Grid And Cloud Computing Concepts And Practical Applications

Grid and Cloud Computing: Concepts and Practical Applications

The distributed computing infrastructure known as ‘the Grid’ has undoubtedly been one of the most successful science-oriented large- scale IT projects of the past 20 years. It is now a fully operational international entity, encompassing several hundred computing sites on all continents and giving access to hundreds of thousands of CPU (central processing unit) cores and hundreds of petabytes of storage, all connected by robust national and international scientific networks. It has evolved to become the main computational platform many scientific communities. This book presents lectures from the Enrico Fermi International School of Physics summer school Grid and Cloud computing: Concepts and Practical Applications, held in Varenna, Italy, in July 2014. The school aimed to cover the conceptual and practical aspects of both the Grid and Cloud computing. The proceedings included here are divided into eight chapters, with chapters 1, 2, 3 and 8 covering general applications of Grid and Cloud computing in various scientific fields, while chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 discuss specific technical areas of Grid and Cloud structures. The book will be of interest to all those whose work involves the use of the Grid or Cloud computing.

Grid and Cloud Computing. Concepts and Practical Applications. Course 192. Proceedings of the International School of Physics «Enrico Fermi»

Grid and Cloud Computing

In today’s dynamic business environment, IT departments are under permanent pressure to meet two divergent requirements: to reduce costs and to support business agility with higher flexibility and responsiveness of the IT infrastructure. Grid and Cloud Computing enable a new approach towards IT. They enable increased scalability and more efficient use of IT based on virtualization of heterogeneous and distributed IT resources. This book provides a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of Grids and Clouds and of how companies can benefit from them. A wide array of topics is covered, e.g. business models and legal aspects. The applicability of Grids and Clouds in companies is illustrated with four cases of real business experiments. The experiments illustrate the technical solutions and the organizational and IT governance challenges that arise with the introduction of Grids and Clouds. Practical guidelines on how to successfully introduce Grids and Clouds in companies are provided.