As part of my honours project I conducted a literature review of virtual machines for grid computing. The following excerpt details the structure of my literature review.
To greater understand what is required for incorporating virtualisation into grid computing; we will first look at high-performance computing and e-Science. This will look at the evolution of e-Science (Section 2) from its early period starting with cluster computing, its evolution in to grid computing, the introduction of scientific workflows, and finally the use of large-scale e-Science.
An understanding of the problems associated with the uptake and use of grid computing will be analysed to gain a greater understanding of what is required by e-Scientists in modern day computing for experimentation on the large-scale e-Science infrastructure.
This will then be followed by a more technical look at virtualisation (Section 3), specifically examining virtualisation in high-performance computing, and how it is applied in grid computing. Emerging architectures will be discussed with a concentration on platform virtual machines as work units.
Finally this review will examine how platform virtual machine work units can be orchestrated across the grid including the configuration, deployment and execution of such units.
My literature review can be accessed here.