ABSTRACT
What better place to start a chapter on the definition of a Grid environment and its components than with a definition of what, in general, are the characteristics of Grid environments?
Definition A Grid is considered a decentralized system, a spanning system containing multiple administrative domains, that provides a nontrivial quality of service where both the set of users and the total set of resources can (and do) vary dynamically and continuously. It handles large numbers of hardware and software systems to perform functions and computations on large volumes of data. Uniform and transparent access to heterogeneous systems (again hardware and software) is provided to both end users and their applications. However, it is a flexible mechanism in which one can locate resources based on a user’s criteria, combined with a set of rules and permissions.
