CloudReports : an extensible simulation tool for energy-aware cloud computing environments

The cloud computing paradigm integrates several technological models to provide services to a large number of clients distributed around the world. It involves the management of large data centers that represent very complex scenarios and demand sophisticated techniques for optimization of resource utilization and power consumption. Since the utilization of real testbeds to validate such optimization techniques requires large investments, simulation tools often represent the most viable way to conduct experimentation in this field. This chapter presents CloudReports, an extensible simulation tool for energy-aware cloud computing environments to enable researchers to model multiple complex simulation scenarios through an easy-to-use graphical user interface. It provides report generation features and a simple API (Application Programming Interface) that makes possible the development of extensions that are added to the system as plugins. CloudReports is an open-source project composed of five mandatory modules and an optional extensions module. This chapter describes all these modules, their integration with the CloudSim toolkit, and a case study that demonstrates an evaluation of power consumption of data centers with a power model that is created as a CloudReports extension.