| The last few years we have witnessed the emergence of Grid Computing as an innovative extension to distributed computing technology, for computing resource sharing among participants in a virtualized collection of organizations. This technology leverages a combination of hardware/software virtualization, and the distributed sharing of those virtualized resources. These resources can include all elements of computing, including: Hardware, software, applications, networking services, pervasive devices, and complex footprints of computing power. Grid Computing is one technology enabler for some of the most innovative and powerful emerging industrial solution approaches, including the IBM On Demand strategies, [1] HP utility computing, [2] and Sun N1 technologies. [3] The emergence of open standards has a great influence on this computing technology, especially in providing seamless Grid interoperability and Grid integration facilities. We could find that technologies of Grid Computing are still evolving; however, the alignment with industry-wide open standards, and the commercial interests, quickly placed this technology into a forerunning state for infrastructure and technology development. The most notable standard we have seen in this area of Grid is the Global Grid Forum's [4] Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) initiative. Until today, most of the work in Grid Computing has been concentrated at the academic, and standards level discussion and building custom solutions. However, the emergence of commercial utility services and the requirement for alignment with the rest of the organizational computing infrastructures hasten the development of open standards and interoperable commercial Grid solutions. This book is a detailed discussion on all aspects of Grid Computing, technology, applications, disciplines, and infrastructures . In this book we provide full treatment to covering the evolution of Grid Computing, existing Grid infrastructure components , emerging Grid service standards, and Grid architectures. In addition, we will explore detailed discussions on many prominent Grid middleware solutions. |
