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Overview

Title: Distributed Systems

Units: 12

Pre-requisites: A grade of "C" or better in 15-213, Introduction to Computer Systems

Lectures: Monday and Wednesday, 9:00 - 10:20 AM, Room 1199

Recitation: Thursday, Time: 4:30 - 5:20 PM, Room: 1199

Webpage: http://www.qatar.cmu.edu/~mhhammou/15440-f16/

Description

15-440 is an introductory course in distributed systems. The emphasis will be on the techniques for creating functional, usable, and high-performing distributed systems. To make the issues more concrete, the class includes several multi-week projects requiring significant design and implementation.

The goals of this course are twofold: First, students will gain an understanding of the principles and paradigms that underlay distributed systems, such as communication across networks, concurrency, synchronization, consistency and fault-tolerance. Second, students will gain practical experience in designing, implementing, and debugging real distributed systems.

The major themes this course will teach include process distribution, communication, naming, abstraction and modularity, concurrency, scheduling, resource sharing, locking, consistency and replication, failure handling, distributed programming models, distributed file systems, protection from accidental and malicious harms, virtualization, and the use of instrumentation, monitoring and debugging tools to solve problems at large-scale. As the creation and management of software systems are fundamental goals of any undergraduate systems course, students will design, implement, and debug large programming projects. Students will learn some of today's most popular distributed systems, such as Google File System, MapReduce and GraphLab.

Instructor

Prof. Mohammad Hammoud,
mhhammou@qatar.cmu.edu, CMUQ 1006, 4454-8506,
Office hours: Wednesday, 4:30 - 5:30 PM.

Teaching Assistant

Tamim Jabban,
tamim@cmu.edu, CMUQ 1005, 4454-8204,
Office hours: Tuesday, 9:30 - 11:59 AM; Thursday, 10:30 - 11:59 AM.

Objectives

Distributed systems combine the computational power of multiple computers to solve complex problems. The individual computers in a distributed system are typically spread over wide geographies, and possess heterogeneous architectures and operating systems. Hence, an important challenge in distributed systems is to design system models, algorithms and protocols that allow computers to communicate and coordinate their actions over heterogeneous networked computers so as to solve large-scale problems.

Our aim in this course is to introduce you to the area of distributed systems. You will examine and analyze how a set of networked computers can form a functional, usable and high-performing distributed system.

The course has three major goals:

Through these objectives, the course will transform your computational thinking from designing applications for a single computer system, towards designing distributed applications that run on networked computers.

Learning Outcomes:

Checkout a complete tree of learning outcomes for this course

The course encompasses two main learning outcomes:

Understanding the Core Concepts of Distributed Systems

Students will learn the core concepts that comprise any distributed system. They will recognize the system constraints, trade-offs and appropriate techniques for building distributed systems that best serve the computing needs of different classes of applications. In particular, students will learn the following concepts:

Access and location transparency

Exposing the capabilities of machines, yet hiding their details is one of the first steps in designing distributed systems. Such systems penetrate economies and masses which transparently leverage their powers. For instance, in the Internet, which is a successful distributed system, a simple browser interface will allow you to explore information scattered over wide-geographies. In this course, students will examine how to abstract data and machine locations (which may reside at different physical places) as well as data and machine replications.

Specifically, students will study the following topics:

Task parallelization

Traditional algorithms that work on a single processor are inefficient - or even fail to work - in a system where multiple machines are working in parallel. In distributed systems, problems/jobs can be solved using parallelization. Generally a job is split into multiple tasks, and all tasks are executed in parallel on different machines. The tasks may access common resources, such as data contained in a shared file. Consequently, two main challenges emerge. First, we ought to ensure that the concurrently running tasks are coordinated and synchronized in a manner that correctly achieves the job's goal. Second, we can potentially replicate and place resources across multiple computers in a way that allows tasks to access them more effectively.

