From: Mustafa Akgul (akgul@Bilkent.EDU.TR)
Date: Thu 04 Jul 2002 - 21:13:20 EEST
UNDERSTANDING GRID COMPUTING 07.01.02
By Ian Baird, Platform Computing Inc. GRIDtoday
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With today's tough economic climate there is constant pressure on
organizations to reduce their research and development costs, speed up their
time-to-market, increase throughput and improve the quality of their products.
Typically, removing resource constraints by increasing an organization 's
processing power would address these challenges. However, vast amounts of
computing capacity within a typical existing IT infrastructure remain
untapped, and dramatic reductions in IT budgets close the door to any
unjustified technology spending.
Introducing Distributed Computing
Distributed computing addresses workload challenges by aggregating and
allocating computing resources from across a business to provide unlimited
processing power. In the last ten years, it has grown from concept that would
enable organizations to simply balance workloads across heterogeneous computer
resources, to a ubiquitous solution that has been embraced by some of the
world 's leading organizations across multiple industry sectors.
Distributed computing ensures that all computing services are reliable and
deliver "always-on "availability despite scheduled maintenance, power outages,
and unexpected failures. It also helps eliminate the problem of users wasting
precious time trying to locate available computer resources to process
workloads, while many other systems within an organization remain idle.
And while distributed computing harnesses the full potential of existing
computer resources by effectively matching the supply of processing cycles
with the demand created by applications, even more importantly it has paved
the way for grid computing ?a more powerful, yet global approach to resource
sharing.
What is Grid Computing?
An evolution of distributed computing, grid computing represents enormous
opportunities for organizations to use processing cycles from networks of
computers spanning multiple geographical boundaries.
While the idea of grid computing may sound complex, it can be compared to the
peer-to-peer ( P2P) computing model made popular by Napster 's file-sharing
community. In much the same way that Napster enabled users to access and share
music between desktop computers, distributed computing uses a similar model to
pool the resources available in separate clusters of desktop computers,
servers or supercomputers. Grid computing elevates these clusters to the next
level by connecting multiple clusters over geographically dispersed areas for
enhanced collaboration and resource sharing.
Benefits of Grid Computing
*Grid computing enables organizations to aggregate resources within an entire
IT infrastructure no matter where in the world they are located. It eliminates
situations where one site is running on maximum capacity, while others have
cycles to spare.
*Organizations can dramatically improve the quality and speed of the products
and services they deliver, while reducing IT costs by enabling transparent
collaboration and resource sharing.
*Grid computing enables companies to access and share remote databases. This
is especially beneficial to the life sciences and research communities, where
enormous volumes of data are generated and analyzed during any given day.
*Grid computing enables widely dispersed organizations to easily collaborate
on projects by creating the ability to share everything from software
applications and data, to engineering blueprints.
*Grid computing can create a more robust and resilient IT infrastructure
better able to respond to minor or major disasters.
*A grid can harness the idle processing cycles that are available in desktop
PCs located in various locations across multiple time zones. For example, PCs
that would typically remain idle overnight at a company 's Tokyo manufacturing
plant could be utilized during the day by its North American operations.
A New Era in Distributed Computing
Defined as the coordinated, transparent and secure sharing of IT resources
across geographically distributed sites, grid computing is built on industry
standard protocols and open source reference platforms for maximum
interoperability.
Essentially, grid computing provides the ability to lower the total cost of
computing by providing, on demand, reliable and inexpensive access to
available computer resources. Initially embraced by academia, grid computing
is very quickly emerging as means for corporate enterprises to collaborate,
share data and software, store more information than on existing networks, and
access vast amounts of processing power without spending significant sums of
money on expensive supercomputers.
One of the earliest examples of grid computing is SETI@home, established by
the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI ) Institute. In the quest
to find signatures that might indicate the existence of extraterrestrial
intelligence, SETI@home utilized the internet to establish virtual
"supercomputer". By bringing together the processing power of more than
500,000 personal computers from around the world SETI@home ensured it had
sufficient processing power to analyze terabytes of data collected from a
radio telescope ?all without the added expense of a "supercomputer".
Beyond the world of academia, corporate enterprises, such as ENEA and Texas
Instruments, are already recognizing the true potential of grid computing and
are adopting it at phenomenal rate. Today, any organization that engages in
research or delivers value through processing compute or data-intensive
workloads can benefit from grid computing.
