It is a fact that businesses and companies are all aware of the fact that networked computing has brought about drastic changes in the world of computing, the most prominent example of which is the internet. Be it any scientific or technical problem solving, communication, resource sharing, group programming or any other fields, networked computing has brought a drastic acceleration in the progress of mankind worldwide. This has been a prime reason behind the recent advancement in research in the area of networked computing.
Network computing is a generic term in computing which refers to computers or nodes working together over a network. With the massive amount of information available, it came into focus how to distribute efficiently and to store them safely.
Definition
Cloud computing refers to the computing on the ‘network cloud’, in real terms, the 'internet cloud' is internet based computing where a hard disk is the whole ‘Internet cloud’. Resources are provided on demand after authentication of the computer demanding it.
Grid computing is the collaboration of multiple administrative computer domains to achieve a common goal. It can be thought of as a 'virtual super computer', which is actually a network of loosely coupled ordinary computers sharing their resources and processors to solve massive amount computing and problems. Thus the grid of computers is utilized to achieve multifold throughput by implementing parallel processing among the distributed systems. It is important to note that each participating computer in the grid computing is a fully fledged ordinary computer, just like several PCs working together.
Features and Objectives
Cloud computing offers a way of computing where there is no need to own much physical infrastructure; people can use the services on rent or subscription basis by the third party providers. Thus they only need to pay for what they use. From small software applications to the online operating systems and processing services, everything is available on the cloud at nominal rates either on subscription or utility basis, with little or no upfront payment. Thus cloud computing aims to provide a cost effective and low storage overhead way of computing.
Grid computing, on the contrary, is designed to enable users solve problems that have enormous processing requirements. Users in different administrative domains can work out large problems sitting at their own PC and yet having the processing capabilities of super computer. The grid computing system uses ‘middleware’ between the software and hardware to provide an abstract view to the user by hiding the underlying heterogeneous nodes involved.
Pros and Cons
To meet the storage needs of the future is an area of concern for the computer researchers, and cloud computing seems to be the only solution with the largest potential at the moment. Cloud computing reduces the storage requirements to an extent that there is no need to keep the same data/resource on every personal hard disk, rather only a few copies of that resource are sufficient on the cloud. On one hand, cloud computing is a cost effective way of using a large number of resources while at the same time, poses a serious security question as the data is held in the hands of third parties, and people that use it have no other choice but to trust the providers that they will keep the data safe and private.
Grid computing is an easy and economical way of achieving the processing capabilities of a supercomputer. The problem of security is also a concern as some nodes may turn out to be malicious and there is no central control over things. This problem becomes trivial if one performs frequent tests by sending the same set of sub problems to random nodes to verify that they give the same results. If they do not then one or both of them might be playing on the system.
Summary
- Cloud and Grid Computing are the recent networked computing techniques.
- Cloud computing is the mass sharing of computer resources sharable on the internet cloud.
- Grid Computing is all about achieving high computational speeds via parallel processing on a network.
- Cloud Computing is an economical way of accessing the resources which otherwise are very expensive if needed to be bought individually.
- Grid computing is a cost effective method to achieve the capabilities of a supercomputer.