«Deployment of a private IaaS Cloud for educational purposes using free software»

Abstract

Cloud Computing is a fairly broad concept used in various contexts and that is sometimes confusing. In this case, we refer to the use of a cloud that mainly provides computing and storage capabilities as a service, which is known by the English term Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Initially, IaaS was only offered by specialized companies to their clients in what is known as public clouds, such is the case of the well-known Amazon Web Services. Later, private clouds emerged, which are built with their own resources within an organization’s own data center. The software with which an IaaS cloud can be implemented has evolved tremendously in recent years, both in the functionalities it offers and in the simplification of the configuration, so it is feasible today to deploy a private cloud even in small organizations with few resources.

IaaS, in addition to being an interesting technology, offers enormous possibilities as a tool in computer studies and other related teachings, since it allows the use of very varied and complex scenarios in the classroom quickly and simply. In this seminar we will describe the experience of a secondary school in which an IaaS private cloud has recently been implemented for educational use using the OpenStack free software.

Bio

Pedro Alberto Molina Coballes is a computer science teacher at the IES Gonzalo Nazareno de Dos Hermanas (Seville). He has a degree in Physics from the University of Seville, a title he obtained in 1998 and a doctorate from the same University at the end of 2003. Since then he has been teaching Systems Administration Training Cycles, focusing his interest on teaching free technologies. Simultaneously, he has worked as systems administrator in the departments and educational centers in which he has worked since 1999. During the 2011/12 academic year, he was the coordinator of an innovation project for the implementation of the Cloud Computing infrastructure for use education in four secondary schools.