Grid Computing

Grid computing is the process of leveraging multiple computing devices that are geographically distributed and connected with each other through a network to work together to accomplish a common task. Furthermore, grid computing is a distributed architecture that uses a group of computers to combine huge resources such as memory, storage, disk and work together to solve a complex problem. And it operates on a data grid where computers interact with each other to coordinate jobs that are compute-intensive and complex to be handled through a single computing environment. To accomplish these tasks, the machines on the given network collaborate under a common protocol and undertake a task as single virtual supercomputer to address the complex problem at hand such as analyzing massive data sets, running complex simulations, or weather modeling.

Grid computing architecture is consisted of three machine types namely Controller node, provider node and the user workstations. The nodes are servers or workstations that are loosely connected together by the Internet or some other private network distributed across multiple geographic locations.

The main components of grid computing include the following:

• User Interface (UI)
• Security Module
• Scheduler
• Data management component

Types of grid computing:

• Computational grid computing
• Collaborative grid computing
• Modular grid computing
• Manuscript grid computing
• Data grid computing

The key differences between cloud computing and grid computing include the following:

• Cloud computing employs a client/server computing architecture while grid computing employs a distributed computing architecture
• In cloud computing architecture, computing resources such as memory, storage, and network are centrally managed, whereas in grid computing architecture, the computing resources are managed through a collaborative arrangements
• Cloud computing architecture is more flexible and scalable than grid computing architecture