Want to Know About Grid Computing? Ask IBM.

Last week, IBM introduced a new version of its self-managing autonomic software for grid computing environments. The software, called IBM Batch-on-Grid, allows IT administrators to do the job they were hired to do rather than sitting around simply baby sitting a computer. An organization's computer systems can continue operating during system failures, natural disasters, or even while complex applications are being upgraded.

IBM Batch-on-Grid is a combination of IBM's self-managing autonomic computing and classic "batch computing", a technology that dates back to the 1950's and is still used today by many government, finance, and industrial organizations.

Batch computing consists of various computing jobs being submitted to queues and then getting scheduled for processing. Batch-on-Grid creates batch workloads within Grid systems and then uses autonomic technology to schedule and maintain those workloads.

IBM says, organizations can automatically shift Grid workloads so that the most important jobs - those affecting customers and supply chain partners - are taken care of first. For example, an organization can limit a server to 95 percent capacity, and when a server approaches that threshold, the software will instantly shift the workload on demand to another server. This ensures customers and partners are provided with continuous service.

Batch-on-Grid consists of three of IBM's Tivoli products working together. It includes IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, which provides a single point of control for managing batch workloads in mainframe and distributed environments; IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler Load Leveler, which allows customers to boost workload performance on AIX and Linux systems; and IBM Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator, which delivers computing capacity when needed by predicting impending workload requirements and provisioning the appropriate computing capacity when needed.

It is difficult to quantify and determine who, if anyone, is the leader in the Grid computing market, however, it is a safe bet to say, if you want to know about Grid computing... ask IBM.

Posted by David Marshall on May 15, 2006 08:12 PM