Chapter 1. Introduction
Grid computing is gaining a lot of attention within the IT industry. Though it has been used within the academic and scientific community for some time, standards, enabling technologies, toolkits and products are becoming available that allow businesses to utilize and reap the advantages of grid computing.
As with many emerging technologies, you will find almost as many definitions of grid computing as the number of people you ask. However, one of the most used toolkits for creating and managing a grid environment is the Globus Toolkit. Therefore we will present most of our information and concepts within the context of the Globus Toolkit.
Note that though most of our examples and testing were accomplished in a Linux environment, grid computing in general implies support for multiple platforms and platform transparency.
It is recommended that the first publication in this series, Introduction to Grid Computing with Globus SG24-6895, be used as a companion to this publication, as many of the concepts and details of the Globus Toolkit provided in the first book will not be duplicated here.
The first part of this book discusses considerations related to what kind of applications are good candidates for grid environments. This discussion is based on both grid characteristics and application characteristics. In later chapters, we provide examples of using the Globus Toolkit to enable applications to run in a grid environment. We also dedicate a large portion of this publication to data-handling considerations. Though it is one thing to execute one or more application components on various nodes within a grid, one must also consider how the application will access and transfer data in an efficient and secure manner.
Important
Though we are focusing on the Globus Toolkit for this publication, it is important to note that there are other providers of solutions for grid computing. Some of these build on top of the Globus Toolkit to provide key services not directly addressed by Globus.
IBM has worked closely with these other vendors and sees their work as strategic to the overall evolution of grid solutions. Though the products and technologies that these vendors are developing are not necessarily addressed in this publication, they are important and should be considered when building a gird or enabling applications for a grid environment. Some of these vendors include:
Platform Computing: Provides a set of solutions to help connect, manage, service, and optimize resources in a grid environment
United Devices: Provides a grid application framework for CPU scavenging