While initial grid implementations ?which focus on providing an organization
with seamless access to globally available computer resources that exist
behind a single firewall ?may seem almost simplistic, the resulting potential
is enormous.
Grid computing, while still in its infancy, is rapidly emerging into another
dimension with the development of public or utility grids that will sell or
lease computing resources, including bandwidth, applications and storage, over
the internet, charging on a per use or customized service basis, in much the
same way as hydro companies charge for electricity.
Propelling the Concept of Grid Computing As grid computing necessitates
increased collaboration between all stakeholders, standardization efforts such
as the following are of increasing importance:
*The Globus Project (www.globus.com) is a multi-institutional research and
development effort creating fundamental technologies for computational grids.
A primary product of the Globus Project is the Globus Toolkit, an open
architecture, open source set of protocols, services and tools that enable
secure, distributed, multi-vendor grid computing.
*Global Grid Forum 4 (www.globalgridforum.com)is a community-initiated forum
of individual researchers and practitioners focused on the promotion and
development of grid technologies and applications via the development and
documentation of "best practices," implementation guidelines, and standards
with an emphasis on rough consensus and running code. Other Grid standards
efforts including The New Productivity Initiative and the Peer-to-Peer Working
Group have joined forces with the Global Grid Forum to create the largest
global grid computing standards group.
The Grid Potential
The earliest and simplest form of grid computing began with the concept of
distributed computing. But today, grid computing is viewed as the next
generation IT infrastructure, and is expected to transform computation,
communication and collaboration. A multitude of grids will exist, each within
its own context, shared by communities within the same industry or with the
same interests. Grids will be service-driven, with organizations accessing
computing resources over the internet on an as-needed, or utility, basis.
Platform Computing estimates that widespread adoption of grid computing will
take a three-phased approach. The first phase currently being deployed is
Enterprise Grids. This phase involves the commercial implementation of
production grids within major corporations that have a global presence or a
need to access resources outside a single corporate location. Enterprise Grid
adoption is simplified and possible today because the virtual collaboration
and the sharing of available resources occurs behind a corporate firewall.
The second phase, Partner Grids, will emerge as organizations operating within
similar industries and areas of interest collaborate on projects, and use each
other 's resources as a means to reach a common goal. For example, life
sciences organizations working together could accelerate their research time
by harnessing the computer potential of available systems or by sharing large
amounts of data within partner organizations. The third phase, Service Grids,
will occur as users adopt the grid as a utility model.
Much in the same way as consumers are now more confident in their use of the
internet, widespread recognition of the benefits of grid computing will take
it to the next level of adoption. This final phase, where computer resources
are leased on a per use or as-needed basis, will only occur once the grid
computing model is proven to be reliable, secure and based on a widely
accepted standards and protocols.
For grid computing to emerge as a successful resource-sharing model, strong
partnerships need to be established between the software companies that design
grid technologies, the hardware vendors that manufacture the systems that
grids will run on, and the application developers that will utilize the
capabilities of the grid. Additionally, open standards and specifications need
to be established to ensure interoperability between the heterogeneous open
source and proprietary solutions that will provide businesses with broad range
of options to choose from.
Fortunately, there are many companies who are already committed to the
development of grid computing and are working hard to lay the foundations for
its widespread commercial use. For example, IBM has its sights set on building
the first public utility grid, and together with The Globus Project, is
developing a new set of specifications that will align web services with grid
computing and allow businesses to share both applications and computing
resources over the internet. Another example is Platform Computing, who
launched Grid Suite, a comprehensive commercial grid computing solution that
integrates its proprietary distributed computing software with open source
components from the Globus Toolkit and external data management components.
Additionally, hardware manufacturers are planning to make grid solutions, such
as Platform 's Grid Suite, available on high performance servers to deliver
completely "grid-enabled "solution.
Experts agree ?grid computing has the potential to revolutionize the world of
information technology, much in the same way as the internet completely
transformed the way people and businesses communicate and share information.
It is these and other initiatives that will accelerate the adoption of grid
computing beyond scientific and technical applications to everyday business
use.
URLs
Web site: http://www.globus.com
Web site: http://www.globalgridforum.com
Web site: http://www.setiathome_ssl.berkeley.edu
Web site: http://www.platform.com
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GRIDtoday welcomes bylined comments for publication.
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