Recently, cloud computing has been recognized as effective computing model, being adopted by both large corporations as well as SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises). Due to its on-demand provisioning nature number of cloud based services are growing gradually and rapidly. The availability of open-source cloud computing platforms plays a vital role to enable researchers to go beyond state of the art for development of cloud applications. In this paper, we have provided an overview of cloud computing along with its services. We have presented a comparative performance analysis of different cloud IaaS platforms while covering different aspects of their application and service models. We have also proposed cloud test-bed using open-source cloud platform. A comparative performance analysis of open-source cloud platforms will assist researchers to select an appropriate tool to validate their research and experimentation
