Virtualization Grid Computing

The concept of the grid deals critically with the virtualization, which means that at all levels there exist a layer of the abstraction as to what is requested and what is provided(service).Grid computing makes it possible to create a single IT infrastructure that can be shared by multiple business processes.

This can be better  understand by considering an Oracle"s Grid environment, where the end users as for an application service and the grid works out as to which clustered J2EE application server can best provide it.

Consider an Oracle application server model in which an Application server asks for the database service from an RAC database and Grid work out from which RAC instance the data service can best be provided. Within the Grid there is indexing of all the possible services to available service provider and the algorithms for assinging the worload and resource appropriately. Due to this the end user neither needs nor have the capacity to know from where the computing resources are actually being provided.

The Grid is not only exclusive to Oracle but at the physical level, some O.S and hardware vendors have the capabilities to partition the server into virtual machines, which can be alloted RAM and CPUs dynamically according to the demand. Thus it is conceptually similar to the Oracle"s approach of dynamically assinging application server and database server resources. Thus there is no reason for which the two approaches can"t be combined and work towards the same goal and can work together. The result of a such a approach would be an environment where adequate resources will always be available on demand, without facing the issues of excess capacity or underperformance at times. It should be possible to design a Grid environment with no single point of failure, and thus achieving 100% uptime, which is demanded by many organizations.