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Working

A Grid Computing network mainly consists of the following three types of machines:
1. Control Node: A computer, usually a server or a group of servers, which administers the
whole network and keeps the account of the resources in the network pool.
2. Provider: The computer which contributes its resources to the network resource pool.

3. User: The computer that uses the resources on the network.
Grid can be of two types—(i) Data grid, used to manage large and distributed data having the
required multi-user access, and (ii) CPU or Processor grid, where processing is moved from
one PC to another as needed or a large task is divided into subtasks and allotted to various
nodes for parallel processing.

Grid Computing is different from IaaS cloud service. In case of IaaS, there is a service provider
who rents the required infrastructure to the users, whereas in grid computing, multiple
computing nodes join together to solve a common computational problem. To set up a grid
by connecting numerous nodes in terms of data as well as CPU, a middleware is required to
implement the distributed processor architecture. The Globus toolkit (http://toolkit.globus.org/
toolkit) is one such software toolkit used for building grids and it is open source. It includes
software for security, resource management, data management, communication, fault detection,
etc.

12.7 BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

Blockchain technology works on the concept
of decentralized and shared database where
Supplement – Informatics Practices with Python–XI
each computer has a copy of the database.
A block can be considered as a secured chunk
of data or valid transaction. Each block has
some data called its header, which is visible
to every other node, while only the owner
has access to the private data of the block.
Such blocks form a chain called blockchain
Fig. 12.16: Blockchain Technology
(Fig. 12.16).

A simple analogy for understanding blockchain technology is a Google Doc. When we create
a document and share it with a group of people, the document is distributed instead of being
copied or transferred. This creates a decentralized distribution chain that gives everyone access
to the document at the same time. No one is locked out awaiting changes from another party,
while all modifications to the doc are being recorded in real time, making changes completely
transparent.

We can define blockchain as a system that allows a group of connected computers to maintain
a single updated and secure ledger. Each computer or node that participates in the blockchain
receives a full copy of the database. It maintains an ‘append only’ open ledger which is updated
only after all the nodes within the network authenticate the transaction. Safety and security of
the transactions is ensured because all members in the network keep a copy of the blockchain
and so it is not possible for a single member of the network to make changes or alter data.

12.12