Fall '26 Week 10
Resources
Video Script
[00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Week 10 announcements for CIS 527 and CC 510 in Fall 2026. So, this week you should be getting started on Lab 5. The first round of Lab 5 quizzes are due this Friday, as well as your response to the third discussion session that we had last week with Kyle Hudson. So make sure you work on that. This lab actually has two sets of quizzes. So the second set of quizzes on all of the Docker stuff is going to be new next Wednesday on the fourth. And then on Friday, November 6, we’re going to have the fourth discussion session, which we’ll talk about briefly. And you should also be getting graded for Lab 5 by Friday, November the sixth.
[00:46] So for Lab 5, we’re going to move some stuff into the cloud. For this one, you’re going to create two droplets in the cloud using DigitalOcean. These will both be Ubuntu droplets. You’ll set up SSH and Firewall and some simple websites running Apache. You’re also going to set up your own DNS domain name to point to those websites. And you’ll set up a Docker reverse proxy so that you can talk to Docker containers that are running up in the cloud. This lab, I think, is kind of a welcome diversion from some of the other stuff. It’s generally a little bit easier of a lab, but it gives us some setup for some of the things we’re going to do later on in Lab 6 and Lab 7.
[01:13] So Lab 5 grading is pretty simple. What you should be able to do is SSH from your computer to your front-end droplet. And then from that droplet, you should be able to SSH to your back-end droplet. But you should not be able to access your backend droplet from the outside. It should only be accessible via front end due to private networking and firewall rules. We’ll check your firewall, your date and time, and some other things, and we’ll actually check all your websites to make sure those are working. So double-check all of that. One thing you may run into is if you’re working from campus, you cannot SSH out from campus. So you either have to use some sort of a VPN to get out of campus, or you’ll have to just work off of campus’s network. It’s the same problem that some students would have had for Lab 4 if they’re working in the cloud for remote desktop. So just be aware of that. If you’re working from on campus, you may run into some SSH problems. You can do a lot of the work in DigitalOcean’s virtual terminal. That does work as well, but I do want you to at least test SSH outside of that terminal at least once.
[02:10] So for this slide, you’re going to set up a couple of cloud services. They’re hosted on DigitalOcean.com. Unfortunately, DigitalOcean has done away with their really cool trial offer. They used to have a trial offer you could get up to $200 credits for free. I could not find any active trial offers for DigitalOcean available this time other than a $5 offer for new accounts. I do have a referral code for DigitalOcean if you want it. I don’t think it gives you anything on your end, but I think if you spend enough money, it does give me something on the back end. So it does help out that way. So if you want my DigitalOcean referral code, let me know. You can also go to Namecheap and specifically you need to go to nc.me, not the main Namecheap website. But if you go to nc.me, there is an offer there for university students to get one free .me domain name for a year. So you can do that. If either of these are going to be a problem for you, either running stuff in DigitalOcean or signing up for Namecheap or anything like that, let me know. I have ability to either create services on my account that I can cover, or I can set you up as a sub-user under my accounts and do it that way. Generally for each student, the total cost for running all of this for these labs should be about $11. You’ll spend about a month’s worth of DigitalOcean credits on two $5 droplets. And in Namecheap, I think it’s $1 to reserve your domain name, if that. So in total, I’m only asking you to spend about $11. But if that does present a problem or you have any issues, let me know. I do have workarounds for that. Just reach out and I’d be happy to help out with that.
[03:40] Other thing you should be thinking about is your final project. Don’t forget there is a final project in this class. The module is open on Canvas, so you can always go take a look at that. The final project in this class is mostly a thought exercise. The idea is you’re going to come up with some IT project, and following along, especially with the stuff we heard from Scott Finkeldei, you’re going to go through the process of proposing that IT change and then analyzing it as an IT project. So your IT project could be building something or fixing something that’s broken. It could be speccing out a web resource for a new startup. It could be setting up laptops for a school, a central authentication system for a company, debating whether you want thick clients versus thin clients in computer labs, et cetera. You know, anything vaguely IT is fair game here. So if you’re having trouble coming up with a final project idea, now is the time to schedule a time to chat with me for some ideas. You’ve got until around Thanksgiving to officially propose your final project. And then what you’ll do is you’ll do analysis and a write-up of that project. You don’t actually have to be able to do the final project that you propose, but you will do some small little proof of concept where you play around with the idea. But you can propose things that you can’t physically do. You just have to be able to analyze them and convince me that you understand what you’re doing.
[04:58] Last up, we have our fourth discussion session coming up here on Friday, November the 6th. We’re going to have one of my good friends, Jordan Wheeler, come in and talk to you. He is a Navy veteran. And since he graduated from K-State many years ago, he’s been working as a cloud infrastructure engineer and a software developer, mostly in the startup scene. So he’s got a little bit of a different view on things working in startups versus large companies. But he does a lot of stuff with cloud infrastructure, Docker, Kubernetes, all of this fun stuff that we’re going to be learning in Lab 5. So Jordan’s going to come in and share some of his expertise and background working in those systems. And that is going to be a week from this Friday on November the 6th at 2.30. So pay attention to that. Other than that, hopefully things are going well. As always, if you have any questions, you can ping me on Ed Discussion, come to office hours, schedule a one-one office hours time with me. I’m always happy to help. Otherwise, hopefully things are going well. We’re over the halfway point. We’re at week 10 of 17 of the semester. So hopefully things go well as we get toward the end. But as always, if you have any questions, let me know. Otherwise, good luck, and I will see you again next week.