Title: TeachCloud: a cloud computing educational toolkit

Authors: Yaser Jararweh; Zakarea Alshara; Moath Jarrah; Mazen Kharbutli; Mohammad N. Alsaleh

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Jordan P.O. Box 3030, Irbid 22110, Jordan ' Department of Computer Science, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Jordan P.O. Box 3030, Irbid 22110, Jordan ' Department of Computer Engineering, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Jordan P.O. Box 3030, Irbid 22110, Jordan ' Department of Computer Engineering, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Jordan P.O. Box 3030, Irbid 22110, Jordan ' Department of Software and Information Systems, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28223, USA

Abstract: Cloud computing is an evolving and fast-growing computing paradigm that has gained great interest from both industry and academia. Consequently, universities are actively integrating cloud computing into their IT curricula. One major challenge facing cloud computing instructors is the lack of a teaching tool to experiment with. This paper introduces TeachCloud, a modelling and simulation environment for cloud computing. TeachCloud can be used to experiment with different cloud components such as: processing elements, data centres, storage, networking, service level agreement (SLA) constraints, web-based applications, service oriented architecture (SOA), virtualisation, management and automation, and business process management (BPM). Also, TeachCloud introduces MapReduce processing model in order to handle embarrassingly parallel data processing problems. TeachCloud is an extension of CloudSim, a research-oriented simulator used for the development and validation in cloud computing.

Keywords: teaching cloud computing; CloudSim; network topologies; MapReduce; SLA management; Rain workload generator; business process management; BPM; computing education; educational toolkit; modelling; simulation; processing elements; data centres; storage; networking; service level agreements; web-based applications; service-oriented architecture; SOA; virtualisation; map-reduce.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCC.2013.055269

International Journal of Cloud Computing, 2013 Vol.2 No.2/3, pp.237 - 257

Published online: 28 Feb 2014 *

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