[cloud] What is the difference between Cloud Computing and Grid Computing?

What are the significant differences between Cloud Computing and Grid Computing ? What are the precise definations and target application domains for both ? I'm looking for conceptual insights along with technicalities.

Like Windows Azure is a Cloud OS, do we have anytihng such for Grid Computing ?

In past I did work on distributed and parallel computing and I used the librariries like PVM and MPI for processing distribution. Out of curiosity I wanted to know If Grid Computing is distributed computing extended over internet ?

I would say that the basic difference is this:

Grids are used as computing/storage platform.

We start talking about cloud computing when it offers services. I would almost say that cloud computing is higher-level grid. Now I know these are not definitions, but maybe it will make it more clear.

As far as application domains go, grids require users (developers mostly) to actually create services from low-level functions that grid offers. Cloud will offer complete blocks of functionality that you can use in your application.

Example (you want to create physical simulation of ball dropping from certain height): Grid: Study how to compute physics on a computer, create appropriate code, optimize it for certain hardware, think about paralellization, set inputs send application to grid and wait for answer

Cloud: Set diameter of a ball, material from pre-set types, height from which the ball is dropping, etc and ask for results

I would say that if you created OS for grid, you would actually create cloud OS.

This is the perfect answer for difference between Cloud Computing and Grid Computing ? Check this:

There are a lot of good answers to this question already but another way to take a look at it is the cloud (ala Amazon's AWS) is good for interactive use cases and the grid (ala High Performance Computing) is good for batch use cases.

Cloud is interactive in that you can get resources on demand via self service. The code you run on VMs in the cloud, such as the Apache web server, can server clients interactively.

Grid is batch in that you submit jobs to a job queue after obtaining the credentials from some HPC authority to do so. The code you run on the grid waits in that queue until there are sufficient resources to execute it.

There are good use cases for both styles of computing.

You should really read Wikipedia for in-depth understanding. In short, Cloud computing means you develop/run your software remotely on remote platform. This can be either using remote virtual infrastructure (amazon EC2), remote platform (google app engine), or remote application (force.com or gmail.com).

Grid computing means using many physical hardwares to do computations (in the broad sense) as if it was a single hardware. This means that you can run your application on several distinct machines at the same time.

not very accurate but enough to get you started.

Cloud Computing is For Service Oriented where as Grid Computing is for Application Oriented. Grid computing is used to build Virtual supercomputer using a middler ware to achieve a common task that can be shared among several resources. most probably this task will be kind of computing or data storage.

Cloud computing is providing services over the internet through several servers uses Virtualization.In cloud computing either you can provide service in three types Iaas , Paas, Saas . This will give you solution when you don't have any resources for a short time Business service over the Internet.

A Grid is a hardware and software infrastructure that clusters and integrates high-end computers, networks, databases, and scientific instruments from multiple sources to form a virtual supercomputer on which users can work collaboratively within virtual organisations

Grid is Mostly free used by academic research etc.

Clouds are a large pool of easily usable and accessible virtualized resources (such as hardware, development platforms and/or services). These resources can be dynamically reconfigured to adjust to a variable load (scale), allowing also for an optimum resource utilization. This pool of resources is typically exploited by a pay peruse model in which guarantees are offered by the Infrastructure Provider by customized service level agreements.

Cloud is not free. It is a service, provided by different service providers and they charge according to your work done.

Cloud Computing is a large group of interconnected computers.The data are hidden form the user. Grid computing is more than one computers interconnected to resolve the problem.grid computing is worked in cloud computing.