SaaSim - um framework para simulação de Software as a Service.

Abstract

With the popularisation of cloud computing paradigm, Web applications started to being delivered as a service in a model known as Software as a Service (SaaS). In such model, contractors pay for a subscription while the provider keeps responsible for execution costs and infrastructure management. As a consequence, several problems related to Web application management have been revisited according to new market models of infrastructure and application in the cloud. However, it is notable that researchers have difficulties in running long duration measurement experiments in order to evaluate new solutions considering SaaS business model, leading them to fall back on simulation experiments. This work designs a simulator that can be used to evaluate, in long duration scenarios, resource management techniques used to run horizontally scalable Web applications delivered as SaaS, avoiding costs associated with real measurement experiments while offering a methodology to allow the validation of models implemented with such simulator. We present SaaSim, a framework for horizontally scalable Web application simulation which focus on SaaS business model. This implementation is extensible and applies the validation methodology proposed to the single-tier application model implemented. We still present a simple framework extension for the evaluation of a dynamic provisioning algorithm for managing a single-tier Web application with a business model inspired by BigCommerce, in a long duration scenario of one year.