Cloud computing and Grid computing involves massive computer network infrastructure. The following information would help in understanding the exact difference between the two types of computing technologies.
On the front end, cloud computing and grid computing are newer concepts compared to other large computing solutions. Both concepts have been developed for the purpose of distributed computing, that is, computing an element over a large area, literally on computers that are separated by some or the other means.
Well there are many reasons people prefer Distributed computing over single processor computing, and here they are:
The reason to opt for distributed computing is to offer parallel or concurrent computational resources to the users.
The concept of queue has been over taken. Requests don’t actually have to wait in a queue to get serviced one after the other. Distributed computing also finds itself cost efficient, as it is better to have multiple low-cost machines than one expensive computing machine. Distributed computing is reliable as there is no single point of failure as compared to the non-distributed computing, which halts the complete system if there is any kind of fault. Distributed computing is much easy in scaling. More number of computing units can be added in case of large user base. On a non-distributed computing system you may have to increase the computational power of the system, which may really prove costly!
Cloud computing vs Grid computing
Cloud computing:
Cloud is basically an extension to the object-oriented programming concept of abstraction. Here cloud means the Internet. For the end users it is just getting outputs for certain inputs, the complete process that lead to the outputs is purely invisible. Computing is based on virtualized resources which are placed over multiple servers in clusters. Also within the “cloud computing” family, are what’s known as “Software as a Service” or SaaS applications. These are lightweight software clients that are installed on your server, but do all of their heavy lifting using someone else’s infrastructure. Cloud computing eliminates the costs and complexity of buying, configuring, and managing the hardware and software needed to build and deploy applications; these applications are delivered as a service over the Internet (the cloud).
Grid computing:
Grid systems are designed for collaborative sharing of resources. It can also be thought of as distributed and large-scale cluster computing. A Grid is basically the one that uses the processing capabilities of different computing units for processing a single task. The task is broken into multiple sub-tasks, each machine on a grid is assigned a task. As when the sub-tasks are completed they are sent back to the primary machine which takes care of the all the tasks. They are combined or clubbed together as an output.
Cloud vs Grid computing: Conclusion
Grid computing uses "Infrastructure as a service" while cloud computing uses "Software as a service", thus cloud enables users to choose services without underlying architecture. Cloud offers more services than grid computing. In fact almost all the services on the Internet can be obtained from cloud, eg web hosting, multiple Operating systems, DB support and much more. Grids tends to be more loosely coupled, heterogeneous, and geographically dispersed compared to conventional cluster computing systems.
The concept of queue has been over taken. Requests don’t actually have to wait in a queue to get serviced one after the other. Distributed computing also finds itself cost efficient, as it is better to have multiple low-cost machines than one expensive computing machine. Distributed computing is reliable as there is no single point of failure as compared to the non-distributed computing, which halts the complete system if there is any kind of fault. Distributed computing is much easy in scaling. More number of computing units can be added in case of large user base. On a non-distributed computing system you may have to increase the computational power of the system, which may really prove costly!
Cloud computing vs Grid computing
Cloud computing:
Cloud is basically an extension to the object-oriented programming concept of abstraction. Here cloud means the Internet. For the end users it is just getting outputs for certain inputs, the complete process that lead to the outputs is purely invisible. Computing is based on virtualized resources which are placed over multiple servers in clusters. Also within the “cloud computing” family, are what’s known as “Software as a Service” or SaaS applications. These are lightweight software clients that are installed on your server, but do all of their heavy lifting using someone else’s infrastructure. Cloud computing eliminates the costs and complexity of buying, configuring, and managing the hardware and software needed to build and deploy applications; these applications are delivered as a service over the Internet (the cloud).
Grid computing:
Grid systems are designed for collaborative sharing of resources. It can also be thought of as distributed and large-scale cluster computing. A Grid is basically the one that uses the processing capabilities of different computing units for processing a single task. The task is broken into multiple sub-tasks, each machine on a grid is assigned a task. As when the sub-tasks are completed they are sent back to the primary machine which takes care of the all the tasks. They are combined or clubbed together as an output.
Cloud vs Grid computing: Conclusion
Grid computing uses "Infrastructure as a service" while cloud computing uses "Software as a service", thus cloud enables users to choose services without underlying architecture. Cloud offers more services than grid computing. In fact almost all the services on the Internet can be obtained from cloud, eg web hosting, multiple Operating systems, DB support and much more. Grids tends to be more loosely coupled, heterogeneous, and geographically dispersed compared to conventional cluster computing systems.