1. INTRODUCTION

This The Grid unites servers and storage into a single system that acts as a single computer - all your applications tap into all your computing power. Hardware resources are fully utilized and spikes in demand are met with ease. This Web site sponsored by Oracle brings you the resources you need to evaluate your organization's adoption of grid technologies. The Grid is ready when you are.

2. THE GRID

The Grid is the computing and data management infrastructure that will provide the electronic underpinning for a global society in business, government, research, science and entertainment, integrate networking, communication, computation and information to provide a virtual platform for computation and data management in the same way that the Internet integrates resources to form a virtual platform for information. The Grid is the computing and data management infrastructure that will provide the electronic. Grid infrastructure will provide us with the ability to dynamically link together resources as an ensemble to support the execution of large-scale, resource-intensive, and distributed applications.

Grid is a type of parallel and distributed system that enables the sharing, selection, and aggregation of geographically distributed "autonomous" resources dynamically at runtime depending on their availability, capability, performance, cost, and users' quality-of-service requirements.

3. BEGINNINGS OF THE GRID

Parallel computing in the 1980s focused researchers’ efforts on the development of algorithms, programs and architectures that supported simultaneity. During the 1980s and 1990s, software for parallel computers focused on providing powerful mechanisms for managing communication between processors, and development and execution environments for parallel machines. Successful application paradigms were developed to leverage the immense potential of shared and distributed memory architectures. Initially it was thought that the Grid would be most useful in extending parallel computing paradigms from tightly coupled clusters to geographically distributed systems. However, in practice, the Grid has been utilized more as a platform for the integration of loosely coupled applications – some components of which might be running in parallel on a low-latency parallel machine – and for linking disparate resources (storage, computation, visualization, instruments). Coordination and distribution – two fundamental concepts in Grid Computing.

The first modern Grid is generally considered to be the information wide-area year (IWAY). Developing infrastructure and applications for the I-WAY provided a seminar and powerful experience for the first generation of modern Grid researchers and projects. This was important, as the development of Grid research requires a very different focus than distributed computing research. Grid research focuses on addressing the problems of integration and management of software. I-WAY opened the door for considerable activity in the development of Grid software.

4. GRID COMPUTING CHARACTERSTICS

An enterprise-computing grid is characterized by three primary features -

· Diversity;

· Decentralization; and

· Dynamism

Diversity:

A typical computing grid consists of many hundreds of managed resources of various kinds including servers, storage, Database Servers, Application Servers, Enterprise Applications, and system services like Directory Services, Security and Identity Management Services, and others. Managing these resources and their life cycle is a complex challenge.

Decentralization:

Traditional distributed systems have typically been managed from a central administration point. A computing grid further compounds these challenges

since the resources can be even more decentralized and may be geographically distributed across many different data centers within an enterprise.

Dynamism:

Components of a traditional application typically run in a static environment without the needing to address rapidly changing demands. In a computing grid, however, the systems and applications need to be able to flexibly adapt to changing demand. For instance, with the late binding nature and cross-platform properties of web services, an application deployed on the grid may consist of a constantly changing set of components. At different points in time, these components can be hosted on different nodes in the network. Managing an application in such a dynamic environment can be a challenging undertaking.