects of future software-defined Clouds. Toward this goal, the class will cover key topics in Cloud systems, networking and security, such as the architecture of various Cloud computing frameworks; Cloud workload characteristics; popular and emerging storage paradigms; the internals of data center networks; the promise of, and challenges in, Software Defined Networking; state-of-the-art schemes for Cloud security and fault tolerance. The hope is to extract key lessons for designing software-defined Clouds at various points along the course.

Emphasis: The course is somewhat networks-oriented in that we will cover both network abstractions/related software systems, as well as "lower-level" issues such as hardware and impact of protocols. For other aspects, e.g., Cloud systems and storage, we will mainly discuss abstractions and related software design/implementation issues. Future versions of this class may place more emphasis on other aspects than networking.

Note that the list of topics covered is, of course, not complete; e.g., it does not include, e.g., core virtualization technologies and Cloud programming languages, both of which are central to software-defined clouds. These may be covered in detail in future special-topics classes.

Readings: The course will be paper reading-based. See the reading list here.

Assignments and project: While readings will cover the "theory" behind software-defined clouds, a set of 3-4 hands-on assignments, coupled with a significant A mini course project, spanning 5-7 wks, will help students explore the "practical" side. See a tentative outline of planned assignments here.