First, we'll look at the typical grid infrastructure components and how each component can affect the application architecture, design, and deployment. These are the main components of a grid infrastructure:

Security. Security is an important consideration in Grid computing. Each grid resource may have different security policies that need to be complied with. A single sign-on authentication method is a necessity. A commonly agreed-upon method of negotiating authorization is also needed.

Resource management. When a job is submitted, the grid resource manager is concerned with assigning a resource to the job, monitoring its status, and returning its results.

Information services. For the grid resource manager to make informed decisions on resource assignments, the grid resource manager needs to know what grid resources are available, as well as their capacities and current utilization. This knowledge about the grid resources is maintained and provided by Grid Information Service (GIS), also known as the Monitoring and Discovery Service (MDS)

Full story...