THE WRENCH FRAMEWORK

A simulation workbench for modern cyberinfrastructure

WRENCH builds on SimGrid to deliver validated models, fast execution, and expressive scenario design. Prototype runtime systems, stress-test scheduling strategies, and explore platform behavior with confidence before deployment.

Define

Capture platforms, workflows, and services with reusable abstractions.

Simulate

Run large scenarios fast, with transparent performance signals.

Validate

Compare outcomes to production behavior and tune models.

  MODULAR BUILDING BLOCKS

Compose CI services, runtime systems, and algorithms from reusable components.

  VALIDATED MODELS

Anchor results in models that reflect observed system behavior.

  SCALABLE RUNS

Simulate large scenarios quickly on a single workstation.

  REPRODUCIBLE EXPERIMENTS

Share configurations and rerun experiments with consistent outcomes.

  EDUCATION TOOLKIT

eduWRENCH delivers classroom-ready simulation modules from freshman to graduate levels.

RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS

Citing WRENCH & published work

Grab the official citation and browse papers authored by the WRENCH team.

Cite WRENCH

BibTeX entry:

@article{wrench,
    title = {Developing Accurate and Scalable Simulators of Production Workflow Management Systems with WRENCH},
    author = {Casanova, Henri and Ferreira da Silva, Rafael and Tanaka, Ryan and Pandey, Suraj and Jethwani, Gautam and Koch, William and Albrecht, Spencer and Oeth, James and Suter, Fr\'{e}d\'{e}ric},
    journal = {Future Generation Computer Systems},
    volume = {112},
    number = {},
    pages = {162--175},
    year = {2020},
    doi = {10.1016/j.future.2020.05.030}
}

WRENCH Team Publications

Journals, conferences, workshops, and reports curated by the team.

Curated list

On the Feasibility of Simulation-driven Portfolio Scheduling for Cyberinfrastructure Runtime Systems, H. Casanova, Y. C. Wong, L. Pottier, R. Ferreira da Silva, Workshop on Job Scheduling Strategies for Parallel Processing (JSSPP), 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22698-4_1

Peachy Parallel Assignments (EduPar 2022), H. M. Bücker, H. Casanova, R. Ferreira da Silva, A. Lasserre, D. Luyen, R. Namyst, J. Schoder, P-A. Wacrenier, D. P. Bunde, 12th NSF/TCPP Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Education (EduPar), 2022, doi: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9835532

Teaching Parallel and Distributed Computing Concepts in Simulation with WRENCH, H. Casanova, R. Tanaka, W. Koch, R. Ferreira da Silva, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.jpdc.2021.05.009

GLUME: A Strategy for Reducing Workflow Execution Times on Batch-Scheduled Platforms, E. Hataishi, P.-F. Dutot, R. Ferreira da Silva, H. Casanova, Workshop on Job Scheduling Strategies for Parallel Processing (JSSPP), 2021, doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-88224-2_11

Evaluating energy-aware scheduling algorithms for I/O-intensive scientific workflows, T. Coleman, H. Casanova, T. Gwartney, R. Ferreira da Silva, International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS), 2021, doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-77961-0_16

Peachy Parallel Assignments (EduHPC 2021), H. Casanova, R. Ferreira Da Silva, A. Gonzalez-Escribano, H. Li, Y. Torres, D. P. Bunde, 2021 IEEE/ACM Ninth Workshop on Education for High Performance Computing (EduHPC), doi: 10.1109/EduHPC54835.2021.00012

Emerging Frameworks for Advancing Scientific Workflows Research, Development, and Education, H. Casanova, E. Deelman, S. Gesing, M. Hildreth, S. Hudson, W. Koch, J. Larson, M.A. McDowell, N. Meyers, J.L. Navarro, G. Papadimitriou, R. Tanaka, I. Taylor, D. Thain, S.M. Wild, R. Filgueira, R. Ferreira da Silva, 2021 IEEE Workshop on Workflows in Support of Large-Scale Science (WORKS), doi: 10.1109/WORKS54523.2021

