Grid and Cloud Computing Simulation Tools

Grid computing aims to handle complex applications by a set of computer resources from several distributed nodes. It is different from conventional computing systems such as cluster computing in its loosely coupled, large-scale, high dynamic and heterogeneous nature. Cloud computing is provid ing hardware and software computing resources as a service over the Internet. Such services are classified as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Serv ice (SaaS). Considering the limitations to implement a real grid or cloud computing environment in terms of needed heterogeneous equipments and large-scale networks for research aims, the simulat ion tools are applied widely by researchers to model and evaluate grid/cloud behaviour. Th is paper reviews the current most applied g rid and cloud computing simulation tools as well their capabilities in different aspects of applications.