doi:10.3850/978-981-08-7300-4_0470

ABSTRACT

Grid computing is an emerging information technology (IT) architecture that delivers more flexible, resilient and lower cost enterprise information systems. With grid computing, groups of independent, modular hardware and software components can be pooled and provisioned on demand to meet the changing needs of businesses. A computational grid can be defined as “a hardware and software infrastructure that provides dependable, consistent, pervasive, and inexpensive access to computational capabilities.” At its core, grid is about virtualization, of both information and workload. By separating applications and information from the infrastructure they run on, and providing an abstract, “virtualized” view, a new level of infrastructure flexibility can be achieved. The grid computing can be thought of as distributed and large-scale cluster computing where a cluster is a group of linked computers, working together closely so that in many respects they form a single computer, however cluster and grid computing represent different approaches to solving performance problems; the key distinction between clusters and grids is mainly in the way resources are managed. This paper is an attempt to explain the concepts and principals behind grid computing laying focus on the capabilities of grids over conventional forms of computing. A comparative study between grids and clusters studies the distinction between the features of the two technologies.

Keywords: Grids, Data grids, Resource balancing, Clusters, Virtualization.

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