Optimal execution of large scale simulations in the cloud. The case of ROUTE-TO-PA SIM online preference simulation

Cloud computing enables massive parallelization of execution of large scale simulation experiments but it is complex to do it in a cost-efficient way. We present methodology used to achieve this goal that was devised in the ROUTE-TO-PA project, where we develop a simulator for generalization of the dynamics of preferences observed on the social platform to the entire population. Experimenting with such a complex simulation model over a computing cluster in the cloud requires solving not only technical challenges (solution architecture and management of dynamically changing infrastructure) but also requires optimization of computing cost. In this work we present our approach (ROUTE-TO-PA SIM) to configure and manage such environment in the Amazon Web Services cloud setting.