Peachy Parallel Assignments (EduHPC 2020), H. Casanova, R. Ferreira da Silva, A. Gonzalez-Escribano, W. Koch, Y. Torres, D. P. Bunde, 2020 IEEE/ACM Workshop on Education for High-Performance Computing (EduHPC), doi: 10.1109/EduHPC51895.2020.00012

WorkflowHub: Community Framework for Enabling Scientific Workflow Research and Development, R. Ferreira da Silva, L. Pottier, T. Coleman, E. Deelman, H. Casanova, 15th Workshop on Workflows in Support of Large-Scale Science (WORKS’20), 2020, doi: 10.1109/WORKS51914.2020.00012

Modeling the Performance of Scientific Workflow Executions on HPC Platforms with Burst Buffers, L. Pottier, R. Ferreira da Silva, H. Casanova, E. Deelman, IEEE Cluster, 2020, doi: 10.1109/CLUSTER49012.2020.00019

Developing Accurate and Scalable Simulators of Production Workflow Management Systems with WRENCH, H. Casanova, R. Ferreira da Silva, R. Tanaka, S. Pandey, G. Jethwani, W. Koch, S. Albrecht, J. Oeth, F. Suter, Future Generation Computer Systems, 2020, vol. 112, p. 162-175, doi: 10.1016/j.future.2020.05.030

Characterizing, Modeling, and Accurately Simulating Power and Energy Consumption of I/O-intensive Scientific Workflows, R. Ferreira da Silva, H. Casanova, A. Orgerie, R. Tanaka, E. Deelman, F. Suter, Journal of Computational Science, 2020, doi: 10.1016/j.jocs.2020.101157

Teaching Parallel and Distributed Computing Concepts in Simulation with WRENCH, R. Tanaka, R. Ferreira da Silva, H. Casanova, Workshop on Education for High-Performance Computing (EduHPC), 2019, doi: 10.1109/EduHPC49559.2019.00006

Bridging Concepts and Practice in eScience via Simulation-driven Engineering, R. Ferreira da Silva, H. Casanova, R. Tanaka, F. Suter, Workshop on Bridging from Concepts to Data and Computation for eScience (BC2DC’19), 15th International Conference on eScience (eScience), 2019, p. 609-614, doi: 10.1109/eScience.2019.00084

Accurately Simulating Energy Consumption of I/O-intensive Scientific Workflows, R. Ferreira da Silva, A-C. Orgerie, H. Casanova, R. Tanaka, E. Deelman, F. Suter, 2019 International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS), 2019, p. 138-152, doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-22734-0_11

WRENCH: A Framework for Simulating Workflow Management Systems, Casanova, H., Pandey, S. , Oeth, J., Tanaka, R., Suter, F., and Ferreira da Silva, R., 13th Workshop on Workflows in Support of Large-Scale Science (WORKS’18), 2018, p. 74–85, doi: 10.1109/WORKS.2018.00013

THEY USE WRENCH

Research Outcomes & Papers Using WRENCH

WRENCH has enabled research in 38 articles. Explore outcomes by year and browse the papers that rely on WRENCH across the workflows community.

Paper list

Scroll to browse publications that use WRENCH.

Automated Calibration of Parallel and Distributed Computing Simulators: A Case Study — J. McDonald, M. Horzela, F. Suter, H. Casanova, 2024

An exploration of online-simulation-driven portfolio scheduling in workflow management systems — J. McDonald, J. Dobbs, Y. C. Wong, R. Ferreira da Silva, H. Casanova, 2024

Automated Calibration of a Simulator of MPI Application Executions — Y. C. Wong, F. Suter, K. Mehta, H. Casanova, J. McDonald, 2024

Simulation of Large-Scale HPC Storage Systems: Challenges and Methodologies — J. Monniot, F. Tessier, H. Casanova, G. Antoniu, 2024

Automated Calibration of Parallel and Distributed Computing Simulators: A Case Study — J. McDonald, M. Horzela, F. Suter, H. Casanova, 2024

Modeling Distributed Computing Infrastructures for HEP Applications — M. Horzela, H. Casanova, M. Giffels, A. Gottmann, R. Hofsaess, G. Quast, S. R. Tisbeni, A. Streit, F. Suter, 2024

