The term grid is very much a part of Oracle Database 10g. In fact, the "g" in "10g" comes from the word "grid," just as the "i" in "8i" was derived from "Internet." And just as Oracle 8i heralded the arrival of Oracle Corporation's flagship RDBMS as a major player in shaping the Internetsomething it accomplished by hosting the massive databases behind the various websitesso too does Oracle hope that Oracle Database 10g will help shape the notion of the computing grid in today's IT world. So what exactly is the grid? And a deeper question: Why do we need a grid? The answer lies in looking at a familiar example, and considering how we can adapt and use that model in computing. A Familiar Example: The Electricity GridThe electricity grid has been around for such a long time that we do not even consider its existence as a grid. However, this grid exhibits most of the characteristics that we would like to have in a computing grid. Some of the characteristics of an electricity grid are noted next. The Electricity Grid from a Consumer's Point of ViewFirst, we will consider the electricity grid from a user or consumer's point of view:
The Electricity Grid from a Producer's Point of ViewFrom an electricity producer's or distributor's point of view, the following characteristics apply:
We have described this familiar grid in detail so that you have an idea of the kind of commodity that computing should become. We are already seeing this in some aspects on the consumer side of computing. For example, specifically in the area of availability and accessibility, anytime-anywhere Web access from mobile devices and always-on wireless PCs at home or work are common in most developed nations. Similarities in the Computing GridA computing grid aims to have similar characteristics to an electricity grid. In short, the following should be possible in a computing grid:
In short, the basic idea of grid computing is the notion of computing as a utility, analogous to the electricity grid described previously. A user in the grid does not care where the data is present or where computation is done, as long as it is done and information is delivered whenever required. From the provider's side, the grid is about virtualization and provisioning. All your resources are pooled together and provisioned dynamically based on the needs of the business, thus simultaneously achieving better resource utilization. A number of recent industry trends helped shape the growing presence of the computing grid. Hardware trends include low-cost, high-volume processors that power server blades with low power and size footprints that reduce cost and increase the density of servers. This in turn ultimately leads to lower costs in running IT services and data-center operations. Network attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SANs) provide terabyte-sized storage, while gigabit ethernet and infiniband networks connect them all. Software trends include the availability of open-source software such as the Linux operating system and the Apache Web server, both of which can run on these inexpensive boxes. As a result, an increase in the number of servers does not necessarily mean an increase in software license costs. Both these downward trends, combined with the rapidly changing and increasing computing requirements, have necessitated and enabled the computing grid. Simply put, grid computing can be defined as applying resources from many computers in a network to a single problem, usually one that requires a large number of processing cycles or access to large amounts of data. As you saw in previous sections, the computational power grid is analogous to the electric power grid. Basically, grid computing allows the coupling of geographically distributed resources to offer consistent and inexpensive access to resources irrespective of their physical location or access point. A wide variety of distributed computational resources varying from supercomputers, computer clusters, storage systems, and data sources can be connected via the Internet or dedicated networks and presented to the user community as a single, unified resource. In other words, grid computing enables devices, regardless of their operating characteristics, to be virtually shared, managed, and accessed across an enterprise, industry, or workgroup. The keyword here is virtualization, which means that these resources will appear as a single, virtual piece of computing equipment. This virtualization of resources places all the necessary access, data, and processing power at the fingertips of those who need to rapidly solve complex business problems, conduct computation-intensive research and data analysis, and operate in real time. For example, through grid computing a company with about 2,000 desktop computers can use those computers to harvest nearly one teraflop (one trillion floating-point operations per second) of computing capacity. Thus, grid computing promises to consolidate, simplify, and fully utilize the available computing resources. Now that we have defined what a computing grid should have, let us see how Oracle Database 10g fits into the picture. Before that, however, let's look at a little history of grid computing. Grid Computing: A Little HistoryGrid computing is not a new concept. Universities and research institutions have been using grid-computing technology for decades. This concept has recently started making inroads into the business market, however. When applied to an enterprise, this kind of computing is specifically known as enterprise grid computing, in order to clarify that it supports the IT requirements of an enterprise. According to a recent survey conducted by Insight Research, awareness of grid computing in the business domain is rapidly growing, with 37% of respondents saying they are now evaluating the case for grid computing. Insight Research expects global enterprises to spend $4.9 billion (U.S. dollars) on grid computing in 2008, which is nearly 20 times higher than the 2003 spending level of $250 million (U.S. dollars). By 2007, market researcher International Data Corp expects the world to spend $3 billion (U.S. dollars) on the software needed to virtualize grid components such as storage, security, and applications. That's a doubling of the $1.5 billion (U.S. dollars) spent globally in 2002. This translates to sales on the horizon for providers and early implementers of this technology, including Oracle Corporation. Hence the suffix change from "i" to "g" in the RDBMS versioning. Oracle, along with a few other organizations in the computing world, have formed a consortium named the Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA). The EGA is an open, nonprofit, vendor-neutral organization formed to develop enterprise grid solutions and accelerate the deployment of grid computing in enterprises. The other organizations in the consortium include EMC, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, Intel, Sun Microsystems, NetApp, and NEC. Hopefully, the EGA will develop and implement standards that are beneficial to the user community rather than to themselves. |