Tech Primer

Grid Computing

What is Grid Computing?

A grid is a group of computers, servers and storage, which is virtualised as one large computing system across an enterprise. Grids unleash latent power that is not being used at any point in time. They can radically accelerate compute-intensive processes. Grid computing involves applying the resources of many computers in a network to a single problem at the same time—usually a scientific or technical problem that requires a large number of computer-processing cycles or access to huge amounts of data. Grid computing uses software to divide and farm out pieces of a program to as many as several thousand computers. A number of corporations, professional groups and university consortia have developed frameworks and software for managing grid computing projects.

How does Grid Computing work?

Grid computing enables the virtualisation of distributed computing and data resources such as processing, network bandwidth and storage capacity to create a single system image, granting users and applications seamless access to IT capabilities. Just as an Internet user views a unified instance of content via the Web, a grid user sees a single, large virtual computer.

Grid computing is based on an open set of standards and protocols like Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA). These enable communication across heterogeneous and geographically dispersed environments. With grid computing, organisations can optimise computing and data resources, pool them for large capacity workloads, share them across networks and enable collaboration.

How do grids process for the users?

Grids are designed to be seamless and transparent. A user whose desktop PC is contributing processing power to the grid will experience no negative effects as the grid runs in the background, utilising available resources when needed by the system. If the PC user decides to run an application that requires more processing power, the work currently being processed on that machine will be dynamically allocated to another machine in the grid with available processing power.

What are the benefits of Grid Computing?

Grid computing offers more than sheer computing power. Enterprises can derive substantial benefits by implementing grids in critical business processes.

It accelerates time to completion and helps in improving productivity and collaboration. It promotes collaboration and operational flexibility by bringing together IT resources and people. It allows widely dispersed departments and businesses to create virtual organisations to share data and resources. The biggest benefit of grid computing is that it gives end users uninhibited access to computing, data and storage. It enables employees to move easily and quickly through product design phases, research projects and so on.

It leverages existing capital investments by improving optimal utilisation of computing capabilities. It helps in avoiding common pitfalls of over-provisioning and incurring excess costs and removing the burden of administering disparate and non-integrated systems.

For more information visit: www.gridcomputing.com

—Priya Jain