COMP3008J Distributed Systems 2020/2021
Case study assignment (20% of full grade) (500words max)
DEADLINE: 20th December 2020, 23:59pm
For the purpose of this assignment, you are expected to carry out a case study analysis on a large
distributed system. You are required to provide a case study on any preferred mid-sized or large-sized
company on how they manage their distributed systems. For example, you can consider studying the
distributed systems of any of the following companies viz. Microsoft, LinkedIn, Baidu etc., and provide
an assessment on them. Please note that the choice of the company is completely up to you.
The rationale behind this assessment is to understand how distributed systems are used in the industry
and provide a critical evaluation of the methodology. Note that critical evaluation doesn’t necessarily
imply a negative evaluation of a work, but it is your structured methodical review of its contributions
as well as limitations.
Your paper should include:
• General overview of your chosen company, and the reasons why you chose the selected
company for your case study report.
• Presentation of the system design architecture of the company, and how they manage
scalability, availability and security. (you can use/draw a figure here)
• Presentation of the distributed file system that is used by the company.
• Presentation of the communication protocols (how the different nodes in the distributed
system communicate with each other) used by the company.
• Critical evaluation of your key findings, specifically their implications and limitations,
and highlighting any contradicting viewpoints.
• Conclusions you have drawn based on your case study.
The paper should be around 500 words (excluding references) in length. You should draw on
appropriate academic literature for your case study (use a MINIMUM of 3 references).
SUBMISSION:
The final report must be submitted to Brightspace on/before the deadline. Submissions received after
the deadline will be subject to penalties. The penalties for late submission are as follows:
• Less than 15 minutes past the deadline - no penalty.
• Greater than 15 minutes and less than 2 hours past the deadline - loss of 25% of the final mark.
• Greater than 2 hours past the deadline - loss of 50% of the final mark.
MARKING RUBRIC:
Case study topic: 15%
• Objective statement
• Relevance of the chosen large-scale company
Critical Evaluation: 70%
• Presentation of the system design architecture (a figure that explains the architecture is enough)
• Presentation of the distributed file system that is used
• Presentation of the communication protocols
• Critical evaluation of your key findings and your conclusion
Report Development: 15%
• Quality in method, organisation, interpretation and resolution of paper
• Adequate and consistent referencing and citation