Cloud-based Simulation Tools for Cloud Testing: A Review

Cloud computing has maintained popularity and attraction in the ICT industry. Many business organizations have embraced the benefits that it offers and many more are still working towards cloud computing. One of the many concerns many organizations and individuals have about cloud computing from its inception is how to test the services and opportunities offered by cloud computing. This concern is as a result of the cost of running experiments on real cloud system and the fact that real infrastructure limits experiments within the size of the infrastructure, thereby making it really difficult to reproduce test. The alternative solution to this concern is the use of cloud simulation tools which offer a cloud environment to test cloud services in a repeated and controlled manner at no cost. Many cloud simulation tools have been developed since the inception of cloud computing. These tools have their strengths and weakness in modelling and simulating cloud system. This paper reviews some simulation tools and compares them in terms of their underlying framework, programming language, GUI, availability, cost modelling, energy modelling, simulation time, federation policy and communication model