Modelling Distributed Heterogeneous Computing Infrastructures for HEP Applications — M. Horzela, H. Casanova, M. Giffels, A. Gottmann, R. Hofsaess, G. Quast, S. Rossi Tisbeni, A. Streit, F. Suter, 2023

Data-aware and simulation-driven planning of scientific workflows on IaaS clouds — T. N'Takpé, J. E. Gnimassoun, S. Oumtanaga, F. Suter, 2022

WfCommons: A Framework for Enabling Scientific Workflow Research and Development — T. Coleman, H. Casanova, L. Pottier, M. Kaushik, E. Deelman, R. Ferreira da Silva, 2022

Peachy Parallel Assignments (EduPar 2022) — H. M. Bücker, H. Casanova, R. Ferreira da Silva, A. Lasserre, D. Luyen, R. Namyst, J. Schoder, P-A. Wacrenier, D. P. Bunde, 2022

On the Feasibility of Simulation-driven Portfolio Scheduling for Cyberinfrastructure Runtime Systems — H. Casanova, Y. C. Wong, L. Pottier, R. Ferreira da Silva, 2022

Co-scheduling Ensembles of In Situ Workflows — T.M.A. Do, L. Pottier, R. Ferreira da Silva, F. Suter, S. Caino-Lores, M. Taufer, E. Deelman, 2022

BottleMod: Modeling Data Flows and Tasks for Fast Bottleneck Analysis — A. Losser, J. Witzke, F. Schintke, B. Scheuermann, 2022

Evaluating energy-aware scheduling algorithms for I/O-intensive scientific workflows — T. Coleman, H. Casanova, T. Gwartney, R. Ferreira da Silva, 2021

GLUME: A Strategy for Reducing Workflow Execution Times on Batch-Scheduled Platforms — E. Hataishi, P-F. Dutot, R. Ferreira da Silva, H. Casanova, 2021

Teaching Parallel and Distributed Computing Concepts in Simulation with WRENCH — H. Casanova, R. Tanaka, Koch, William, R. Ferreira da Silva, 2021

WfChef: Automated Generation of Accurate Scientific Workflow Generators — T. Coleman, H. Casanova, R. Ferreira da Silva, 2021

Modeling the Linux page cache for accurate simulation of data-intensive applications — H-D. Do, V. Hayot-Sasson, R. Ferreira da Silva, C. Steele, H. Casanova, T. Glatard, 2021

Emerging Frameworks for Advancing Scientific Workflows Research, Development, and Education — H. Casanova, E. Deelman, S. Gesing, M. Hildreth, S. Hudson, W. Koch, J. Larson, M.A. McDowell, N. Meyers, J-L. Navarro, G. Papadimitriou, R. Tanaka, I. Taylor, D. Thain, S.M. Wild, R. Filgueira, R. Ferreira da Silva, 2021

Characterizing, Modeling, and Accurately Simulating Power and Energy Consumption of I/O-intensive Scientific Workflows — R. Ferreira da Silva, H. Casanova, A-C. Orgerie, R. Tanaka, E. Deelman, F. Suter, 2020

A Workflow Scheduling Algorithm for Reducing Data Transfers in Cloud IaaS — J. E. Gnimassoun, T. N'Takpe, G. H. F. Diedie, S. Oumtanaga, 2020

Modeling the Performance of Scientific Workflow Executions on HPC Platforms with Burst Buffers — L. Pottier, R. Ferreira da Silva, H. Casanova, E. Deelman, 2020

WorkflowHub: Community Framework for Enabling Scientific Workflow Research and Development — R. Ferreira da Silva, L. Pottier, T. Coleman, E. Deelman, H. Casanova, 2020

Peachy Parallel Assignments (EduHPC 2020) — H. Casanova, R. Ferreira da Silva, A. Gonzalez-Escribano, W. Koch, Y. Torres, D. P. Bunde, 2020

Using Simple PID-inspired Controllers for Online Resilient Resource Management of Distributed Scientific Workflows — R. Ferreira da Silva, R. Filgueira, E. Deelman, E. Pairo-Castineira, I. M. Overton, M. Atkinson, 2019

