CloudSim 7G: An Integrated Toolkit for Modeling and Simulation of Future Generation Cloud Computing Environments

Background: Cloud Computing has established itself as an efficient and cost-effective paradigm for the execution of web-based applications, and scientific workloads, that need elasticity and on-demand scalability capabilities. However, the evaluation of novel resource provisioning and management techniques is a major challenge due to the complexity of large-scale data centers. Therefore, Cloud simulators are an essential tool for academic and industrial researchers, to investigate the effectiveness of novel algorithms and mechanisms in large-scale scenarios. Aim: This paper proposes CloudSim 7G, the seventh generation of CloudSim, which features a re-engineered and generalized internal architecture to facilitate the integration of multiple CloudSim extensions within the same simulated environment. Methods: As part of the new design, we introduced a set of standardized interfaces to abstract common functionalities and carried out extensive refactoring and refinement of the codebase. Results: The result is a substantial reduction in lines of code with no loss in functionality, significant improvements in run-time performance and memory efficiency (up to 25∖% less heap memory allocated), as well as increased flexibility, ease-of-use, and extensibility of the framework. Conclusion: These improvements benefit not only CloudSim developers but also researchers and practitioners using the framework for modeling and simulating next-generation Cloud Computing environments.