CloudSim4DWf: A CloudSim-extension for simulating dynamic workflows in a cloud environment

The resources provisioning for workflow applications has become one of the most difficult challenges in the cloud. It consists in taking an appropriate decision when mapping tasks to resources while meeting QoS requirements. The need to modify workflows while they are being executed has become a major requirement to deal with unusual situations and evolution. Therefore, it is necessary to implement a provisioning policy which takes into account dynamic changes of workflow, while satisfying some performance criteria defined by the user. Simulation tools are an efficient solution to evaluate the performance of cloud applications. They offer a free environment that can mimic the behavior of a real cloud environment. Nevertheless, existing simulators are based on static application models. In this paper, we introduce CloudSim4DWf, which extends the existing CloudSim simulator with a new resource provisioning policy for dynamic workflows. The different experiments that we present show the efficiency of our tool.