Open-source simulators for Cloud computing: Comparative study and challenging issues

Resource scheduling in infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is one of the keys for large-scale Cloud applications. Extensive research on all issues in real environment is extremely difficult because it requires developers to consider network infrastructure and the environment, which may be beyond the control. In addition, the network conditions cannot be controlled or predicted. Performance evaluations of workload models and Cloud provisioning algorithms in a repeatable manner under different configurations are difficult. Therefore, simulators are developed. To understand and apply better the state-of-the-art of Cloud computing simulators, and to improve them, we study four known open-source simulators. They are compared in terms of architecture, modeling elements, simulation process, performance metrics and scalability in performance. Finally, a few challenging issues as future research trends are outlined.