Problem Set 0: Getting onto the cloud
Due: Friday 9/12 (by 9:30am)
Consider this a warm-up exercise in getting acquainted with "the cloud". As discussed in class, one of the key ideas behind "cloud computing" is the rapid provisioning of computing resources in large data centers enabled by virtualization technology. This is closely related to the notion of "utility computing", where computing cycles are treated like electricity, water, gas, etc.: available on demand, and you pay for what you use. In this class we'll be specifically using Amazon's Web Services: particularly, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3). Of course, do recognize that there are many different "cloud providers" out there (see, for example, GoGrid and AppNexus)—but Amazon seems to be the most mature at this time in terms of available offerings.
For the 0th problem set, take a look a Cloud9, a Hadoop library I've written that will help get you started with MapReduce in Hadoop. Go through the tutorial on getting started with EC2: by the end of the tutorial, you will have started your own Hadoop cluster on EC2 and run the basic word count demo. Of course, feel free to poke around the rest of the documentation also.
Deliverables
This problem set is due by 9:30am, Wednesday 9/10. Send me an email, with "LBSC 878A: Problem Set 0" as the subject. In the email body, copy-and-paste verbatim the following statement: "I have successfully completed Problem Set 0 as described on the course homepage. I was able to start a Hadoop cluster on EC2 and I have run the cloud9 word count demo."
Make sure the statement is actually true, and that's it for problem set 0!
