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ITEC850 Network System Design

Department of Computing

Macquarie University

ITEC850 Assignment 2
Due: Thursday 1st June 2017

Submission: via ilearn (TurnItIn)

Submit an electronic copy to the TurnItIn link on iLearn on Thursday 4th May.

Please also print double sided and hand paper copy in at Thursday evening
lecture.

Background

The aim of this assignment is to enable you to understand the relationship

between applications running within a cloud environment and the underlying
cloud infrastructure.

The assignment is in two parts; the first part focuses on the architecture of three
applications that includes a legacy application as well as modern RESTful web
based applications.

The second part involves the underlying cloud infrastructure.

Your task is to design these applications and the underlying cloud infrastructure
in such a way as to ensure the performance, continuity and security of the
applications.

Your submission should be in the form of a written report describing your design
decisions. You will need to clearly outline arguments as to why you have made
your design decisions. Wherever there are choices between multiple design
decisions or technologies you should explain why your choice is the appropriate
one.

The report should be approximately 2500 words (10 pages) long.

Part 1 - Client Application (5 marks)

Design three applications that include both a modern RESTful web based
application and a legacy application using a traditional DBMS such as Oracle or
Microsoft SQL Server.

Describe these applications through the use of diagrams and system

requirements. The description should include a list of virtual machines, their
roles, and their resource (compute, memory, storage and connectivity)
requirements. Your specification should include placement and configuration of
NFV controls. You should also include any support services that might be needed
for the applications to function (e.g. authentication services, DNS, etc.)

Your answer should include descriptions of network topology, link bandwidths,

layer-3 address allocation (subnets) and any other details that your deem relevant.

Part 2a - Cloud Infrastructure (6 marks)

You will now need to describe and diagram the underlying cloud infrastructure
that will enable your applications to run in a well performing, continuous and
secure way.

You will need to describe and diagram your environment to include physical
servers including capacity requirements (CPU, RAM, NICs, etc.), hypervisor and
control configuration, underlay networks and storage infrastructure.

Your answer should include descriptions of network topology, link bandwidths

and subscription ratios, layer-3 address allocation (subnets), layer-2 broadcast
management (VLANs, overlay end-points, mac learning for Broadcast Unknown
unicast and Multicast trac). You should also consider how you will manage
locality constraints on trac, and any other details that your deem relevant.

Part 2b - Operations (4 marks)

Lastly, please outline the orchestration process for deploying the applications
within your cloud system. You should include appropriate service naming,
transaction lists and rollback points and procedures.
Example application diagram

Tier 0

Internet

Internet

Firewall
Choke filter

Load
Balancer
FEP Load Balancers

Tier 1 - Presentation Layer

Nginx Nginx Nginx 3 x Linux nodes

Nginx web server

Firewall Screening firewall

Tier 2 - Application Layer

Django
1 x Linux node

Django framework

Firewall
Screening firewall

Tier 3 - Data Access Layer

Postgresql
1 x Linux node

PostgreSQL DBMS

Note: this example is not complete as it contains no resource information such as

demarcation of subnets amongst other things. It is simply provided so that you
can visually see what is meant by designing an application within the context of
the assignment.
Presentation (As per assignment 1)
As with all assignments at ITEC level, the presentation should be professional.
You should use headings and subheadings to structure your assignment top down.
You do not need heading numbers. Headings should use a sans serif font (such as
Helvetica, avoid Arial), and paragraph text a serif font (I prefer friendly looking
fonts such as Palatino, rather than the formal looking Times). Subheadings should
be a smaller size than their parent heading. On structure, your headings should at
least be structured from the question. Do not double space the lines.

Submission
Please submit assignments as PDF documents to TurnItIn. (Do not submit
Microsoft Word documents).

Marking Guidelines
The following criteria will factor in the assessment of this assignment:

understanding of the subject matter;

relevance of answer written and of the arguments proposed;
planning and organisation;
logical coherence;
critical evaluation;
comprehensiveness of research;
evidence of synthesis;
innovation, creativity, originality;
utilisation of proper academic [or other] style (e.g. citation of references)
wherever required.
The language used with appropriate spelling, grammar, and punctuation must be
of a sucient standard to permit assessment of the above criteria.

Plagiarism
You should be well aware of the University's plagiarism policy. In this assignment,
you must be particularly careful to avoid plagiarising your articles or any other
sources of information. If you wish to directly quote any portion of another
document, you must enclose your quotation in quotation marks and immediately
following the quotation you must identify your source. It is important that you do
not attempt to write your answers by pasting together pieces of text that you find
on the Internet. You need to write your own words and phrases that express your
own ideas. You must also list all sources used in your answer/essay in a
bibliography at the end of the answer/essay.