Grid Computing:

idea of grid was brought by Ian Foster, Carl Kesselman and Steve Tuecke in the year 1970.
Grid computing distributed computing Parallel computing

internet=network of communication grid computing=network of computation

Grid Computing (A Method)

What is grid computing? Grid computing is a method of harnessing the power of many computers in a network to solve problems requiring a large number of processing cycles and involving huge amounts of data.

 What sort of "problems" is grid computing used for? Those problems that are beyond the processing limits of individual computers. Right now that primarily means scientific or technical projects such as cancer and other medical research -- projects that involve the analysis of inordinate (irregular, excessive)amounts of data.

Current uses of grid computing(Examples)

Oxford University's Centre for Computational
Drug Discovery's project

Project utilizes more than one million PCs to look for a cancer cure. People around the world donate a few CPU cycles from their PCs through "screensaver time." The project eventually will analyze 3.5 billion molecules for cancer-fighting potential. More than 50,000 years of CPU power (based on a 1.5 gigahertz chip) have been put to work so far.

Current uses of grid computing(Examples)

Project : SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) @Home

PC users worldwide donate unused processor cycles to help the search for signs of extraterrestrial life(life that does not originate from Earth )by analyzing signals coming from outer space.

Question?
How does grid computing work in practice? Is special hardware or software needed?

Answer
Having a computer tied to a network is a good start. The most far-reaching network, of course, is the Internet, which is enabling regular people with home PCs to participate in grid computing projects from anywhere in the world. Beyond that, PC owners must download simple software from the project's host site. On the other end, grid computing projects use software that can divide and distribute pieces of a program to thousands of computers for processing.

Are any commercial companies involved with grid computing?

Sun Microsystems released its Grid Engine software in September 2000. IBM is involved in several grid computing projects. In November 2001, IBM announced it is building a computing grid for the University of Pennsylvania designed to bring advanced methods of breast cancer diagnosis and screening to patients across the nation, while reducing costs. Intel and Compaq are also involved in grid computing, as are a number of private companies.

Resource
An entity that is to be shared
E.g., computers, storage, data, software

Does not have to be a physical entity

E.g., Condor pool, distributed file system,

Defined in terms of interfaces, not devices

E.g. scheduler such as LSF and PBS define a compute resource Open/close/read/write define access to a distributed file system, e.g. NFS, AFS, DFS
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The Grid problem: Resource sharing & coordinated problem solving in dynamic, multi-institutional virtual organizations
Resource sharing Computers, storage, sensors, networks, Sharing always conditional: issues of trust, policy, negotiation, payment, Coordinated problem solving Beyond client-server: distributed data analysis, computation, collaboration, Dynamic, multi-institutional virtual orgs Community overlays on classic org structures Large or small, static or dynamic Enable communities ( virtual organizations ) to share geographically distributed resources as they pursue common goals -- assuming the absence of central location, central control, Omniscience( One having total knowledge), existing trust relationships

Why Discuss Architecture?

Descriptive
Provide a common vocabulary for use when describing Grid systems

Guidance
Identify key areas in which services are required

Prescriptive
Define standard Intergrid protocols and APIs to facilitate creation of interoperable Grid systems and portable applications
Grid architecture: Emphasize protocol and service definition to enable interoperability and resource sharing
October 12, 2001 Intro to Grid Computing and Globus Toolkit 12

Virtual Organization

Virtual Organization(VO)
a dynamic set of individuals and/or institutions defined around a set of resource-sharing rules and conditions all VO s share some commonality conditional, time bound and rules driven resource sharing dynamic collection of individuals sharing relationship among participants is peer to peer assigning users, resources from different domains

Early Grid Activities

Earlier Grid Computing efforts were aligned with the overlapping functional areas:
Data and Computation

Functional Data Requirements for Grid Computing: efficient data transfer mechanisms data caching and/or replication mechanisms data discovery mechanisms data encryption and integrity backup/restore mechanisms

Early Grid Activities(Contd )

Functional Computational Requirements for Grid Computing: mechanisms to select resources Understanding of current and predicted data loads failure detection and failover mechanisms

Grid Architecture and Other Distributed Technologies

Like the Web, grid computing keeps complexity hidden: multiple users enjoy a single, unified experience. Unlike the Web, which mainly enables communication, grid computing enables full collaboration toward common business goals. Like peer-to-peer, grid computing allows users to share files. Unlike peer-to-peer, grid computing allows many-to-many sharing not only files but other resources as well.

