ReliaCloud-NS: A scalable web-based simulation platform for evaluating the reliability of cloud computing systems

This paper discusses the implementation, architecture, and use of a graphical web-based application called ReliaCloud-NS that allows users to (1) evaluate the reliability of a cloud computing system (CCS) and (2) design a CCS to a specified reliability level for both public and private clouds. The software was designed with a RESTful application programming interface for performing nonsequential Monte Carlo simulations to perform reliability evaluations of a CCS. Simulation results are stored and presented to the user in the form of interactive charts and graphs from within a web browser. The software contains multiple types of CCS components, simulations, and virtual machine allocation schemes. ReliaCloud-NS also contains a novel feature that evaluates CCS reliability across a range of varying virtual machine allocations and establishes and graphs a CCS reliability curve. This paper discusses the software architecture, the interactive web-based interface, and the different types of simulations available in ReliaCloud-NS and presents an overview of the results generated from a simulation.