MCA-223
Cloud Computing
Computing rented rather than owned — service and deployment models, virtualisation and its security, data centre architecture, and building on a real platform.
- Semester
- Semester 3
- Credits
- 3
- Scheme
- 3 lectures a week
- Contact hours
- 40 across four units
- Category
- Core Elective - II
What the paper is
Cloud Computing is the elective with the most direct professional payoff and the least stable subject matter, and the syllabus handles that by teaching the concepts and then naming the platforms. Units I and II are durable — service models, deployment models, virtualisation — and Units III and IV are current.
Virtualisation in Unit II is the idea everything else rests on. If you understand what a hypervisor does and what hardware virtualisation costs, then elasticity, multi-tenancy, containers and most of the security material follow without being memorised separately.
Unit IV is explicitly practical: setting up cloud services, containers, the cloud shell, building virtual infrastructure, deploying a VM and configuring load balancing. It is done on whichever platform the lab uses, and it pairs with the Core Elective II lab.
What to concentrate on
- IaaS, PaaS and SaaS compared on what you manage versus what the provider manages is the single most asked question in the paper. Learn it as a diagram with an example of each.
- The four deployment models — public, private, community, hybrid — are the second. Be ready to recommend one for a described organisation and justify it, because that is usually how it is set.
- For the security unit, concentrate on multi-tenancy, data location and the shared responsibility model. Those three explain most cloud-specific risks and let you reason about one you have not seen before.
Syllabus, unit by unit
Summarised from the approved scheme. Hours are the contact hours the scheme allots, which is a fair guide to where the marks sit.
Unit I · Introduction and cloud architecture
10 hours- Definition, evolution and characteristics of cloud computing
- Service models — IaaS, PaaS and SaaS — and their comparison
- Issues, challenges and applications of cloud computing; overview of security configurations
- Cloud architecture and deployment models — public, private, community and hybrid — compared
- Identity as a service; an overview of data-intensive computing through MapReduce
Unit II · Virtualisation and security
10 hours- Virtualisation and its implementation, middleware support
- Advantages and applications of virtualisation
- Virtualisation implementation techniques, hardware virtualisation, types of virtualisation
- Security challenges in cloud computing; information security, privacy and trust
Unit III · Data centres and the major platforms
10 hours- Architectural building blocks of a data centre
- Industry direction and the operational and technical phasing overview
- Computing with the major providers: Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM
- Accessing cloud platforms through web applications, web APIs and web browsers
Unit IV · Migration and hands-on implementation
10 hours- Migrating to the cloud: services for individuals, mid-market and enterprise; best practices and the future of cloud computing
- Web services: structure and objective; cloud portals, groups and mobile apps
- Setting up cloud services and containers, handling the cloud shell, setting up projects
- Building virtual infrastructure, deploying a virtual machine, configuring load balancing
How it is examined
- Question 1 is compulsory, covers the whole syllabus, and is made of objective or short-answer questions. It carries 12 marks.
- The rest of the paper is four units matching the four above. Each unit sets two questions and you attempt one, so there are four more answers at 12 marks each.
- Examiners are asked to map every question to a course outcome using Bloom's taxonomy, which is why questions are phrased as “apply”, “analyse” or “evaluate” rather than only “explain”.
The pass mark is 40 out of 100 in every paper.
Learning objectives
- Basic concepts of cloud computing and its applications
- Virtualisation and its role in implementing cloud computing
- Data centre overview and architecture
- Popular public clouds and their features
- Security issues in the cloud and the available countermeasures
Assumed beforehand
- Computer Networks
- Linux
- Programming in web technologies or full stack development
Paired in the scheme with MCA-265 Lab based on Core Elective II.
Books it is taught from
- TB1V. K. Pachghare, “Cloud Computing”, PHI Learning, 1st edition, 2016
- TB2Venkata Josyula, Malcolm Orr and Greg Page, “Cloud Computing: Automating the Virtualized Data Center”, Cisco Press, 1st edition, 2016
- TB3Toby Velte, Anthony Velte and Robert Elsenpeter, “Cloud Computing: A Practical Approach”, McGraw Hill, 1st edition, 2015
- TB4Mitanshi Joshi, “Agile, DevOps and Cloud Computing with Microsoft Azure”, BPB Publications, 1st edition, 2019
Notes for MCA-223
Lecture notes, question papers and assignments filed against MCA-223 are in the library. Everything there has been checked by a moderator before it appears, and an account is free — new ones are approved by hand, which is what keeps the shelf clean.