Blogs of Note

Grids in the Enterprise I've posted on the topic of Grid Computing in the past -- but it's a topic that keeps coming back in the media. Grid computing wasn't born yesterday -- it has been in the making for decades. Only now have all the components come together to make the the delivery of grid computing possible and affordable. Here's an eWeek article that takes a look at grid's imminent arrival at enterprise data centres. So what is grid computing? Grid computing [PDF] is the connection of heterogeneous systems using self administrating software (for load balancing, adpative allocation of workload, etc.) that makes the diverse systems function as one. This is different from clusters, in that clusters are homogeneous systems, and are usually under the command of a central authority -- like Google's set up [PDF]. So why all the noise all of a sudden? Well, for one thing, the technology has arrived. All the components are here to make heterogenous systems work together -- and most have become commodities. Central to bringing the price of grids down, is the advent of low cost Intel boxes, running Linux. Sure, you can call on processing power from the traditional boxes in a data centre, but now, you can also very quickly, add computing power via Linux machines.