The Grid 2: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure (The Elsevier Series in Grid Computing) [Hardcover]

Beyond the Net, say Foster, Kesselman, and a host of impressive contributors, lies the Grid. While the Net allows users everywhere to share information, the Grid will allow users to share raw computing power. The goal is to put full supercomputing capabilities into the hands of anyone who needs it while providing for more efficient use of the supercomputers of tomorrow. The potential benefits to science, government, and business may well be beyond imagination.

Foster and Kesselman have gathered together essays, proposals, and ruminations of more than 30 distinguished stars of the high-speed computing and networking world in order to do four things: make the case for developing computational grids, provide ideas on how such grids may be designed, demonstrate how the grids might be used, and point out the research still needed to make it happen. While the book was written to serve as a possible textbook in advanced networking, it makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the future of network computing.

The text covers Grid applications, the programming tools required, the services that will be provided, and an examination of Grid infrastructure. Despite being the work of so many authors, the chapters are logically arranged so that the knowledge needed to understand one chapter is provided by those that precede it. --Elizabeth Lewis

I am struck by the increased emphasis on applications---50% more pages and 4 times the number of chapters---than in the first edition. There is also more material on developing standards, policy, and management. These are true signs of a maturing technology. I hold firm that the Grid will have significant impact on more aspects and segments of IT than the designers originally conceived. The rich experiences in this book will convince the reader as well -Shane Robison, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy & Technology Officer, Hewlett-Packard The "doing of science" s at an inflection point: Computation, collaboration, visualization and smart storage lie at the heart of what science in the 21st century requires. This extremely readable collection provides a detailed roadmap for creating a global platform that enables this transformation. Most fascinating, to me, is how the Grid creates a technical artifact around which the social practices of science will evolve. Cultures form around artifacts,which is why this book is so important. -John Seely Brown, Former Chief Scientist of Xerox and Director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), co-author of The Social Life of Information, HBSP 2000 The Grid, 2nd Edition, extends a vision and agenda for another decade. The Grid and web services technologies are enabling pioneering, distributed applications that begin to fulfil the vision. Eventually we"ll look back on the resulting standardization for interoperation as the real revolution. The standards and discipline will enable a new form of software construction, delivery, and even restructure the software industry. -Gordon Bell, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Foster and Kesselman have done a great job in documenting the promises and challenges of GRIDs as they evolve from their distributed computing roots to support the virtualization of applications. -Robert Aiken, Director of Engineering Academic Research and Technology Initiatives (ARTI), Cisco Systems Inc. Do you want to understand why the computer, as we know it today, will become obsolete? If yes, put your money down, and buy this book. I congratulate the authors. -Philip Emeagwali, Scientist and "A Father of the Internet" Since the first edition of this book, the Grid has evolved from vision to reality: it has become a computing and data management infrastructure that is widely used in science and engineering, has a strong industrial support and has a large community of developers and users. The two editors of this book, Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman, played a leading role in this transformation. This new edition of The Grid reflects this change. Like the original edition, it is likely to become the one essential reference about the Grid, as well as an excellent introduction to the technologies that are used in the Grid infrastructure. -Marc Snir, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign For proponents of Grid computing and for the IT community that seeks to apply these ideas, this book will serve as a first class tour of the concept space and the details of its implementation. Guaranteed to be thought provoking and an excellent source of information. -Vint Cerf, Internet Pioneer

'The Grid is an emerging infrastructure that will fundamentally change the way we think about-and use-computing. The word Grid is used by analogy with the electric power grid, which provides pervasive access to electricity and has had a dramatic impact on human capabilities and society. Many believe that by allowing all components of our information technology infrastructure-computational capabilities, databases, sensors, and people-to be shared flexibly as true collaborative tools the Grid will have a similar transforming effect, allowing new classes of applications to emerge.' - From the Preface. In 1998, Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman introduced a whole new concept in computing with the first edition of this book. Today, there is a broader and deeper understanding of the nature of the opportunities offered by Grid computing and the technologies needed to realize those opportunities. In "Grid 2", the editors reveal the revolutionary impact of large-scale resource sharing and virtualization within science and industry, the intimate relationships between organization and resource sharing structures and the new technologies required to enable secure, reliable, and efficient resource sharing on large scale. Foster and Kesselman have once again assembled a team of experts to present an up-to-date view of Grids that reports on real experiences and explains the available technologies and new technologies emerging from labs, companies and standards bodies. "Grid 2", like its predecessor, serves as a manifesto, design blueprint, user guide and research agenda for future Grid systems. There are 30 chapters including more than a dozen completely new chapters. There is web access to 13 unchanged chapters from the first edition. Three personal essays are by influential thinkers on the significance of Grids from the perspectives of infrastructure, industry, and science. There is a foundational overview of the central Grid concepts and architectural principles. Twelve application vignettes showcase working Grids in science, engineering, industry, and commerce. There are detailed discussions of core architecture and services, data and knowledge management, and higher-level tools. There are focused presentations on production Grid deployment, computing platforms, peer-to-peer technologies, and network infrastructures. There is extensive bibliography and glossary.

Ian Foster is Senior Scientist in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, where he also leads the Distributed Systems Laboratory, and Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. His research concerns techniques, tools, and algorithms for high-performance distributed computing, parallel computing, and computational science. Foster led the research and development of software for the I-WAY wide-area distributed computing experiment, which connected supercomputers, databases, and other high-end resources at 17 sites across North America (a live experiment at the Supercomputing conference of 1995). Most recently Carl Kesselman received international recognition for GUSTO, the world's first high-performance computational grid. GUSTO pushes the technological envelope by using high-speed networks and software to provide global access to advanced supercomputers and other devices.