CPIT-490/CPIT-632: Cloud Computing Architecture Fall 2025


This course is a survey of system administration and cloud computing where we introduce a variety of topics related to the management of production environments. Students who take this course will be introduced to the architecture and deployment of modern applications on the cloud. The course takes a hands-on approach and promotes learning by doing with an in-depth analysis of the tools and techniques that facilitate the deployment and management of applications on the cloud.

Note: This is a cross-listed course for both undergraduates and graduate students although it is mostly comprised of undergraduate students.

Schedule

CPIT-490

  • Lecture:
    • Time: Monday, Wednesday 13:00PM-14:20PM
    • Location: Building 80A, classroom H1-10
  • Lab:
    • Lab: Sunday 17:00-18:20PM
    • Location: Virtual on Teams

CPIT-632: Not offered for Fall 2025

Instructor

Khalid Alharbi, Ph.D

  • Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 01:00PM-02:00PM
  • Location: Building 80, office: 25F70

Join our MS Teams team for announcements, submissions, and questions.

Calendar

WeekTopicReadings & NotesAssignment & Labs
45%
  • 1
  • Rabiʽ al-Awwal 1st / August 24th
  • Course overview
  • Overview of UNIX and LINUX systems
  • Essential duties of a system administrator
  • System administration and DevOps
  • Fundamentals of Unix and Linux systems
  • Chapter 1 (Textbook)
Lab 1
Assignment 1
45%
  • 2
  • Rabiʽ al-Awwal 8th / August 31st
  • The Linux file system
  • The Bash shell
  • Shell scripting
  • Basic Bash scripting
Lab 2
Assignment 2
45%
Long weekend: No classes on Sunday
  • 3
  • Rabiʽ al-Awwal 15th / September 7th
  • Introduction to Cloud Computing
  • Connecting using SSH
  • VM Instance lifecycle
  • Cloud Storage Solutions
  • Compute Solutions
  • Provisioning resources
  • Accessing resources
Lab 3
Assignment 3
Assignment 4
45%
  • 4
  • Rabiʽ al-Awwal 22nd / September 14th
  • Web hosting and app deployment (I)
  • deploying and running on Virtual Machines
  • deploying and running on Platform as a service (PaaS)
  • deploying and running on Serverless
Lab 4
Assignment 5
45%
  • 5
  • Rabiʽ al-Thani 1st / September 23rd
  • Web hosting and app deployment (II)
  • Fully Managed Databases
  • Storage on the cloud
  • Object storage
  • Block storage
  • File storage
Lab 4
Assignment 6
45%
No classes on Thursday (National Holiday)
  • 6
  • Rabiʽ al-Thani 6th / September 28th
  • Cloud Networking Fundamentals
  • Subnets and routing
  • IP addressing
  • Virtual Private Clouds/Virtual Networks
  • Egress/Ingress Monitoring
      Lab 5
      Assignment 7
      45%
      Midterm exam [TBD]
      • 7
      • Rabiʽ al-Thani 13th / October 5th
      • Network security
      • public key infrastructure (PKI)
      • Virtual Private Network (VPN)
      • IPsec tunnels
          Lab 6
          45%
          • 8
          • Rabiʽ al-Thani 20th / October 12th
          • Virtualization
          • Custom Virtual Machine
          • Building Automated Machine Images
          • Configuration Management
          • Vagrant
          • Packer
          Project presentation
          Lab 6 (cont.)
          45%
          • 9
          • Rabiʽ al-Thani 27th / October 19th
          • Microservices
          • Docker Containers
          • Managing a cluster of Docker containers
          • Docker compose
          • Docker Swarm
          • Kubernetes
            Lab 7
            45%
            • 10
            • Jumada Al-Awwal 4th / October 26th
            • Cloud Architecture Patterns
            • Deploying scalable and resilient applications
            • Load balancers
            • Web Application Firewalls
              45%
              • 11
              • Jumada Al-Awwal 11th / November 2nd
              • Cloud observability tools
              • Log management
              • Performance Management
              • Performance tracing tools
              • Project demo and final presentation
                  Lab 8
                  45%
                  • 12
                  • Jumada Al-Awwal 18th / November 9th

                      Lecture notes:
                    45%
                    • 13
                    • Jumada Al-Awwal 22nd / November 16th

                        Lecture notes:
                      45%
                      • 14
                      • Jumada Al-Awwal 16th / November 16th

                          Lecture notes:
                        45%
                        • 15
                        • Jumada Al-Awwal 25th / November 23rd
                        • Lab exam and project demo

                            Lecture notes:
                          45%
                          • 16
                          • Dhu al-Qa'dah 11th / May 19th
                          • Final Exams (Dhu al-Qa'dah 11th-29th / May 19th-June 6th)

                              Lecture notes: