What is the difference between Cloud Computing and Grid Computing

Question

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

User · Answer

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.

User · Answer

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

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

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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

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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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

Grid computing is where more than one computer coordinates to solve a problem together  Often used for problems involving a lot of number crunching  which can be easily parallelisable   Cloud computing is where an application doesn t access resources it requires directly  rather it accesses them through something like a service  So instead of talking to a specific hard drive for storage  and a specific CPU for computation  etc  it talks to some service that provides these resources  The service then maps any requests for resources to its physical resources  in order to provide for the application  Usually the service has access to a large amount of physical resources  and can dynamically allocate them as they are needed    In this way  if an application requires only a small amount of some resource  say computation  then the service only allocates a small amount  say on a single physical CPU  that may be shared with some other application using the service   If the application requires a large amount of some resource  then the service allocates that large amount  say a grid of CPUs  The application is relatively oblivious to this  and all the complex handling and coordination is performed by the service  not the application  In this way the application can scale well    For example a web site written  on the cloud  may share a server with many other web sites while it has a low amount of traffic  but may be moved to its own dedicated server  or grid of servers  if it ever has massive amounts of traffic  This is all handled by the cloud service  so the application shouldn t have to be modified drastically to cope   A cloud would usually use a grid  A grid is not necessarily a cloud or part of a cloud   Wikipedia articles  Grid computing  Cloud computing

User · Answer

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

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