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Distributed Systems Saarland
University Summer Semester
2010 |
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Overview | Announcements
| Course Description | Schedule
| Project |
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Course Overview
Instructors:
Teaching
Assistants:
Lectures:
The class meets on Mondays and Thursdays,
12:00-14:00 hours. The location is E1.3, HS 001. Lecture notes, course schedule, recommended
readings, and assignments can be found here. Students are encouraged to meet the
teaching staff during office hours for help with any questions or problems.
Tutorials will be offered when needed. Mailing
Lists:
<ds-ss10@lists.mpi-sws.org>:
includes everyone involved with the course, the teaching staff as well as the
students. Important announcements, such as exam schedules and assignment
deadlines, will be posted on this list. Students can also use it to form
project teams, to discuss projects, and to exchange ideas and experience.
Everyone should join and read this group mailing list daily. To subscribe,
please visit https://lists.mpi-sws.org/listinfo/ds-ss10. <ds-ss10-staff@mpi-sws.org>
: includes all members of the teaching staff, the instructors as well as the
teaching assistants. Students should use this for all communication with the
course staff. Please, email individual staff members only
when the communication is personal, and is not related to the course in
general. Announcements
Lab 8 has
been posted. Lab 7 has
been posted. Lab 6 has
been posted. Lab 5 has
been posted. Lab 4 has
been posted. Lab 3 has
been posted. Lab 2 has
been posted. Lab 1 has
been posted. A tentative course
schedule is now available. The course mailing list is now set up.
Please subscribe at https://lists.mpi-sws.org/listinfo/ds-ss10
using the same email address you use to send messages (postings from
non-members will be rejected). Course Description
This course introduces students to the
principles, design, and implementation of distributed systems. The lectures focus
primarily on the principles and design of distributed systems, and cover
communication, distributed storage, naming, synchronization, fault tolerance,
peer-to-peer systems and data centers. A course project exposes students to
the implementation aspects of distributed systems and serves to solidify
students' understanding of the course material. Intended
Audience / Prerequisites
This core course is open to Bachelor and
Master students. Bachelor students must have passed the basic courses on Programming
2 and Math 2, as well as the concurrent programming or alternatively the
operating systems course. Proficiency in programming (C/C++) and UNIX
development tools (e.g. make, gcc, gdb) is strictly required to take this
course. The language of the course is English. All
lectures, office hours, tutorials and communication with the course staff
will be conducted exclusively in English. Textbook
Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design,
by Jean Dollimore, Tim Jindberg, George Coulouris. (Addison Wesley; 4th
edition, May 2005); or Distributed Systems: Principles and
Paradigms, by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Maarten van Steen. (Prentice Hall; 2nd
edition, October 2006) A small number of papers will be made
available to the class. The lecture will cover some topics in more depth than
the books, and also in a different order. Lecture
Notes
Summary lecture notes will be available on
the course web-site for some of the material covered in the class. These
notes are primarily meant to help students with taking notes. However, they
will not accurately or consistently cover all the material discussed in the
lectures. Students are expected to know all material covered in the lectures,
and in the assigned readings and projects. Therefore, students should not
rely only on the lecture notes. They should attend class regularly, take
their own notes and complete all assignments. Exams
There will be a midterm exam (covering
material from the first half of the course), a term end exam (covering
material from the second half of the course), and a repeat exam (covering the
entire course). The exams carry equal weight. All exams will be open book and
based on the material covered in lectures, readings, and projects. Grading
To pass the course, a student must (i) pass
the project assignments, and (ii) pass at least two out of the three exams.
To pass the project assignments, the sum of all points earned by a student in
the project assignments must be at least 50% of the maximal possible points.
To pass an exam, a student must score at least 50% of the maximum possible
points in the exam. Your course grade will be based on a
weighted score computed from the points you earn in your successful
examinations and your project assignments. If a student takes all three
examinations, then the exam with the lowest result will not be considered
when computing the course grade. Project scores count towards 50% of the
weighted score, and exam scores account for the remaining 50% of the weighted
score. Homework
Assignments
Homework assignments will be provided to
help students prepare for the exams. Solutions should be turned within one
week after the assignments are handed out. Teaching assistants will read over
the solutions, identify common mistakes being made, and discuss them during
the tutorial hours. Teaching assistants will also provide sample solutions.
However, they will not grade the submitted solutions; homework assignments
will not count towards the course grade. Class
Project
In a sequence of project assignments,
you'll build a multi-server file system called Yet-Another File System (yfs) in
the spirit of Frangipani.
The eight project stages correspond to the design and implementation of (1)
lock server, (2) basic file server, (3) reading, writing and sharing files,
(4) MKDIR, REMOVE and locking, (5) caching lock server, (6) caching extent
server and consistency, (7) Paxos, and (8) replicated lock server. The project will require a substantial
amount of software design and implementation. The software produced will be
graded based on its ability to successfully pass a set of functional and
performance tests. Project teams: Students are required to work on the projects in
small teams of two students. It is the responsibility of the students to form
and manage their own teams. We do not allow individual project solutions. If
your teammate drops the course you must immediately find a replacement,
irrespectively of the current project stage. All team members must be involved in all
aspects of the project. To collaborate effectively, team members should
divide the project responsibilities so that they can work in parallel.
However, each member is responsible for, and should be familiar with, all the
work done by the team. Proper time management is critical – if you don't
start working on the assignments early you will not be able to complete the
projects! Project deadlines: Programming projects must be submitted by 11:59 PM
on their due dates (posted on this website). Projects should be submitted by
email to ds10-assignment@mpi-sws.org. Expect a confimation within 48 hours of
handing in your project and please contact the instructors if you don't
receive one. Please remove all unnecessary files from the code you hand in
such as object files or executables. When submitting the project, please use
the following format for the subject line: Assignment N - LastName1 LastName2 Late submissions: We will apply a flexible slip date policy for late
submissions. Each student is allocated an automatic extension of 4 calendar
days for the entire semester. Students can use the extension on any project
during the semester in increments of one day. For instance, you can hand in
one project assignment 4 days late, or one assignment 2 days late and two
assignments 1 day late. For team submissions, the slip time will be
deducted from each team member's remaining slip time. Students will not
receive credit for late submissions beyond the automatic extensions. Honor code: It is acceptable to discuss ideas, algorithms, or
approaches to solving problems and assignments with other students. We
encourage you to give and get such advice as it will help you learn the
material better and improve your ability to work in a team. However, what you
submit must be the work of your own group; copying code or solution sets from
any source is strictly prohibited. |
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