A Review of Cloud Computing Simulation Platforms and Related Environments

Recent years have seen an increasing trend towards the development of Discrete Event Simulation (DES) platforms to support cloud computing related decision making and research. The complexity of cloud environments is increasing with scale and heterogeneity posing a challenge for the efficient management of cloud applications and data centre resources. The increasing ubiquity of social media, mobile and cloud computing combined with the Internet of Things and emerging paradigms such as Edge and Fog Computing is exacerbating this complexity. Given the scale, complexity and commercial sensitivity of hyperscale computing environments, the opportunity for experimentation is limited and requires substantial investment of resources both in terms of time and effort. DES provides a low risk technique for providing decision support for complex hyperscale computing scenarios. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the development and extension of tools to support DES for cloud computing resulting in a wide range of tools which vary in terms of their utility and features. Through a review and analysis of available literature, this paper provides an overview and multi-level feature analysis of 33 DES tools for cloud computing environments. This review updates and extends existing reviews to include not only autonomous simulation platforms, but also on plugins and extensions for specific cloud computing use cases. This review identifies the emergence of CloudSim as a de facto base platform for simulation research and shows a lack of tool support for distributed execution (parallel execution on distributed memory systems).

[1]  Ilango Sriram,et al.  SPECI, a Simulation Tool Exploring Cloud-Scale Data Centres , 2009, CloudCom.

[2]  Xiaohong Jiang,et al.  DartCSim: An enhanced user-friendly cloud simulation system based on CloudSim with better performance , 2012, 2012 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Cloud Computing and Intelligence Systems.

[3]  Fang Liu,et al.  NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture , 2011, 2011 IEEE World Congress on Services.

[4]  Rajkumar Buyya,et al.  CloudSim: a toolkit for modeling and simulation of cloud computing environments and evaluation of resource provisioning algorithms , 2011, Softw. Pract. Exp..

[5]  Karan Mitra,et al.  CloudSimDisk: Energy-Aware Storage Simulation in CloudSim , 2015, 2015 IEEE/ACM 8th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC).

[6]  Minghua Chen,et al.  Joint VM placement and routing for data center traffic engineering , 2012, 2012 Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM.

[7]  Takahiro Hirofuchi,et al.  Adding a Live Migration Model into SimGrid: One More Step Toward the Simulation of Infrastructure-as-a-Service Concerns , 2013, 2013 IEEE 5th International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science.

[8]  Ayan Banerjee,et al.  GDCSim: A simulator for green data center design and analysis , 2014, ACM Trans. Model. Comput. Simul..

[9]  R. Prodan,et al.  GroudSim: An Event-Based Simulation Framework for Computational Grids and Clouds , 2010, Euro-Par Workshops.

[10]  Wilhelm Hasselbring,et al.  CDOSim: Simulating cloud deployment options for software migration support , 2012, 2012 IEEE 6th International Workshop on the Maintenance and Evolution of Service-Oriented and Cloud-Based Systems (MESOCA).

[11]  Ross Mcnab,et al.  Simjava: A Discrete Event Simulation Library For Java , 1998 .

[12]  Dzmitry Kliazovich,et al.  GreenCloud: A Packet-Level Simulator of Energy-Aware Cloud Computing Data Centers , 2010, GLOBECOM.

[13]  Takahiro Hirofuchi,et al.  SimGrid VM: Virtual Machine Support for a Simulation Framework of Distributed Systems , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing.

[14]  Rajkumar Buyya,et al.  EMUSIM: an integrated emulation and simulation environment for modeling, evaluation, and validation of performance of Cloud computing applications , 2013, Softw. Pract. Exp..

[15]  Hanan Lutfiyya,et al.  DCSim: A data centre simulation tool for evaluating dynamic virtualized resource management , 2012, 2012 8th international conference on network and service management (cnsm) and 2012 workshop on systems virtualiztion management (svm).

[16]  Luís Veiga,et al.  An Adaptive Distributed Simulator for Cloud and MapReduce Algorithms and Architectures , 2014, 2014 IEEE/ACM 7th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing.

[17]  Rajkumar Buyya,et al.  CloudAnalyst: A CloudSim-Based Visual Modeller for Analysing Cloud Computing Environments and Applications , 2010, 2010 24th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications.

[18]  Radu Prodan,et al.  Fostering Energy-Awareness in Simulations behind Scientific Workflow Management Systems , 2014, 2014 IEEE/ACM 7th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing.

[19]  Jesús Carretero,et al.  iCanCloud: A Flexible and Scalable Cloud Infrastructure Simulator , 2012, Journal of Grid Computing.

[20]  Wei Zhao,et al.  Modeling and simulation of cloud computing: A review , 2012, 2012 IEEE Asia Pacific Cloud Computing Congress (APCloudCC).

[21]  Rajkumar Buyya,et al.  A toolkit for modelling and simulating data Grids: an extension to GridSim , 2008, Concurr. Comput. Pract. Exp..

[22]  Rajkumar Buyya,et al.  NetworkCloudSim: Modelling Parallel Applications in Cloud Simulations , 2011, 2011 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing.

[23]  Luiz Fernando Bittencourt,et al.  CEPSim: Modelling and simulation of Complex Event Processing systems in cloud environments , 2016, Future Gener. Comput. Syst..

