Grid hosting is a service that provides grid computing capabilities to its clients. Grid computing is the application of multiple computers (or servers) to a problem that requires access to a large number of computing cycles. It is the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal.
Grid hosting is a cost effective alternative to shared web hosting. A grid is composed of over the counter computers connected to a network. Grid Web hosting allows for distribution of the total work among multiple servers connected on a network. Load sharing technique has helped reduce the total pressure on one single system. Scalability is the biggest advantage of grid hosting.
In shared hosting, capabilities are fixed. No matter how popular a certain website may get, access to resources remains the same and more resources are not available. But a website on a grid host which gains popularity can gain access to more computing resources where as relatively unknown sites can consume lesser resources. So basically there is no fixed capacity of resources that a website on a grid host may use. In grid hosting there are numerous commodity hardware assigned to do specific tasks like serving email, providing web services etc. Increased load due to spikes in web traffic are simply distributed to the grid members. Grid web hosting also allows for implementing different applications together without any conflict with the other applications. Also because all the resources are interlinked, the servers which are getting higher hits may get help from those sitting idle.
Another notable useful point of grid hosting is that while a new server is being installed to the cluster, the other servers do not go down and hence, there is no change in the uptimes for the various websites hosted.
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