Performance Analysis of Cloud Computing Architectures Using Discrete Event Simulation

Cloud computing offers the economic benefit of on-demand resource allocation to meet changing enterprise computing needs. However, the flexibility of cloud computing is disadvantaged when compared to traditional hosting in providing predictable application and service performance. Cloud computing relies on resource scheduling in a virtualized network-centric server environment, which makes static performance analysis infeasible. We developed a discrete event simulation model to evaluate the overall effectiveness of organizations in executing their workflow in traditional and cloud computing architectures. The two part model framework characterizes both the demand using a probability distribution for each type of service request as well as enterprise computing resource constraints. Our simulations provide quantitative analysis to design and provision computing architectures that maximize overall mission effectiveness. We share our analysis of key resource constraints in cloud computing architectures and findings on the appropriateness of cloud computing in various applications.