Enabling HLA-based Simulations on the Cloud

The HLA framework is widely used to formalize simulations and achieve reusability and interoperability of simulation components. In order to manage the underlying system of HLA-based simulations, Grid Computing and Cloud Computing are employed to tackle the details of operation, configuration, and maintenance of simulation platforms that simulation applications run on. However, to make a simulation-run-ready environment among different types of computing resources and network environments is challenging, especially for modelers who may not be familiar with the management of distributed systems. In this article, we propose a new cloud-based scheme for HLA based simulations, aiming to ease the management of underlying resources, particularly for those located on geographically distributed locations, and to achieve rapid elasticity that can provide adequate computing capability to end users. An approach for handling diverse network environments is given, by adopting it, idle public resources can be easily configured as additional computing resources for the local cloud infrastructure. In the experiments, compared with its corresponding Grid Computing platform, this Cloud Computing platform achieves a similar performance but with many advantages that Cloud can provide, such as energy consumption, security, and multi-user availability.