Specifically, students will study the following topics:

Fault-tolerance

In distributed systems, a failure of a single or a part of a computer (or what is known as partial failure) is very likely. If such a failure is not tolerated, the whole system might come to a grinding halt or result in a random and unpredictable behavior. Students will learn how to avoid and recover from partial failures, a concept referred to as fault-tolerance.

Security

In distributed systems, computers that serve in solving your problem may not be under your administrative control. This makes a distributed system vulnerable to security and privacy issues. Students will learn the common security issues in distributed systems and some mechanisms that can be used to secure distributed systems.

Practical Application of the State-of-the-Art Distributed Systems:

Students will also learn how to apply principles of distributed systems in a real-world setting. In particular, they will learn the following topics:

Textbooks

The primary textbooks for this course are:

In addition, we recommend the following text books:

We have several reference books in the library covering most of the course topics. We will also be reading book chapters (written by the Instructor), tutorials, and research papers on the covered topics.

Course Organization

The participation of students in the course will involve five forms of activities:

Assessment

Final Grade Assignment and Assessment methods

Each student will receive a numeric score with a corresponding letter grade, based on a weighted average of the following:

  1. Projects:

    The projects will count for a total of 40% of your final score. There will be 4 projects throughout the course. All projects are individual projects (i.e., no team can work on the same project). The first project is worth 15% and the last three projects are worth 7.5%, 10% and 7.5% respectively. It’s important to note that Project 2 heavily relies on completing Project 1, and therefore, it’s strongly advised to finish P1 early to avoid complications with P2 (If you have not completed P1, you will not be given any solution files to work on P2!).

    You are encouraged to submit the projects on time. For all projects except the final one, the following rules apply. If you submit one day late, we will deduct 25% of the project score as a penalty. If you submit two days late, 50% will be deducted. The project will not be graded (and you will receive a zero score on it) if you are more than two days late. However, there is a grace-days quota for projects. In particular, you will be given 3 grace days for all projects, except for the final one. You can use the grace days as needed. For instance, you can submit your first project three days late and still not receive any penalty. In this case, you will be penalized starting from the 4th day after the deadline. Furthermore, when you consume all your grace days, you will be left with no grace days for the rest of the projects.

    Note that the final project is unique in two aspects. First, you cannot use grace days for the final project. As such, if you are left with some grace days before the final project, you will lose them all. Hence, plan how to utilize your grace-days quota judiciously. Second, there will not be any penalty system for this project either. That is, if you are one day late in submitting the project, it will not be graded and you will receive a zero score on it.

  2. Exams:

    There will be two in-class exams – midterm and final – which combined will count for 30% of your final score. The midterm is worth 10% and the final is worth 20%. Both exams are open-book. That is, you are allowed to bring your textbooks, slides, and other supporting documents of your own. Any electronic equipment is not allowed, however.

  3. Problem Solving Assignments:

    There will be 5 assignments that will test you on problem analysis and solving skills. These assignments will altogether carry 15% of your final score. At the end of the semester, the Problem Solving Assignment with the lowest score will be dropped.

  4. Quizzes:

    There will be 2 quizzes, which combined will count for 10% of your final score. These quizzes are meant to test your understanding and preparation for the concepts covered throughout the course.

  5. Class-Recitation Participation and Attendance:

    Your attendance of both, classes and recitations, as well as your participation in discussions during presentations will count for 5% of your final score.

To this end, the below table shows the breakdown of the five forms of activities that the course involves, alongside the quantity and the overall weight of each activity. Take into account that small differences in scores can make the difference between two letter grades. Letter grades will be determined by absolute standards. The total score will be plotted as a histogram. Cutoff points are determined by examining the quality of students' work on the borderlines. Individual cases, especially those near the cutoff points may be adjusted upward or downward based on factors such as attendance, class participation, improvement observed throughout the course, exam performance, and special circumstances.

