Abstract
Novel cloud computing algorithms and techniques are initially evaluated via testbeds, simulators and mathematical models of datacenter infrastructure. However, it can be difficult to perform cross validation of these platforms against realistic scale infrastructures due to the prohibitive costs involved. This paper describes an approach to evaluating a cloud simulator through an empirical study involving a micro datacenter of commodity Raspberry Pi devices. To demonstrate the methodology, we compare performance of real-world workloads on this physical infrastructure against corresponding models of the workloads and infrastructure on the CloudSim simulator. After modelling a Raspberry Pi micro datacenter in CloudSim, we claim that the simulator lacks sufficient accuracy for cloud infrastructure experiments.