Abstract
This paper shows how a desktop simulation can be migrated into its cloud equivalence using Windows Azure. It is undeniable that simulators are expensive and cost-intensive regarding maintenance and upgrading, and thus, it is not always feasible to buy such a simulator. Therefore, it will be of great significance if we have an approach, which provides simulators with services through the Internet with the aim of making them accessible from anywhere and at any time. That is, researchers and developers can focus on their actual researches and experiments and the intended output results. The cloud simulation infrastructure of this contribution is capable of hosting different simulations with the ability to be cloned as cloud services. The simulator example used here mimics the process of a distillation column to be seen as a widely used plant in several industrial applications. The cloud simulation core embedded in the cloud environment is fully independent from the developed user-interface of the simulator meaning that the cloud simulator can be connected to any user-interface. This allows simulation users such as process control and alarm management designers to connect to the cloud simulator in order to design, develop and experiment their systems on a “pay-as-you-go” basis as it is the case of most cloud computing services, aimed at providing computing services as utilities like water and electricity. For coding convenience, Windows Azure was selected for both developing the cloud simulation and hosting it in the cloud because of the fact that the source code of the desktop simulator is already available in C# based on dot Net technology. From a software technical point of view, UML graphical notations were applied in order to express the software requirement specifications of the distributed cloud simulation, representing a widespread technology in the object-oriented design and analysis.
Highlights
Simulations imitate real phenomena using a set of mathematical formulas
At the end of using the simulation, the user logouts and this leads Windows Azure to terminate the cloud session in a such a way that, on the one hand, the assigned virtual machine (VM) machine will be returned to the VM pool, and on the other, it calculates the costs of using the cloud simulation
One of the major reasons why this is of great significance is that user-interface designers for e-learning training systems or process control and alarm management developers can design and develop their systems as desired and they have the possibility to connect to the simulator to test their creations. After having completed this project, we came to the conclusion that cloud computing offers the promise of outsourcing the task of providing and managing execution platform to users; it offers the possibility of making a simulation technology much more readily accessible to the simulation community
Summary
Simulations imitate real phenomena using a set of mathematical formulas. In essence, simulations play an important role in many fields such as academic research, e-learning and industrial development [1]. A key observation is that the user needs a certain simulator for research and experimenting purposes regarding number of uses are varied: while someone needs it only once such as the case in one-time projects, others’ work is fully dependent on such a simulator as it is the case in training and education as well as in user-interface development and design of process control and alarm management systems [4]; the rest need it for a period, for example in some research projects In this sense, it is not always feasible to buy a simulator since, as stated earlier, such simulators are expensive and cost-intensive regarding maintenance and upgrading. Various process variables such as operating pressure, temperatures inside the distillation column, liquid levels etc., play a central role in achieving the degree of separation required during the operation of monitoring and controlling the distillation column process
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