Example Distributed systems

Internet ATM (bank) machines Intranets/Workgroup

The Grid problem: Resource sharing & coordinated problem solving in dynamic, multi-institutional virtual organizations

Grid architecture: Emphasize protocol and service definition to enable interoperability and resource sharing

Types of Grid
Grids by Resource Grids by Distribution Grids by Service

Grids by Resource Grids can be classified by the type of resource they share. Some Grids may share more than one type of resource, and therefore fall into more than one of the following categories: Computational Grids. These primarily share CPU resources. Examples include TeraGrid which has more than 750 teraflops and SETI@home which aggregates the computing power of millions of home computers. Utility computing ventures such as the Sun Grid Compute Utility are also an example of computational Grids. Data Grids. These are intended to share data resources, such as the results of experiments, between users. Typically, data Grids will handle very large amounts of distributed data, such as QCDGrid or the LHC Computing Grid. Storage Grids. These are designed to provide users with access to an enormous amount of storage space. One of the biggest and most wellknown examples of a storage Grid is Amazon S3. Equipment Grids. Grids can also be set up to share access to physical resources, such as astronomical telescopes in the eSTAR project.

 Grids can also be classified by how geographically distributed their resources are: Internet. Internet-scale Grids can potentially include anyone with access to the internet. Examples include SETI@home and the World Community Grid which both contain thousands of computers dispersed across the globe. Virtual Organisation (VO). A VO-scale Grid contains several academic or corporate entities. Most Grids fall into this category e.g. TeraGrid, QCDGrid. Local. A local Grid is contained entirely within one organisation. Often companies will have access to their own clusters for processing tasks. For example, the render farms used to produce animated films such as Toy Story are a form of local Grid.

Grids by Service From a user perspective, the important thing about a Grid is the services it provides. For example, a render farm will provide graphical rendering services using a specific software package such as Blender or Shake. A data Grid gives access to specific data resources, such as results from a large physics experiment. Although many computational Grids are application agnostic, some Grids may not be able to run certain applications due to licensing or platform restrictions. Therefore, as Grid becomes more prevalent, we may start to see more initiatives such as Network.com which provides a catalogue of applications that can be run on the Sun Grid computing facility.

 "Cloud Computing" is often categorised by application. Cloud Computing generally refers to users off-loading application processing to some 3rd party resource or "cloud". Normally the "cloud" can be defined as some form of Grid, often using virtualization technology to optimize and simplify resource usage. Cloud computing can be broken down by the services it offers to consumers, typically web applications such as Google Apps. At the moment, the most prevalent types of service offered by Grids are forms of graphical rendering, scientific simulations and web applications.

What is a Cluster Computer?

A "cluster" is a group of systems working together as one unit.

Consists of many of the same or similar type of machines (Heterogeneous clusters are a subtype, still mostly experimental) Tightly-coupled using dedicated network connections All machines share resources such as a common home directory They must trust each other so that rsh or ssh does not require a password, otherwise you would need to do a manual start on each machine.

An example is four database servers clustered together appearing as a single database server. If one system in the cluster goes down, the other servers are still available to do the work.

Cluster Vs Grid Grid computing relies on an application to be broken into discrete modules, where each module can run on a separate server. Cluster computing typically runs an entire application on each server, with redundancy between servers.

Cluster Vs Grid
the computers that are part of a grid can run different operating systems and have different hardware

the cluster computers all have the same hardware and OS.

Grid are inherently distributed by its nature over a LAN, metropolitan or WAN. the computers in the cluster are normally contained in a single location or complex.

you are not required to have clusters in your grid and not all clusters are part of a grid. But clusters and grids do work nicely together.

Cluster Vs Grid
Clusters are usually homogeneous. Homogeneous is where all CPU nodes have the same Hardware configuration and OS. Grids are heterogeneous. CPU nodes that are part of a Grid need not be homogeneous and are usually spread across LANs or WANs. A cluster of clusters is usually a Grid.

Cluster Vs Grid
Characteristics of Grid Computing Loosely coupled (Decentralization) Diversity and Dynamism Distributed Job Management & scheduling Characteristics of Cluster computing Tightly coupled systems Single system image Centralized Job management & scheduling system