School of Systems and Technology

Department of Computer Science

University of Management and Technology, Lahore
CS439-Cloud Computing, Spring 2021

Homework 1 - due Monday, March 22, 2021.

Problem 1
An increasing number of organizations in industry and business sectors adopt cloud sys-
tems.
Answer the following questions regarding cloud computing:
a. List and describe the main characteristics of cloud computing systems.
b. Discuss key enabling technologies in cloud computing systems.
c. Discuss different ways for cloud service providers to maximize their revenues.

Problem 2
Characterize the following three cloud computing models:
a. What is an IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) cloud? Give one example system.
b. What is a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) cloud? Give one example system.
c. What is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) cloud? Give one example system.

Problem 3
Briefly explain each of the following cloud computing services. Identify two cloud providers
by company name in each service category.
a. Application cloud services
b. Platform cloud services
c. Compute and storage services
d. Collocation cloud services
e. Network cloud services

Problem 4
Compare three distributed operating systems: Amoeba, DCE, and MOSIX. Research their
recent developments and their impact on applications in clusters, grids, and clouds. Discuss
the suitability of each system in its commercial or experimental distributed applications. Also
discuss each system’s limitations and explain why they were not successful as commercial
systems.

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Problem 5
An organization debating whether to install a private cloud or to use a public cloud, e.g.,
the AWS, for its computational and storage needs, asks your advice. What information will
you require to base your recommendation on, and how will you use each one of the following
items: (a) the description of the algorithms and the type of the applications the organization
will run; (b) the system software used by these applications; (c) the resources needed by
each application; (d) the size of the user population; (e) the relative experience of the user
population; (d) the costs involved

Problem 6
A. An organization wants to purchase time from a cloud service provider. They want to
develop their own applications to use but rent the hardware/processing power. Which form
of cloud service best fits this, IaaS, PaaS, or Saas? Justify your choice.
B. A small organization has decided to forego purchasing software site licenses for such soft-
ware as Microsoft Office. Instead, the organization wants its employees to access such software
via a cloud service provider. Which form of cloud service best fits this, IaaS, PaaS, or Saas?
Justify your choice.

Problem 7
Compare the Oracle Cloud offerings (see https://cloud.oracle.com) with the cloud services
provided by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.