Grid computing

Draft

Definition

Grid computing is a form of distributed computing. The grid “is an infrastructure that bonds and unifies globally remote and diverse resources in order to provide computing support for a wide range of applications.” Wikipedia, retrieved 11:29, 17 June 2010 (UTC) defines grid computing as “the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains for a common goal. Grid computing (or the use of a computational grid) is applying the resources of many computers in a network to a single problem at the same time - usually to solve a scientific or technical problem that requires a great number of computer processing cycles or access to large amounts of data”.

Grid computing is popular in e-science, forms of research that often require huge computing power and collaboration between various data and computing services.

Essential characteristics of grids

According to Bote-Lorenzo (2003:2-3; 2004), the essential characteristics of grids are the following ones:

• Large scale: a grid must be able to deal with a number of resources ranging from just a few to millions. [...]
• Geographical distribution: grid's resources may be located at distant places.
• Heterogeneity: a grid hosts both software and hardware resources that can be very varied ranging from data, files, software components or programs to sensors, scientific instruments, display devices, personal digital organizers, computers, super-computers and networks.
• Resource sharing: resources in a grid belong to many different organizations that allow other organizations (i.e. users) to access them. [...]
• Multiple administrations: each organization may establish different security and administrative policies under which their owned resources can be accessed and used. [...]
• Resource coordination: resources in a grid must be coordinated in order to provide aggregated computing capabilities.
• Transparent access: a grid should be seen as a single virtual computer.
• Dependable access: a grid must assure the delivery of services under established Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. [...]
• Consistent access: a grid must be built with standard services, protocols and inter-faces thus hiding the heterogeneity of the resources while allowing its scalability. [...]
• Pervasive access: the grid must grant access to available resources by adapting to a dynamic environment in which resource failure is commonplace. [...]

Main uses of grids

According to Bote-Lorenzo (2008:5ff; 2004), main uses of grids are:

• Distributed supercomputing support
• High-throughput computing support
• On-demand computing support
• Data-intensive computing support
• Collaborative computing support
• Multimedia computing support

(Some) Links

Research consortia and teams (some)

• myGrid, makers of the taverna workbench a popular e-science tool.
• Enabling Grids for E-sciencE project (EGEE), EU project from 2002-2010 replaced by EGI.
• European Grid Infrastructure based on federation of individual National Grid Infrastructures.
• Open Science Grid (US)
• OpenGridForum (OGF) is an open community committed to driving the rapid evolution and adoption of applied distributed computing.
• D4Science-II (Data Infrastructures Ecosystem for Science, EU project ended 2010)

Dissemination/propaganda sites

• GridTalk EU dissemination/propaganda site for grid computing projects.
• GridCafé, orginally created by CERN, the GridCafé explains grid computing in a simple and stimulating fashion.
• GriGuide, includes a good list of Grid projects, including articles that present these projects.
• International Science Grid this week, iSGTW is an international, weekly, on-line science-computing newsletter that shows the importance of distributed computing, cloud computing and supercomputing.
• GridCast, Blogging behind the scenes of Grid computing.

Overviews and introductions

• Grid computing
• Feature - Grid makes drug discovery crystal clear (example article from International Science Grid this Week).

Standards and tools

See also Wikipedia's Grid computing article (as of June 2010 a bit outdated).

Standards

• Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), a classic middleware architecture designed to fit within a traditional three layer distributed systems model with an access layer, a services layer, and a resources layer.
• The GLUE specification is an information model for Grid entities described using the natural language and UML Class Diagrams. As a conceptual model, it is designed to be independent from the concrete data models adopted for its implementation.
• Various web services standards, for example WSRF (Wikipedia) and WS-Management (Wikipedia).
• Simple API for Grid Applications (SAGA), a high level API that addresses directly the need of application developers.
• [https://forge.gridforum.org/sf/projects/jsdl-wg Job Submission Description Language (JSDL).

Tools

• Globus Toolkit (Wikipedia)

See also:

• the full list of recommendation documents from OGF

References

• Bote-Lorenzo, Miguel L.; Yannis A. Dimitriadis and Eduardo G. Gómez-Sanchez, (2003). Preprint to appear in School of Telecommunications Engineering, University of Valladolid. PDF, retrieved 12:28, 21 April 2008 (UTC).

• Bote-Lorenzo, M.L., Dimitriadis, Y., Gómez-Sánchez (2004), E. Grid characteristics and uses: a grid definition (Postproceedings extended and revised version) Proceedings of the First European Across Grids Conference, ACG'03, Springer-Verlag, LNCS 2970, 291-298, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, February 2004. PDF, retrieved 12:28, 21 April 2008 (UTC).

• Bote-Lorenzo, M.L., Gómez-Sánchez, E., Vega-Gorgojo, G., Dimitriadis, Y., Asensio-Pérez, J.I., Jorrín-Abellán, I.M. Gridcole: a tailorable grid service based system that supports scripted collaborative learning (2007, in press) Computers & Education, retrieved 12:28, 21 April 2008 (UTC).