Type # Weight
Projects 4 40%
Exams 2 30%
Problem Solving Assignments 5 15%
Quizzes 2 10%
Class/Recitation Participation and Attendance 42 5%

Because of the importance of understanding both the theoretical and hands-on elements of the class, students must pass both components of the course (projects as one component, and exams, quizzes and Problem Solving Assignments as the second) in order to receive a passing grade for the course. This does not affect the actual letter grade assignment unless one of the components is not completed to a passing standard.

Getting Help

For urgent communication with the instructor and the teaching assistant, it is best to send an email (preferred) or give a phone call. If you want to talk to any of them in person, remember that their posted office hours are merely nominal times when they guarantee that they will be in their offices. You are always welcome to visit them outside of their office hours if you need help or want to talk about the course.

We ask that you follow a few simple guidelines. The instructor normally works with his office door being open. Whenever the office door is open, he welcomes visits from students. However, if his office door is closed, this means that he is busy with meetings or phone calls, thus prefers not to be disturbed.

We will use the course webpage as the central repository for all information about the class. Through the webpage, you can:

  1. Obtain copies of any handouts or assignments. This is especially useful if you miss a class or lose a document.
  2. View announcements that relate to the course.
  3. Find links to any electronic data you need for your assignments.
  4. Read clarifications and changes made to any assignments, schedules, or policies.
  5. Provide healthy feedback about the course.

Lastly, you can use Piazza for asking questions and receiving answers without all the emails! Posting your questions on Piazza will help the whole class benefit and will certainly avoid redundancy. Find our class Piazza page at: https://piazza.com/qatar.cmu/fall2016/15440/home

Policies

Working Alone on Assignments/Projects

Assignments/projects that are assigned to students should be performed individually. This course does not include any team projects or assignments.

Handing in Assignments/Projects

All assignments/projects are due at 11:59PM (one minute before midnight) on the specified due date. All hand-ins are electronic and should be submitted using the AFS file system: /afs/qatar.cmu.edu/usr10/mhhammou/www/15440-f16/handin/userid/, where userid is your andrew user id.

Making up Exams, Assignments and Projects

Missed exams, assignments and projects can be made up on a case by case basis, but only if you make prior arrangements with the instructor. However, you should have a good reason for doing so. You need a written consent from the instructor for making up exams, assignments or projects. It is your responsibility to get your projects and assignments done on time. Be sure to work far enough in advance to avoid unexpected problems, such as illness, unreliable or overloaded computer systems, etc.

Appealing Grades

After each exam, assignment, and/or project is graded, you have 7 calendar days to appeal your grade. All your appeals should be provided in writing. If after appealing you are still not satisfied, please visit the instructor. If you have questions about an exam, an assignment or a project grade, please visit the instructor directly.

Cheating

Each project or assignment must be the sole work of the student turning it in. Projects and assignments will be closely monitored, and students may be asked to explain suspicious similarities with any write-up or piece of code available. The following are guidelines on what cheating is and is not:

What is cheating?

  1. Sharing code or other electronic files: either by copying, retyping, looking at, or supplying a copy of a file.
  2. Sharing written assignments: either by re-writing, looking at, or supplying a copy of an assignment.

What is NOT cheating?

  1. Clarifying ambiguities or vague points in class handouts.
  2. Helping others use the computer systems, networks, compilers, debuggers, profilers, or other system facilities.
  3. Helping others with high-level design issues.
  4. Helping others debug their codes.

Consequently, be aware of what constitutes cheating (and what does not) when interacting with your colleague students. Same rules of cheating as above apply when collaborating with other students. In short, you cannot share written assignments, code, and/or other electronic files with other students. If you are unsure, ask the teaching staff.

Finally, be sure to store your work in protected directories. The penalty for cheating is severe, and might jeopardize your whole career as a student - cheating is not worth the trouble. By cheating in the course, you are cheating yourself; the worst outcome of cheating is missing an opportunity to learn. Besides, you will be removed from the course and assigned a failing grade. We also place a record of the incident in your permanent university profile.

Class Schedule

Please refer to Schedule for the tentative schedule for the class. The schedule indicates the project and the assignment activities as well. Any changes will be always announced and reflected on this webpage.