Fall '21 Week 12
Resources
Video Script
Hello, and welcome to the week 12 Announcements video for CC 510 in fall 2021. So coming up this week, you’ve got lab six, that’s due a Monday. So about six days from now at 7pm, you should hopefully be working on that right now. And then after that most of the deadlines move to December where you have December 3, your final project proposal is due; December 6, we have lab seven that is due and then you have until the end of finals week on December 17, to actually present your final project to me, so there’s not a whole lot left in this class.
For lab six grading, there’s basically four distinct parts to that lab: we’ll check out your Windows file server on your VMs and your Ubuntu file server on your VMs will also check out the Windows web application on your VMs. And then you should have an Ubuntu web application running in the cloud. Of note, remember, for the Windows web application, I show you how to install one application in the videos. And I give you a pointer to install a different one for your lab. So make sure you install the one in the lab. Don’t install the forum, I believe it’s blog engine dotnet that I have you install, you can find another dotnet web application. But blog engine dotnet is by far the easiest. Likewise, for the cloud web application, I show you how to install one thing, I believe I encourage you to install WordPress. And specifically in the cloud, we’re setting it up so that you have a front end server and then the database is on a separate server. So we have to connect those two as well. Then we’ll move on to lab seven. Lab seven is a little catch all it covers a lot of different topics such as backup and restore monitoring DevOps, it’s a little bit everything, it’s kind of the last few things that I wanted to cover in this class. So you’ll have plenty of time to work on lab seven, it’s in several discrete parts as well, so you can work on it. However that works in your schedule.
So for your final project, I believe I’ve talked to everybody a little bit about the final project in this class. But as a quick summary, the whole idea is to either build something or fix something related to the world of system administration. It could be a web resource for a startup company, you could figure out a way to automatically set up laptops for a school, you could design some sort of a central authentication process for a company, discuss things like the benefits of thin clients versus thick clients and labs and offices. If you haven’t come up with a good idea yet, feel free to schedule a time to chat with me about some ideas, I’d love to throw some ideas around and see what’s interesting to you. But the idea is I want you to demonstrate that you’ve learned something in this class by applying the things you’ve learned towards some sort of a final project that you’re interested in.
So to complete your final project, there are three big things that you’ll turn in. The first thing you’ll turn in is a written report. In the final project materials, I give you a small template to give you an idea of what sections you should have in your written report. For clarity, the template uses bullet points to explain what the section should contain. Your report should be a formal written essay, not a list of bullet points - I’ve had some students get confused on that. But the bullet points in the template simply show you what goes in that section. In your written report, you’re going to talk about the research you’ve done in your project propose your idea. Give me a SWOT analysis, a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis. And then of course, don’t forget the wrap up use the outcome of your SWOT analysis to convince me as your CIO, that it’s either a good idea or a bad idea. And it’s totally okay for the idea that you propose. After you go through the SWOT analysis, you realize, that’s a bad idea, we shouldn’t do that. Your written report, you can include in graphics data, whatever as needed, there is no minimum or maximum length I tell you, you need to write enough so that it covers the topic, but not so much that I would get bored reading it. And that’s really all I’ll say, depending on your topic, it might be longer or shorter, but it needs to be cohesive, it needs to have everything in there. And you need to make a convincing case one way or the other for your project. Then you’ll do a live presentation, you can either record a video of yourself presenting, you can do that in zoom or any other tool that you have, or you can schedule a time to meet with me, we’ll hop on Zoom and you can present live, your presentation should run about 15 to 30 minutes plus some time for questions. And it basically goes through the same content in your written report. Again, the idea is to convince me that you have thought through your process, you have done your analysis and you really understand what you’re proposing and the good or bad. The other thing I want you to do for this final project is a small prototype. The prototype is some small self contained part of your larger presentation. So for example, if your project is to take everything on a website and move it into containers, so that you can deploy it on Kubernetes. Maybe your small prototype is to figure out how to get Docker running on DigitalOcean. So very, very small, self contained part of your project. But it shows me that you’ve actually done something a little bit hands on. I tell most people you should spend around two to four hours on the prototype, which is not an awful lot of time. It’s, you know enough time to figure out how to install Docker, maybe set up your own Docker container or something like that. That’s all I want. And then as part of your live presentation, you will show me the small prototype that you’ve been working on as well.
So, like I said, the presentation, it can be either live or pre recorded, you present on or before the Friday of dead week. If you want your err, sorry, the Friday of finals week, if you want, you’re welcome to schedule. Now my Calendly link is open, it shows stuff all the way out through December. If Monday through Friday, eight to five doesn’t work well for you, you can email me for alternative arrangements, I’m more than happy to work with that, especially if I’ve got a little bit of prior knowledge. So be thinking about your presentation. It’s about a month from now. But you can go ahead and get it on the schedule. Now if you want to make sure you reserve the time that you want.
So other than that, I think things are going really well in this class. It looks like everybody’s getting caught up and getting toward the end of the semester. As always, if you have any questions you can catch me on Discord you can find me on Tea Time, you can catch me for one on one, office hours, whatever works best for you. Otherwise, I hope everything’s going well hopefully for your project you can think about you know me making a PowerPoint or something or you know, I’ve had students for their final project not do any PowerPoints at all or they’ve done something completely different. So feel free to make your final project presentation fit with whatever your style is. I look forward to seeing it and let me know if you have any questions.