My Journey with Cloudsim Simulation Toolkit

It was the month of December 2012 when I first read about the cloudsim simulation toolkit while searching for cloud computing research gaps. I was undergoing my Master's thesis semester. 

My research supervisor guide was Dr. Mala Kalra, and she recommended exploring the field of the task or resource scheduling. At that moment, framing the problem statement was not a big challenge. But, understanding cloudsim and simulating the solution using the cloudsim simulation toolkit was.

To fulfill my Master's degree requirement, the research solution was required to be simulated. It was essential to eat this frog(learning cloudsim ??) even when I was not pro with Java programming.

Though I have read the paper on Cloudsim, still I started searching for it on the internet to check if I could find some help to get started. I found the Cloudsim google group maintained by the team of Dr. Raj Kumar Buyya. This small community has helped me a lot and helped me frame my path of learning with the cloudsim simulation toolkit.

So here are the steps I followed, along with reading the base paper on Cloudsim a number of times:

1. Studied thoroughly most of the relevant examples provided in the org.cloudbus.cloudsim.examples, org.cloudbus.cloudsim.examples.power.planetlab and org.cloudbus.cloudsim.examples.network. I did this by simply debugging and following the flow of execution. This research exercise took me approximately one month.
2. Once I understood the flow of examples, I tried changing some of the examples code w.r.t. cloudlets, virtual machine, and data center characteristics configurations. It helped get more insights into the work's implementation. And the exercise added another month to my learning and research with cloudsim.
3. Moving on, I went more into the source code of the cloudsim. I started analyzing the working of Datacenter, DatacenterBroker, Cloudsim, CloudsimTags, DeferredQueue, FutureQueue, SimEntity, and SimEvent Classes. In addition to these classes, I studied all the extensions of the same to have the possibility of implementations concerning power-aware implementations and simulating virtualization techniques. This step was the turning point in my learning with cloudsim as I could appreciate the complete simulation engine's working. This final research with cloudsim learning took me approximately two months.

After all these steps, I could able to connect all the dots of this Cloudsim API puzzle. Then, it took me another month to get the optimized results and comparative analysis of different algorithms. And, finally summited my work to fulfill my Master's degree requirement.

Once everything was over, I wondered what if some dedicated learning resources were available for this tool? Then close to 4 months could have been saved.

It was the first time I decided to create few video lecture resources of Cloudsim Tutorials and put them on youtube as Superwits Academy for fellow cloudsim developer communities.

Later I could able to consolidate a few more articles on www.CloudsimTutorials.online website. And as an appreciation from Dr. Raj Kumar Buyya, the Cloudsim Tutorials website's link is mentioned on the cloudsim project page. 

I also started helping individuals with their work for free to promise the commitment to help back the community with their contributions. Still, it happened very rarely and even not consistent. But the best part is that more than a dozen researchers were able to file their patents, which brings me a sense of satisfaction as a teacher.

 Over time, I was so overwhelmed with repetitive queries. If I tell you the truth, it has become dull and started becoming a burden on my professional life as I was teaching full time at a private university.  

This is how the course "Essential Cloudsim Tutorials" came into existence. I could able to produce a course content that is over 12 hours and discusses all the essential components. The components explained in the course are used to implement a range of research problem solutions like task scheduling, resource scheduling, Virtual machine scheduling, Virtual machine placements, Virtual machine Migrations, integrating the new utilization data sets, etc. 

The course flow helps to reduce the individual's cloudsim learning curve to just two weeks (if spent dedicatedly). And even though the course is only 11 months old, it has been followed by more than 300 research scholars(Masters/Ph.D.) and has been widely appreciated.

This journey with Cloudsim has brought me a lifetime of learning and network. And I feel privileged that I could able to serve the Cloudsim Developer's Community in some way. 

I am also grateful to Dr. Mala Kalra and Dr. Raj Kumar Buyya for all the support and appreciation that they have showered during all this time.

Finally, thank you to all the readers/viewers/subscribers who have followed my content over all these years and shared their feedback, which ultimately helped in improving with the due course of time.

Do you have more to say on my journey or have a few more questions to ask?

I will look forward to it and will be more than happy to answer.??