“Pros of Grid Computing
We have identified four major benefits of grid computing. These are listed in no particular order and are not all inclusive. There are many more benefits, but these are representative of the types of benefits you could expect from including grid computing in your infrastructure.
• High computation rates. With the amalgamation of multiple hosts on a network, an application can achieve very high computational rates or computational throughput.
• Shared infrastructure. Although grids are not necessarily great infrastructure components to share with other applications simultaneously, they are generally not used around the clock and can be shared by applications sequentially.
• Unused capacity. For grids that utilize unused hosts during off hours, the grid offers a great use for this untapped capacity. Personal computers are not the only untapped capacity, often testing environments are not utilized during the late evening hours and can be integrated into a grid computing system.
• Cost. Whether the grid is scaling the specific program within your service offerings or taking advantage of scavenged capacity, these are both ways to make computations more cost-effective. This is yet another reason to look at grids as scalability solutions.
These are four of the benefits that you may see from integrating a grid computing system into your infrastructure. The amount of benefit that you see from any of these will depend on your specific application and implementation.”
—Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott, The Art of Scalability: Scalable Web Architecture, Processes, and Organizations for the Modern Enterprise.