Empowering Agroecosystem Modeling with HTC Scientific Workflows: The Cycles Model Use Case — R. Ferreira da Silva, R. Mayani, Y. Shi, A. R. Kemanian, M. Rynge, E. Deelman, 2019

Accurately Simulating Energy Consumption of I/O-intensive Scientific Workflows — R. Ferreira da Silva, A-C. Orgerie, H. Casanova, R. Tanaka, E. Deelman, F. Suter, 2019

Bridging Concepts and Practice in eScience via Simulation-driven Engineering — R. Ferreira da Silva, H. Casanova, R. Tanaka, F. Suter, 2019

Teaching Parallel and Distributed Computing Concepts in Simulation with WRENCH — R. Tanaka, R. Ferreira da Silva, H. Casanova, 2019

SMPI Courseware: Teaching Distributed-Memory Computing with MPI in Simulation — H. Casanova, A. Legrand, M. Quinson, F. Suter, 2018

WHO ARE WE?

ABOUT

Open-source, research-driven

WRENCH is an open-source framework distributed under the LGPLv3 license, built to enable reproducible, community-driven cyberinfrastructure research.

Core institutions: University of Hawai'i at Mãnoa (UHM) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

Collaboration model: Researchers, educators, and developers advancing open simulation practices together.

LGPLv3 Open-source Community-led

Contributors

5 current collaborators · 14 alumni contributors.

Current team

  • Henri Casanova
    Henri Casanova Professor of Computer Science at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and member of the SimGrid team
  • Rafael Ferreira da Silva
    Rafael Ferreira da Silva Senior Research Scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  • Frédéric Suter
    Frédéric Suter Senior Research Scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and member of the SimGrid team
  • Jesse McDonald
    Jesse McDonald Computer Science PhD student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa
  • Loïc Pottier
    Loïc Pottier Research Scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Previous contributors

  • Derrick Luyen
    Derrick Luyen Computer Science Masters student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa
  • Tainã Coleman
    Tainã Coleman Computer Science PhD student at the University of Southern California
  • Jason Feuerstein
    Jason Feuerstein Computer Science undergraduate student at University of Southern California
  • Gautam Jethwani
    Gautam Jethwani Computer Science undergraduate student at University of Southern California
  • Evan Hataishi
    Evan Hataishi Computer Science Masters student at University of Hawaii at Manoa
  • Ty Gwartney
    Ty Gwartney Computer Science and Maths Undergraduate Student at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa
  • William Koch
    William Koch Computer Science Masters student at University of Hawaii at Manoa
  • Ryan Tanaka
    Ryan Tanaka Computer Science Masters student at University of Hawaii at Manoa
  • Vivian (Tongyu) Zhu
    Vivian (Tongyu) Zhu Computer Science undergraduate student at University of Southern California
  • Suraj Pandey
    Suraj Pandey Computer Science Masters student at University of Hawaii at Manoa
  • Tabitha See Ya Lee
    Tabitha See Ya Lee Computer Science undegraduate student at Vanderbilt University
  • Samuel He
    Samuel He Computer Science undergraduate student at University of Southern California
  • Spencer Albrecht
    Spencer Albrecht Computer Science undergraduate student at University of Southern California
  • James Oeth
    James Oeth Computer Science undergraduate student at University of Southern California

DEV'S CORNER

Everything you need to build, test, and collaborate

Source code lives on GitHub. Report bugs or request features via the Issues tracker.

Community

Join the WRENCH Slack

Collaborate with the community, share experiences, and get support in real time.

Join the workspace
Research assets

Workflow traces + generators

Access workflow assets via WfCommons to feed WRENCH simulators.

Explore WfCommons

Core repository

Track releases, browse issues, and contribute to the main codebase.

View GitHub

Issue tracker

File bugs, request features, and follow roadmap discussions.

Open an issue

Latest unstable build

Grab the freshest features and performance updates (with the usual experimental caveats).

git clone https://github.com/wrench-project/wrench.git

Documentation hub

API references, tutorials, and guides to speed up onboarding.

Read the docs