International Journal of Private Cloud Computing Environment and Management Vol. 2, No. 2, (2015), pp. 27-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.21742/ijpccem.2015.2.2.03 ISSN: 2205-8478 IJPCCEM Copyright ⓒ 2015 GV School Publication Simulation Frameworks to Assess QoS Provisioning Solutions for Cloud- based Services Abul Bashar 1 College of Computer Engineering and Sciences Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia 31952 abashar@pmu.edu.sa Abstract The rapid growth of Cloud Computing as an IT service across diverse organizational structures has brought forward the dire challenge of their performance evaluation. One of the key issues which affects both the cloud providers and the end users is the ability to assess the QoS/QoE of the cloud services under varied service offering scenarios. This provides an opportunity to the cloud computing researchers to propose and implement evaluation frameworks for understanding cloud services QoS/QoE issues. As a matter of fact, many such evaluation frameworks have been proposed which can simulate and test the cloud services before these services are commissioned to the customers, in order to eventually minimize service disruptions and performance degradation issues during the real-time operational phase. Hence the work in this paper attempts to critically evaluate and compare them in an organized and methodological way. The major contribution of the paper is to compare fifteen (15) most popular cloud simulation tools based on six (6) evaluation criteria and make informed recommendations on the choosing the tool based on the user requirements. Another contribution is, a detailed comparative study of the most popular QoS/QoE techniques for Cloud Computing system and their novel taxonomy and classification. As such, the paper aptly provides a rich study of QoS/QoE approaches and cloud computing simulation tools which can be a great resource for cloud service providers who can immensely benefit by adopting a solution based on the proposed guidelines and recommendations provided. Keywords: Cloud Computing, QoS Performance Study, Modeling Tools and Simulation Frameworks 1. Introduction The rapid advancements in the area of computing and information technology (IT) has led to the emergence of a new IT service model termed as Cloud Computing. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition, “Cloud Computing i s a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction” [1]. This IT model is achievable through the use of standard service and deployments models. The three basic service models include delivery of Infrastructure as a Article history: Received (June 10, 2015), Review Result (August 16, 2015), Accepted (September 20, 2015)