GRID (Clustered) SAN computing standards Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

GRID (Clustered) SAN computing standards - Essay Example 2. A storage system which consists of network elements such as storage devices, computer systems, servers, control software (such as server administration and site server) that will communicate over the network. Storage networks are distinguished from other forms of network storage devices simply by their low-level access method they use and is very similar to such network devices as ATA, disk drives and SCSI hardware. Inside a storage network, the server will issue a request for specific blocks of data and this device on the storage network will then send requests across the network. In the clustered GRID infrastructure would be a series of SAN devices that would then integrate as part of the larger network in order to share the storage capabilities inside the GRID. As such, each device would then be added to the larger network that can be used by other networked devices such as a computer workstation. An example of this computing infrastructure, courtesy of Force10, shows how this cluster/GRID computing network is positioned to utilized these storage devices GRID computing is the transformation of a computer infrastructure into an integrated Virtual Organisation that allows for dynamic collaboration and the ability to share resources from anywhere in the world. This sharing provides users with an unprecedented amount of computing power, especially for those in the field of scientific investigation and collaboration in which the needs of the computer power cannot necessarily be handled by one such computer. Through integration inside the GRID of such supercomputers will enable users to access power without the need to purchase larger systems. GRID computing is based on three concepts as outlined by Reddy (2004) "as: Virtualization: severing the hard-coded association of resources to systems Resource Allocation and Management: dynamically allocating resources on demand, and managing them and finally, Provisioning: configuring resources whenever and wherever needed." (Reddy, 2004) Kalzar Amin, Gregor von Laszewski and Armin R. Mikler Kalzar, et al describe the term Grid computing as commonly referred "to a distributed infrastructure that promotes large scale resource sharing in a dynamic institutional "virtual organisation" (VO). A computational Grid forms a closed network of a large number of pooled resources providing standardized, reliable, specialized and pervasive access to high-end computational resources." Typically, in order to establish a computational Grid, several institutions pool their resources such as computational cycles, specialized software, database servers, network bandwidth, and people. As a result of this "pooling" global policies will be set for the virtual organisation which will in an essence identify each of the participating entities' roles and responsibilities, much like in a LAN server networking scenario. Each of the site institution administrators, who are generally trained as network administrators will then enforce these policies at the domain level. The GRID administrators will then provide each of the GRID users their appropriate credentials and through these credentials will the users access