This full-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2016 conference.

Analysis of Simulation Tools in Cloud Computing

Ashalatha R. Jayashree Agarkhed Siddarama Patil
Department of C.S.E Department of C.S.E Department of E.C.E
P.D.A.C.E.G P.D.A.C.E.G P.D.A.C.E.G
Kalaburagi, India Kalaburagi, India Kalaburagi, India
ashalatha.dsce@gmail.com jayashreeptl@yahoo.com pdapatil@gmail.com

Abstract— For any large scale cloud applications coming simulation technologies related to cloud environment. Section
around large geographic distribution, the large requirements 4 gives overall architecture details of simulation tools. Section
have to be evaluated by the developers. Simulation procedures 5 deals with results and discussion part. Section 6 ends with
are very much useful for the researchers during their research conclusion.
process. Their own algorithms can be tested in a cloud
environment using any type of simulators. Therefore, the
common toolsets have to be used for evaluation and modeling for II. RELATED WORKS
large cloud applications. In this regard, common simulation tools
are defined in this paper for large cloud environments which This section gives a brief idea about the simulation tools
takes care of computing services and user workloads. defined by other researchers. An extensive survey has been
done on cloud computing simulation frameworks. Readily
Keywords—Applications, Cloud Computing, Evaluation, available cloud computing simulators include CloudSim,
Modeling, Simulation, Toolset
CloudAnalyst, Open Cirrus, GroudSim, Network CloudSim,
EMUSIM, SPECI, GreenCloud, DCSim, iCanCloud,
I. INTRODUCTION GDCSim, MDCSim, CDOSim, TeachCloud and many more
Millions of users and making use of cloud computing which are indicated in Fig 1 [4].
technology in today’s world. The definition of cloud
computing can be given as follows. “It is a type of parallel and
distributed system consisting of a collection of inter-connected
and virtualized computers that are dynamically provisioned
and presented as one or more unified computing resources
based on service-level agreements established through
negotiation between service provider and the consumer” [1].
The cloud maintenance perspective is the major advantage
in cloud environment by the cloud providers. The cloud
provides lots of storage services and also major components
which includes infrastructure, virtualization, hardware,
software, platform and network as well. Cloud offers various
types of services which majorly includes Infrastructure as a Fig.1. Types of Cloud Simulators
service for hosting multiple applications, Platform as a service
for building enormous applications as required by the user and The authors in [5] have proposed a flexible and extendible
Software as a service for consuming various applications for simulator for performance evaluation of virtual machine
cloud providers. Top companies giving cloud services include allocation. FlexiCloud adopts appropriate design patterns to
Amazon, Microsoft, Rackspace, Google, Sales force and so assure flexibility and extensibility. This type combines the
on. The simulation techniques are used to check the behavior features for supporting public cloud providers, load balance
of large scale applications. Many researchers have developed
and energy efficiency scheduling.
number of simulation tool set for providing various cloud
services [2].
The authors in [6] have proposed a simulation tool called as
The computing services are provided to the users based on SPECI for exploring cloud scale data centers. The
the abstraction level of the service. IaaS (Infrastructure as a implementation of SPECI simulation tools represents data
Service) gives hardware platform to the consumers for center layout, topology and components for experiment
providing various cloud applications. Simulations make us execution and measuring.
understand about the models before building the systems.
Available basic simulations include CloudSim, GreenCloud The authors in [7] have discussed about execution study of
and other simulation tools provide data center resources for cloud simulators in load balancing approach in cloud
various applications [3]. computing. The importance of cloud simulators and
The remainder of this article is organized as follows. comparative study are well defined. The performance
Section 2 presents the related work. Section 3 presents various

978-1-4673-9338-6/16/$31.00 2016
c IEEE 748
 This full-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2016 conference.
evaluation graph of the cloud simulators are briefly discussed
here.
The authors in [8] have described various applications of high
performance computing (HPC) standard benchmark tests for
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) data centers. The EC2
cloud computing system is chosen to be the best solution for
various HPC applications.
The authors in [9] have considered various parameters of
simulation tools in cloud computing system. The comparison
of various tools related to cloud implementation is given in
detailed format. The authors in [10] have given number of
simulation environments in cloud environment. The
comparison between cloud computing simulators for energy
efficient data centers are described in this work.
III. SIMULATION TECHNOLOGIES
This section gives the details about the technologies used for
the simulation framework in cloud environment. Using
mathematical formulas, the process of modeling a real cloud
environment refers to simulation. Various simulators
discussed are defined as follows.
1. CLOUDSIM: CloudSim toolkit supports modeling of cloud
environment under single or multiple clouds. It supports
number of cloud system components like data centers, virtual
machines and resource provisioning policies [11]. CloudSim is
defined as a self-contained platform for modeling clouds,
service brokers, provisioning and allocation policies. It
provides a simulation framework for cloud computing
infrastructures. For any large scale platforms, CloudSim
models data centers, service brokers and cloud scheduling
policies in cloud environment [12].
Fig. 2. Extension of CloudSim Toolkit
Fig 2. specifies different extension given to CloudSim
simulation framework. These tool sets are broadly used for
various applications over the cloud. Advantages include time
effectiveness and flexibility and applicability at various cloud
environments [13].
2. EMUSIM: EMUSIM is open source software stack which is
mainly used for various applications. This framework is built
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after automated emulation framework and CloudSim toolkit
[14, 15].
3. NETWORK CLOUDSIM: Network CloudSim is an
extended version of CloudSim toolkit which is a framework
designed for real application models. It is capable of
simulating cloud data center network and applications and
used for implementation of network layer of CloudSim
simulation toolkit [16].
4. GREENCLOUD: GreenCloud simulator is used for
calculating the complexity of data center network. It is used as
a packet level simulator for optimizing the energy efficiency
of cloud data centers [17]. It is used for simulating CPU,
memory, storage and network resources. It is an extension of
NS2 network simulator [18].
5. CLOUD ANALYST: Cloud Analyst is basically a visual
modeler used for large cloud applications. It is used for
evaluating the user requirements and the workloads. It helps
the developers to distribute various applications among cloud
infrastructures. This tool suits for allocating the resources for
incoming requests among the given data centers [19].
Fig. 3. Cloud Analyst Design
Fig 3. gives the architectural details of the Cloud Analyst
scheme which is based on the design of CloudSim toolkit.
GUI acts as the controller for application, screen transitions
and user interface activities. The design pattern of Cloud
Analyst comprises of the extension of CloudSim tool which is
shown in the form of figure.
6. iCANCLOUD: iCanCloud is a kind of network simulator
based on SIMCAN simulator used for simulating large storage
networks [20]. It has hypervisor module which is used for
simulating cloud computing architectures. It has capability for
customizing virtual machines for large distributed models
[21].
7. CDOSIM: CDOSim is an cloud deployment option
simulator which is used for simulating response time, cost and
SLA violations of cloud deployment [22].
 This full-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2016 conference.

