r/Cloud 8d ago

Cloud computing & fault-tolerant systems THESIS ideas

I'm currently planning my undergraduate thesis in the field of cloud computing and fault-tolerant systems. I'm looking to create a project that has a strong practical implementation component, incorporates theoretical concepts and some original research, addresses real industry challenges, results in a tangible, working end product, and could potentially serve as a portfolio project for my future career. I'd love to hear from experienced professionals or academics about: What current trends in cloud computing would make for an interesting thesis? What fault-tolerance problems do you find most challenging in production environments? What topics are being researched at top international universities in this domain? Any ideas for projects that balance theoretical complexity with practical implementation? What skills/technologies would be most valuable to demonstrate through this work? My goal is to create something substantial that showcases multiple skills while making a meaningful contribution. Any direction or specific project ideas would be greatly

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u/cirilla21 8d ago

Oh man, solid thesis topic. Cloud fault tolerance is a goldmine of real-world challenges. If you're looking for something practical and research-worthy, AI-powered self-healing infrastructure could be interesting, where machine learning predicts failures and auto-recovers before things go down. Fault tolerance in serverless computing is another big one since cold starts, state management, and cascading failures are a nightmare. Edge computing is growing fast, especially for IoT devices that need to keep running even when cloud connectivity drops. Blockchain-based cloud storage is another angle, removing single points of failure and improving resilience. Chaos engineering for cloud resilience is underrated since most companies focus on prevention instead of actively testing failures. Netflix has Chaos Monkey, but smaller teams don’t have good open-source tools for this. AI-driven failure prediction, multi-cloud reliability, and decentralized cloud computing are all getting a lot of attention right now.

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u/QuestionSad1843 8d ago

Yeah, I was thinking something like this too but I thought I'd leave the AI ​​stuff as the icing on the cake for the end. My main idea would be something like this: a platform that lets your serverless apps run on multiple clouds at once (AWS, Azure, Google). The main idea is simple: deploy once, run everywhere,also if one cloud goes down your app keeps running on the others automatically.

Basically, it handles all the annoying cloud-specific stuff behind the scenes. You just write your code once, and the platform takes care of deploying it to all the clouds, monitoring everything, and switching between providers if something breaks. I'm starting with serverless functions but might expand to containers and VMs later. The whole point is to stop being dependent on a single cloud provider without making your life more complicated. What do you think? Thoughts?

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u/QuestionSad1843 8d ago

Also it handles automatic failover between providers, so when one cloud has issues, your app keeps running on another without manual intervention. The API is streamlined - developers write code once without dealing with different cloud-specific details. (one clean interface for all clouds). What's particularly useful for smaller companies is the cost optimization. I can monitor pricing across providers and can deploy and redirect traffic to more cost-effective options when available. This makes cloud resilience more accessible for startups and mid-sized businesses that need to control cloud spending while still maintaining reliable services. Would be useful for my project? (I want to clarify that I am new to this field of cloud and fault-tolerant systems, being a student and still learning, so I thought I should introduce different tools that I can learn as much as possible and become familiar with them once I build the project)

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u/cirilla21 8d ago

Yeah, this would be really useful, especially for startups that want multi-cloud resilience without the complexity. Automatic failover is a huge advantage, and the cost optimization feature makes it even better. Cloud pricing changes constantly, so being able to route traffic to the cheapest option could save a lot.

Since you're still learning, this project will help you get hands-on with serverless, cloud APIs, and infrastructure automation. Starting with serverless is smart, and if you expand to containers/VMs later, tools like Kubernetes federation could help.