Smart CloudBench -- Automated Performance Benchmarking of the Cloud

As the rate of cloud computing adoption grows, so does the need for consumption assistance. Enterprises that are looking to migrate their IT systems to the cloud, would like to quickly identify providers that offer resources with the most appropriate pricing and performance levels to match their specific business needs. However, no two vendors offer the same resource configurations, pricing and provisioning models, making the task of selecting appropriate computing resources complex, time-consuming and expensive. In this paper, we present Smart CloudBench - a platform that automates the performance benchmarking of cloud infrastructure, helping potential consumers quickly identify the cloud providers that can deliver the most appropriate price/performance levels to meet their specific requirements. Users can estimate the actual performance of the different cloud platforms by testing representative benchmark applications under representative load conditions. Experimentation using the prototype implementation shows that higher price does not necessarily translate to better or more consistent performance, and benchmarking results can provide more information to help enterprises make better informed decisions.