CloudSim Express: A Novel Framework for Rapid Low Code Simulation of Cloud Computing Environments

TL;DR

CloudSim Express is a new framework that simplifies cloud environment simulation with low-code, human-readable scripts, maintaining extensibility and significantly reducing complexity and code size compared to existing simulators.

Contribution

It introduces an architectural framework for low-code, extensible cloud simulation, implemented on CloudSim, improving usability without sacrificing flexibility.

Findings

Over 71% reduction in code complexity

89% reduction in lines of code

Enhanced usability and extensibility

Abstract

Cloud computing environment simulators enable cost-effective experimentation of novel infrastructure designs and management approaches by avoiding significant costs incurred from repetitive deployments in real Cloud platforms. However, widely used Cloud environment simulators compromise on usability due to complexities in design and configuration, along with the added overhead of programming language expertise. Existing approaches attempting to reduce this overhead, such as script-based simulators and Graphical User Interface (GUI) based simulators, often compromise on the extensibility of the simulator. Simulator extensibility allows for customization at a fine-grained level, thus reducing it significantly affects flexibility in creating simulations. To address these challenges, we propose an architectural framework to enable human-readable script-based simulations in existing Cloud environment simulators while minimizing the impact on simulator extensibility. We implement the proposed framework for the widely used Cloud environment simulator, the CloudSim toolkit, and compare it against state-of-the-art baselines using a practical use case. The resulting framework, called CloudSim Express, achieves extensible simulations while surpassing baselines with over a 71.43% reduction in code complexity and an 89.42% reduction in lines of code.