SOF: Zero Configuration Simulation Optimization Framework on the Cloud

Simulation models are becoming an increasingly popular tool for the analysis and optimization of complex real systems in different fields. Finding an optimal system design requires performing a large parameter sweep. In this paper, we present the design of SOF (Simulation Optimization and exploration Framework on the cloud), a framework which exploits the computing power of a cloud computational environment in order to realize effective and efficient simulation optimization strategies. SOF offers several attractive features: SOF requires "zero configuration" as it does not require any additional software installed on the remote node, SOF is transparent to the user, since the user is totally unaware that system operates on a distributed environment, SOF is highly customizable and programmable, since it enables the running of different simulation optimization scenarios on different simulation toolkits. The tool has been fully developed and is available on a public repository under the Apache public licence.