If you happened to attend HostingCon last year, you may have been present for a somewhat heated exchange between the CEO of Parallels, a virtualization company, and the CEO of HostMySite.com, a firm that specializes in dedicated servers. The discussion centered around the assertion by the Parallels CEO that grid computing (also now sometimes called 'cloud computing') would herald a new era in web hosting. The alternative view held that traditional hosting and dedicated servers were doing just fine, and in fact were the sole money-maker for the majority of attendees - as evidenced by a show of hands.

Fast forward to today, and there are numerous indications that grid computing is indeed moving quickly from a theoretical technology to a disruptive force in web hosting. The factors speeding adoption of grid computing are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-demand, scalable hosting targeted at online applications. The following is a brief comparison of the traditional hosting and dedicated server markets and the up-and-coming technologies of grid computing.

First a few definitions. Dedicated servers are defined by Wikipedia as a ''type of Internet hosting where the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system and hardware''. In fact a dedicated server is the ultimate buffer between the various companies that occupy the same data center. If one server suffers an outage, is the victim of malicious activity or falls prey to poorly written or executed code - the consequences of that activity are restricted to just that single server. Other dedicated servers in the same data center remain unaffected. Grid computing is defined by Wikipedia as: ''a form of distributed computing whereby a ''super and virtual computer'' is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely-coupled computers, acting in concert to perform very large tasks. This technology has been applied to computationally-intensive scientific, mathematical, and academic problems through volunteer computing. What distinguishes grid computing from typical cluster computing systems is that grids tend to be more loosely coupled, heterogeneous, and geographically dispersed. Also, while a computing grid may be dedicated to a specialized application, it is often constructed with the aid of general purpose grid software libraries and middleware''.

So what are the practical differences between a dedicated server and grid computing when applied to a typical website application? Let's say that a system administrator has a high volume (high traffic, high bandwidth usage) website which is growing in popularity very quickly. As traffic to the site increases, so do the demands on the infrastructure supporting that website. In the case of a cluster of dedicated servers, each time a server reaches capacity - the system administrator must buy and provision an additional dedicated server. Further, the admin will pay for the entirety of the new server from day one - even if the usage of that server keeps it at only half capacity. So there are some delays and administrative hassles in deploying the new server, additional costs, and inefficiencies unless the server is always fully utilized (not likely). Grid computing takes a thoroughly different approach to this problem: the grid computing company has already absorbed the cost of the infrastructure and deployed it fully. This cost is then spread out among the grid's users. As the website grows in popularity, the grid computing model simply allocates additional existing resources to the website in precisely the amounts needed at any given time to accommodate the traffic volumes. There are no additional servers to deploy, no OS's to load, no additional provisioning and clustering needed. So if a website is growing quite quickly, the grid permits a smoother and more efficient scaling of the site than traditional dedicated servers would.

So why aren't all applications and websites simply converting over to grid computing? The answers are numerous and in some cases complex. There are companies that don't want to be bothered by the migration and switching costs of moving operations to grid computing. New systems and vendors mean additional overhead in switching billing, moving data, and working out start up bugs that smooth running websites simply don't want to tolerate for the marginal savings. There is also the learning curve as system administrators learn the skills needed to manage the grid computing systems versus the dedicated servers that they are used to and well-skilled in. Ultimately, there is simply the 'tried and true' system of dedicated servers that has yet to be outdone by grid computing. However, this is not necessarily the fault of grid computing - but simply a byproduct of the massive scalability of the system.

For example, look at what just happened with Microsoft's new online application - Photosynth. Microsoft operates it's own massive grid computing infrastructure and used the grid to launch Photosynth - which is a fairly revolutionary software program that can 'stitch together' various disparate photos of an object and render a 3-D model of the object from the photos. Microsoft had calculated various load capacities for the service and arrived at an appropriate allocation of the grid for launch. When the launch proved exponentially more popular that the models had calculated, the entire system crashed - leaving users in the dark about the status of their Photosynth projects. Microsoft corrected the system after several hours, but foes of grid computing use the incident to point out the system weaknesses - even with massive grids and capacity planning in place.

In the end, there are probably plenty of fertile uses for both dedicated servers and grid computing. Look for additional coverage in the trade press over the next year as grid computing comes of age - and companies learn how best to tap into this new and growing source of online computing power.

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Published on: 2008-08-25 (1172 reads)