Teaching Cloud Computing at restart.network

This week I had a lot of fun teaching the basics of cloud computing at restart.network, a start-up company that offers computer-science bootcamps to refugees, helping them get into the Dutch job-market.

Jesse Donkervliet @LargeResearch (@EEMCS_TUD) introduces the dual scheduling problem of cloud computing to the @Restart_Network students. pic.twitter.com/WY353u4ilF

— Alexandru Iosup (@AIosup) May 1, 2017

The goal of the session is to let students understand what it means to run a program in the cloud, and is part of a larger one-day cloud-computing workshop and follows an introductory lecture. Where is the cloud located? How can I put stuff on the cloud? How do I interact with my programs once they are running? These are some of the questions students get to answer during the workshop.

During roughly 1.5 hours, students go through the steps of manually selecting and booting their own virtual machine in the cloud, and using it run a web-server and do some basic image processing. At the end of the session students no longer view the cloud as a magical place, but understand the basic concepts about the hardware and software that makes this multi-billion dollar industry work.