Is utility computing, grid computing, and virtualization the same thing?
Utility computing, grid computing and virtualization
are terms that have been floated around when disscussing IT efficiency planning and server consolodation. However, some people use them interchangably. What do you think, are they just different names for the same concept?
are terms that have been floated around when disscussing IT efficiency planning and server consolodation. However, some people use them interchangably. What do you think, are they just different names for the same concept?
They’re different aspects and utilizations of a concept instead of the same exact thing.
Grid Computing tends to refer (in academia) to the scientific discipline, communications protocols and technologies that enable massively distributed computer systems to be massed across numerous origanisations. Owing to the massive scale of these systems they’re frequently homogenous (i.e. many dissimilar varieties of large computers and protocols that find some common ground through the grid protocols).
Utility Computing (amongst commercial circles) is most typically used to describe the ability to leverage computing power when it’s needed. As a result, utility computing tends to be more heterogeneous because it’s oftentimes provided by a single vendor.
Virtualization is the odd-man-out here because it is a concept that appears in both grid computing and utility computing models, in addition to in smaller machines and identifies the capability for an individual hardware machine to appear to run as multiple machines through software. Therefore it is popular in Utility computing since it is a nice way of selling “a machine” that does not actually exist – i.e. the company sells the capability of a machine but owns an altogether different kind of machine.