[24]  Erich Schikuta,et al.  Bazaar-Extension: A CloudSim Extension for Simulating Negotiation Based Resource Allocations , 2016, 2016 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC).

[25]  Henri Casanova,et al.  Scheduling distributed applications: the SimGrid simulation framework , 2003, CCGrid 2003. 3rd IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid, 2003. Proceedings..

[26]  Rajkumar Buyya,et al.  iFogSim: A toolkit for modeling and simulation of resource management techniques in the Internet of Things, Edge and Fog computing environments , 2016, Softw. Pract. Exp..

[27]  Danielo G. Gomes,et al.  CloudReports: An Extensible Simulation Tool for Energy-Aware Cloud Computing Environments , 2014 .

[28]  Rong-Guey Chang,et al.  DCSim: Design Analysis on Virtualization Data Center , 2012, 2012 9th International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing and 9th International Conference on Autonomic and Trusted Computing.

[29]  Steffen Becker,et al.  SimuLizar: Design-Time Modeling and Performance Analysis of Self-Adaptive Systems , 2013, Software Engineering.

[30]  Mahmoud Al-Ayyoub,et al.  CloudExp: A comprehensive cloud computing experimental framework , 2014, Simul. Model. Pract. Theory.

[31]  Rajkumar Buyya,et al.  CloudNetSim++: A toolkit for data center simulations in OMNET++ , 2014, 2014 11th Annual High Capacity Optical Networks and Emerging/Enabling Technologies (Photonics for Energy).

[32]  Hanan Lutfiyya,et al.  DCSim: A data centre simulation tool , 2013, 2013 IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM 2013).

[33]  Iosif Legrand,et al.  The MONARC toolset for simulating large network-distributed processing systems , 2000, 2000 Winter Simulation Conference Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37165).

[34]  Steffen Becker,et al.  The Palladio component model for model-driven performance prediction , 2009, J. Syst. Softw..

[35]  Abadhan Saumya Sabyasachi,et al.  Cloud computing simulators: A detailed survey and future direction , 2014, 2014 IEEE International Advance Computing Conference (IACC).

[36]  Ewa Deelman,et al.  WorkflowSim: A toolkit for simulating scientific workflows in distributed environments , 2012, 2012 IEEE 8th International Conference on E-Science.

[37]  Rajkumar Buyya,et al.  GridSim: a toolkit for the modeling and simulation of distributed resource management and scheduling for Grid computing , 2002, Concurr. Comput. Pract. Exp..

[38]  Andrew A. Chien,et al.  The MicroGrid: a Scientific Tool for Modeling Computational Grids , 2006 .

[39]  Yaser Jararweh,et al.  TeachCloud: a cloud computing educational toolkit , 2013, Int. J. Cloud Comput..

[40]  Sebastian Lehrig,et al.  CloudScale: scalability management for cloud systems , 2013, ICPE '13.

[41]  Mayank Shekhar,et al.  Comparison of Various Cloud Simulation tools available in Cloud Computing , 2015 .

[42]  Arnaud Legrand,et al.  Scalable Multi-purpose Network Representation for Large Scale Distributed System Simulation , 2012, 2012 12th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (ccgrid 2012).

[43]  Takahiro Hirofuchi,et al.  Adding Virtual Machine Abstractions Into SimGrid: A First Step Toward the Simulation of Infrastructure-as-a-Service Concerns , 2013, 2013 International Conference on Cloud and Green Computing.

[44]  Hwangnam Kim,et al.  MR-CloudSim: Designing and implementing MapReduce computing model on CloudSim , 2012, 2012 International Conference on ICT Convergence (ICTC).

[45]  Johan Tordsson,et al.  The CACTOS Vision of Context-Aware Cloud Topology Optimization and Simulation , 2014, 2014 IEEE 6th International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science.

[46]  Arnaud Legrand,et al.  Adding Storage Simulation Capacities to the SimGrid Toolkit: Concepts, Models, and API , 2015, 2015 15th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing.

[47]  P. Mell,et al.  The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing , 2011 .

[48]  Nik Bessis,et al.  SimIC: Designing a New Inter-cloud Simulation Platform for Integrating Large-Scale Resource Management , 2013, 2013 IEEE 27th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA).

[49]  Georgia Sakellari,et al.  A survey of mathematical models, simulation approaches and testbeds used for research in cloud computing , 2013, Simul. Model. Pract. Theory.

[50]  Rajkumar Buyya,et al.  CloudSimSDN: Modeling and Simulation of Software-Defined Cloud Data Centers , 2015, 2015 15th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing.

[51]  Wenhong Tian,et al.  A Toolkit for Modeling and Simulation of Real-Time Virtual Machine Allocation in a Cloud Data Center , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering.

[52]  Rahul Malhotra,et al.  Study and Comparison of Various Cloud Simulators Available in the Cloud Computing , 2013 .

[53]  Mohammed H. Sqalli,et al.  UCloud: A simulated Hybrid Cloud for a university environment , 2012, 2012 IEEE 1st International Conference on Cloud Networking (CLOUDNET).

[54]  Chita R. Das,et al.  MDCSim: A multi-tier data center simulation, platform , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing and Workshops.