Testing Elastic Computing Systems

Elastic computing systems are a new breed of software system that arose with cloud computing and continue to gain increasing attention and adoption. They stretch and contract in response to external stimuli, such as the input workload, aiming to balance resource use, costs, and quality of service. The relationships between quality, costs, resources, and workloads are complex and--given such systems´ runtime adaptability--inherently dynamic, making it difficult to properly design elastic computing systems. Their quality assurance is imperative, yet highly challenging. Here, the authors introduce novel ideas on testing for elastic computing systems, identify some primary research challenges, and discuss future directions for this topic.