Grid computing

From GridInfo

The Web allows sharing of information over the Internet, and in a similar way the Grid allows sharing of computing, application, data and storage resources. Grids cross geographic and institutional boundaries, lack central control, and are dynamic (computers join and leave in an unco-ordinated fashion).

The main benefit to users is greater availability of resources.

The problems faced in building a Grid include the broad categories of security (authentication and authorization), data management (including data security and file transfer), job management (including scheduling and job execution), and information services (including monitoring and discovery).

Topics

The Globus Toolkit

produced by the Globus Alliance, is a collection of software tools to enable building a Grid. It offers services and libraries for finding, monitoring, and managing resources, as well as security and file management.

Condor

software to enable high throughput computing on distributed resources. It provides a job queueing and scheduling system, and resource monitoring and management. It can interoperate with Globus.

• Portals
• Portlets
• Web services
• GridSAM

Links

• Wikipedia article on Grid computing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_computing
• GridCafé: http://gridcafe.web.cern.ch
• Open Grid Forum: http://www.ogf.org/