This article describes the final semester of a Master's year at UQAC. Here's an overview of the two courses I chose and the internship required for graduation.
Rio Tinto First Nation Culture Pavilion
A last quarter different from others
This third term is shortened by half. The courses have the same number of hours as the others, but the sessions are twice as close together: Two courses with two 2h45 sessions per week for two months, whereas in the other quarters we had four courses with one session per week for four months.
View of Chicoutimi and the fjord from the Pulperie, located to the south-west
I chose two courses from a more limited list than in previous quarters. Here is my selection:
🕵🏻♂️ Computer forensics
I had a short introduction to forensics in the previous term, and this course is a methodological, legal and technical deepening of it. The program covers both legal and business aspects. Each course is followed by practical work to apply our knowledge and develop our research skills. I studied several aspects:
› File system; hard disk & SSD operation, volume analysis and data acquisition methods.
› Network; reminders of necessary knowledge, certificate operation, Man-in-the-Middle attack execution and detection, and Wireshark capture analysis.
› Software vulnerability; an understanding of the memory of a running program, and the execution of a buffer overflow attack with GDB.
› RAM memory; a case study, the Volatility tool and process recovery.
This course was both very interesting and varied, covering a wide field of computer forensics.
Aluminium technology center next to UQAC (Chicoutimi plays an important role in the aluminum industry)
🏬 Datacenter set-up and security
This second and final network-oriented course enabled me to understand the architecture of a datacenter by creating one myself. Don't worry if you're not comfortable with networking, the beginning of the course is devoted to a brush-up on the necessary concepts.
The security aspect is not forgotten; knowing how a datacenter works helps to understand the sensitive points to be protected. I also learned how to set up a tunnel to secure access to this datacenter. It's a project using the IPSec protocol, based on one I'd already done in my 1st year of engineering studies at ISEN. You can find my work here: A brief cryptographic analysis of IPSec
The aim of this datacenter is to be able to create virtual machines (VM), duplicate them, update them and access them from a web portal. This must be done securely and optimized with distributed resources. I'm going to vulgarize the contents of the datacenter I've set up. We used four IBM physical servers for the whole class with VMWare's VCenter.
Virtual server
Each group building its own datacenter creates four ESX (VMWare virtual servers) to simulate physical servers. Each group needs four servers to set up a datacenter. The advantage of ESX is that we can all share the same four physical servers. This also facilitates connections and other network manipulations, which can be done virtually from a computer.
Communication mediums
A communication medium is any space that allows a frame to be transmitted unchanged to the next network element. Example: a cable between two routers.
Un datacenter a besoin de plusieurs réseaux, qui sont des supports de communication. Leur but est de relier les ESX (qui simulent des serveurs physiques) entre eux, et à internet, pour un accès à distance. Cela permet au datacenter d’apparaitre comme une entité unique. Voici ces réseaux :
› Gestion; used to manage and configure the datacenter and VMs,
› VMotion; used to migrate VMs from one server to another. This network must provide high bandwidth, as files are very large. The datacenter needs to execute actions quickly to avoid being unavailable or causing inconsistencies. It will also support storage services.
› Production; which enables access to VMs from a web portal.
Simplified diagram of my virtual datacenter
ESX architecture
Each ESX has :
› A web server for management from the vCenter (VMWare),
› A VM migration service,
› A local storage service,
› A shared storage service, shared between ESXs
› A VM part, where virtual machines are connected to the "production" communication medium for external user access.
Each of the parts mentioned above has an interface connected to a distributed virtual switch (DVS) that enables ESX to communicate with each other (the four virtual servers) and with the outside world (Internet access via the physical server interfaces).
This information won't enable you to set up a datacenter, but it will, I hope, help you understand the concept and what lies behind the image of a datacenter. If you're curious to learn more, go for it: the teacher is pedagogical, very friendly and a bit of a joker. You won't see the time go by.
From left to right: Science and Health Pavilion (linked to the Main Pavilion by the footbridge), Monts-Valin (in the distance) and the Student Residence
Internship and end of year
Following the last term, comes the internship period. Unlike the ISEN M2 six-month internship, which takes place during the final year, the UQAC internship, of the same duration, takes place after the school year.
As for your ISEN engineering degree, by completing your three quarters in Quebec, you will validate all the ECTS you need to obtain it. This means you can graduate at the same time as your classmates in France.
You can do your internship in Canada or abroad. If you're doing your internship in Canada, you'll need to go through a number of administrative steps to obtain a co-op work permit to do your internship as a non-resident. UQAC explains everything.
Once your UQAC degree has been validated, you can apply for an open work permit, i.e. one that does not require you to work for a specific employer. This will allow you to start your working life with peace of mind, until you potentially obtain a permanent resident card or even Canadian nationality.
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