  Cloud computing is being viewed as the technology of today and the future.
Through this paradigm, the customers gain access to shared computing resources
located in remote data centers that are hosted by cloud providers (CP). This
technology allows for provisioning of various resources such as virtual
machines (VM), physical machines, processors, memory, network, storage and
software as per the needs of customers. Application providers (AP), who are
customers of the CP, deploy applications on the cloud infrastructure and then
these applications are used by the end-users. To meet the fluctuating
application workload demands, dynamic provisioning is essential and this
article provides a detailed literature survey of dynamic provisioning within
cloud systems with focus on application performance. The well-known types of
provisioning and the associated problems are clearly and pictorially explained
and the provisioning terminology is clarified. A very detailed and general
cloud provisioning classification is presented, which views provisioning from
different perspectives, aiding in understanding the process inside-out. Cloud
dynamic provisioning is explained by considering resources, stakeholders,
techniques, technologies, algorithms, problems, goals and more.