8. TEACHCLOUD: TeachCloud simulator is used for

educational institutions used for developing GUI toolkit [23]. Table I. Types of Simulation Tools

9. DCSIM: DCSIM means data center simulator which works Simulation Advantages Language used Platform
on IaaS layer of cloud. Tool
CloudSim Time effectiveness, Java GridSim /
Flexibility, SimJava
10. SPECI: Simulation program for elastic cloud infrastructure Applicability
toolkit is used for scalability and performance issues of future CloudAnalyst Easy Allocation of Java CloudSim
data centers. resources
SPECI Used for future data Java SimKit
centers
11. MDCSIM: This toolkit uses data centers related hardware
GreenCloud Used for cloud C++ / octl NS2
parameters for analysis and prediction. communications
Network Performance Java CloudSim
12. GDCSIM: Green data center simulator tool consists of CloudSim Optimization
modular and extensible entities. This toolkit is developed as a EMUSIM Presents accurate Java AEF
component of blue tool infrastructure as BlueSim tool chain. models
DCSIM Extensible Java NA
simulation
13. OCT: The open cloud test bed tool was basically used for framework
cloud computing systems for interoperability. It is a smaller iCanCloud High performance C++ / Omnet SIMCAN
scale test bed used for cloud computing software and applications
infrastructures. GDCSIM Used for energy C++ / XML Bluetool
efficiency of data
centers
14. OPEN CIRRUS: It is used as a cloud test bed used for new
MDCSIM Uses hardware C++ / Java CSIM
cloud applications as well as cloud computing research related parameters
programs. It comprises of experimental data sets which is CDOSIM Runtime Java CloudSim
developed on open source stacks and APIs for cloud. reconfiguration
plans
15. GROUDSIM: This is a discrete event simulation tool used TeachCloud Used for NA CloudSim
development and
for both cloud computing and grid computing technologies validation in
applied for scientific applications. The Ground Entity feature research
is used for user modification purpose. OCT High performance, NA Distributed
Interoperability
IV. ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS OPEN Develops open NA Heterogenous
CIRRUS source stacks and
1. Major advantages of simulation process: APIs
GROUDSIM Used for scientific Java NA
i) Reduces the overall cost incurred for simulation. applications
ii) Knowledge of programming skills are sufficient for the
deployment over the cloud. The steps showing the flow of simulation method is depicted
iii) Good results can be obtained from simulation process [24]. in terms of pseudocode. The working flow of general
simulation tool are shown in Algorithm 1. Firstly, the topology
In this section, the general process creating the simulation has
definition is used to create the basic facilities and its
been defined in detail.
relationship. Next, the development models are added to the
______________________________________________
simulation in Step 3. The models set their default values
Algorithm 1: Simulation Workflow
through node and link configuration in Step 4. During exection
Step 1: Begin stage, simulation facilities generate events and the request is
taken into consideration in Step 5. Once the simulation is
Step 2: Topology Definition
done, the data is made available for statistical analysis during
Step 3: Model Development Step 6. Lastly, the collected data through simulation process
are viewed for graphical visualization in Step 7 and Step 8
Step 4: Node and Link Configuration
ends the simulation workflow.
Step 5: Execution
V. RESULST AND DISCUSSIONS
Step 6: Performance Analysis
Step 7: Graphical Visualization This section discusses about the results drawn from the
Step 8: End extensive survey made from the previous work. Table I gives
the comparison between various simulation tools used in cloud
_________________________________________________ computing environment under various platforms and

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 This full-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2016 conference.
languages used. Cloud simulators are found to be better than
grid computing simulators in large scale environments. For
any simulation of cloud environment, CloudSim is stated as
best simulator compare to other distributed system simulators.
CloudSim architectures comprises of user interface structure,
vm services, cloud services, cloud resources and network
components.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
The overall study of cloud technologies especially in the field
of simulation tools are also an important issue to be considered
for large scale applications. Various simulation framework
need to be addressed for federated cloud environment. This
paper has discussed some of the important simulation
technologies addressed in cloud computing environment.
Number of simulators can be used for conducting various
types of simulations on the cloud environment depending upon
the requirements.
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