Grid Technology Unveiled

Grid technology is built on the idea that computing can be considered as a utility, like the electric power grid or the telephone network. These utilities are meant to be unbreakable and highly available for consumers. Likewise, the primary initiative for grid computing at organizations is improving affordability and availability of enterprise systems. Organizations are looking at different ways to improve the system availability and process efficiencies at lower expenses. This forms the client-side view on utility computing. From a server-side view, grid computing achieves this goal by consolidating islands of hardware and using centralized tools to allocate and manage resources more effectively. Looking at the utilization perspective, computing resources are not sitting idle, and all requests for resources are answered promptly. Grid computing began with ideas developed in the academic and research communities.

Oracle Corporation has been working on grid technology for several years to provide seamless availability solutions with its database products. Oracle 9i has technologies for building the grid, such as Oracle Streams, Oracle transportable tablespaces, and Oracle Real Application clusters. Oracle has matured this technology in Oracle Database 10g. The availability of cheaper, faster, and affordable hardware; better operating systems; and newer, cheaper open source software like Linux has supplemented the path for grid-technology development. Grid computing has become one of the best means to save money on hardware and software, enjoy resource optimization, and receive better results on investments.

You will learn more about grid technology and the Grid Control in Chapter 18, "Leveraging Grid Technology Features."