Grids over the enterprise WAN

Grid computing is touted by many as the killer application for wide area networks. The whole idea of grid computing -- that of reusing spare processing power on one computer for a job running on another -- is predicated on the idea that the computers are connected over a network.

This network can be a local area network or a WAN, but in practice is more likely to be the latter, as grid computing is right now largely the preserve of universities, research establishments and large corporations in the pharmaceutical, financial and oil industries. At its most basic, grid computing -- commonly referred to as the next-generation Internet -- can run over the flimsiest of networks. SETI@Home and other distributed computing applications, which are akin to a poor man's grid, run quite happily over the public Internet, with nodes (that is, PCs or servers that take on a share of the processing load) on everything from corporate LANs to dial-up connections.

But for serious grid computing the message is emerging that a robust and fast network is essential. The Globus Alliance -- a team of academic, government and commercial researchers that created an open-source Globus Toolkit of interfaces and source code -- cites the problems of making something work fast and consistently over a network that may be neither of those things.

Some organisations are taking a good look at their networks now, in anticipation of the demands that grid computing may place on them in future. This does not mean every company out there should be doing so, but some universities in particular are already upgrading their networks to 10Gbit backbones just to support grid computing -- and finding that in a buyer's market they are able to get good deals on the upgrades.

Grid evangelist Ian Foster, who is head of the distributed systems lab at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, agrees that grids are currently more academic curiosity than commercial venture: "Grid computing today is where the Internet was in 1991... today's mini-grids will grow into a huge global grid." However, the commercial applications of grid computing are beginning to catch on. IBM, HP and Sun are all pushing their grid initiatives as they feel the adverse affects of diminishing budgets for new server and network infrastructures in enterprises. The Globus project now has version 3 of its grid toolkit -- an open-source implementation of the Open Grid Service Architecture (OGSA) that companies can use to create grid applications. Even Oracle is getting in on the act with its 10g database and 10g application server. But while Larry Ellison will laud the potential of grid computing at OracleWorld, in private Oracle executives admit they have few corporate customers on the horizon.

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline is one company that is using grid computing to achieve jobs that would previously have taken months. "There are real examples out there," says Una du Noyer, head of infrastructure and security at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, who is working with companies to implement grid-computing solutions. But, she admits, most applications are still confined to life sciences and financial applications. "It's finding uses in anything that you would traditionally use supercomputers for," she says.

In life sciences, grid computing is used for cancer research and protein sequencing and folding (the Folding@home project is one example of a distributed computing application for this). In financial services, applications include derivatives analysis, statistical analysis and portfolio risk analysis, where the statistical margin of error can be significantly reduced.

There are other applications: in the field of energy, grid computing can be used for seismic analysis and reservoir analysis; in manufacturing it can find a home in mechanical design and process simulation; and in the entertainment field there is digital rendering.

But all of this takes the right infrastructure. The computing element is easy: the whole point of grid computing is to use fallow computing power on underused computers in -- and sometimes even outside -- an organisation. It is the network part that needs careful consideration.

Cardiff University is nearing the end of a major overhaul of its already substantial network, prompted by several factors, one of which was its pioneering work on grid computing. Network team leader Tom Wearsma is nearing the end of a major project to upgrade the university's substantial WAN that will span two campuses (Cardiff University will merge with the University of Wales College of Medicine in August 2004), and has 25,000 outlets.