Benefits of grid computing

One of the basic uses of grid computing is to run an existing application on a different machine. The machine on which the application is normally run might be unusually busy due to a peak in activity. The job in question could be run on an idle machine elsewhere on the grid.

There are at least two prerequisites for this scenario.

1. 1. First, the application must be executable remotely and without undue overhead.
2. 2. Second, the remote machine must meet any special hardware, software, or resource requirements imposed by the application.

For example, a batch job that spends a significant amount of time processing a set of input data to produce an output data set is perhaps the most ideal and simple use case for a grid. If the quantities of input and output are large, more thought and planning might be required to efficiently use the grid for such a job. It would usually not make sense to use a word processor remotely on a grid because there would probably be greater delays and more potential points of failure.

In most organizations, there are large amounts of underutilized computing resources. Most desktop machines are busy less than 5 percent of the time over a business day. In some organizations, even the server machines can often be relatively idle. Grid computing provides a framework for exploiting these under utilized resources and thus has the possibility of substantially increasing the efficiency of resource usage.

The processing resources are not the only ones that may be underutilized.

Often, machines may have enormous unused disk drive capacity. Grid computing (more specifically, a data grid) can be used to aggregate this unused storage into a much larger virtual data store, possibly configured to achieve improved performance and reliability over that of any single machine.

If a batch job needs to read a large amount of data, this data could be automatically replicated at various strategic points in the grid. Thus, if the job must be executed on a remote machine in the grid, the data is already there and does not need to be moved to that remote point. This offers clear performance benefits. Also, such copies of data can be used as backups when the primary copies are damaged or unavailable.

Another benefit of a grid is to better balance resource utilization. An organization may have occasional unexpected peaks of activity that demand more resources. If the applications are grid-enabled, they can be moved to under utilized machines during such peaks. In fact, some grid implementations can migrate partially completed jobs. In general, a grid can provide a consistent way to balance the loads on a wider federation of resources. This applies to CPU, storage, and any other types of resources that may be available on a grid.