Performance Evaluation of the Illinois Cloud Computing Testbed
Ahmed Khurshid, Abdullah Al-Nayeem, Indranil Sen Gupta · Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) · 2009
Abstract. Cloud computing has the potential to bring sophisticated computing facility at the door-steps of users. The performance of services hosted at a cloud generally depends on its computation, storage and networking models. Since the storage and communication costs in a data-intensive applica-tion usually dominate the overall cost, we analyze the performance of the storage and communication facilities of a cloud. Little work has been done to measure the performance of existing cloud facilities. In this project, we experiment on the Open Cirrus cloud computing research testbed located at the University of Illinois. We evaluate the performance of this cloud environment while providing service to users located at different parts of the world. We use PlanetLab and Emulab as part of our experiments to mimic distributed users and cloud facilities. We observe that the performance mostly vary because of the network characteristics between the cloud facility and its users. Performance also depends on internal cloud architecture. Based on our experiences, we suggest different possible enhancements of existing cloud computing environments. 1