Building Massively Scalable Grids

By Iqbal Khan

When done right, Enterprise Data Grids offer utility-style computing and easy expansion.

An Enterprise Data Grid is a new form of IT infrastructure that gives high-transaction applications improved scalability and reduces the stress they impose on the database. For .NET and Windows platforms, these applications could be ASP.NET applications or service-oriented architecture (SOA) applications developed as Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services and hosted in IIS or TCP in a multiserver environment. These applications can be developed in C#, VB.NET or any of the leading programming languages. Similarly, applications developed in Java, PHP or other programming languages fall into the same category.

Grid Computing has recently become popular for applications that need massively parallel computation, a need addressed by Microsoft HPC Server 2008. A Compute Grid is a collection of servers that can easily scale to hundreds or even thousands of servers, allowing that much more parallel computing to be distributed in the Compute Grid. A Compute Grid seamlessly expands computation power through inexpensive hardware.