GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - Virtual hosting vs. dedicated hosting vs. grid hosting

So I have been researching new technologies that I may be able to bring to the market in the next few months. One of these is grid hosting.

I am sure that many of you know of the MediaTemple Grid solution which I have to say, is nicely done. As part of my research I purchased an account from them, tested it and found it to be a good idea in theory. The major issues I see with their solution is resource management, but that is another subject all together.

What I want to see is how people feel about a grid computing in relation to a hosted services or applications that could be used to host a customer's website.

As of right now there are 2 types of hosting commonly used today. The first is virtual or shared hosting. As a provider I love virtual hosting as it's overall ROI is great, and allows me to offer a strong solution to a new customer looking for value. However virtual hosting has it's own set of issues, one of which is the effects caused resource demanding websites on the server as a whole. Generally hosting companies offer virtual hosting to customer on a single "node", which doesn't allow for any load balancing or redundancy, BIG problem in today's market. But since the value saving is there, a lot of customer are willing to take the chance. As of me, I at last have some load balancing, and reducancy built into my hosting plans, but again another subject.

The next is dedicated hosting or colocation. Both require dedicated hardware which generally has a 1:1 relationship. Meaning 1 websites to 1 server, or 1 client to 1 server. This provides the customer dedicated resources which is always good, but as I see it, you still have the problem of load balancing and service redundancy.

So both of these solution have their good points, and bad point. As masters of enterprise we all have to take these in consiteration, and work to build ourselves into solutions that will fit the needs posed by today requirements, and hope that what we have built will work for the future. As I see it there has to be a better way!

In comes the Grid solution.

For those of you that don't know much about Grid Theory, (here I go using that high priced degree I have) the idea behind grid computing, is to allow the load of a job, or process to be shared between linked hardware. Offering both load balancing and redundancy on all layers. This simply means that the grid functions as 1 very large server, when in fact it is several nodes communicating together via some kindof backbone. Up until resently, grid solutions were reserved for university science teams working on ways to unlock unknown unknowns. They required special software, and were generally hard to use. Having a market ready solution which would be used by the masses just wasn't part of the Grid Theory, and forget about using standard open source software which we ALL know and love.

Now in counter Grid Theory when applied to web hosting would provide a never before seen quality of service giving users the ablility to grow a single solution seamlessly without having to worry about managing resource requirements, offering load balancing and redundancy on all levels; with extreme cost saving compared to dedicated or colocation services. Offering the users virtually limitless expandablility.

With all of these said, I would like to know what people think about a Grid Hosting Solution (GHS), and how they feel it will compare to existing virtual, dedicated and/or colocation solutions offered today.

Thank you,
JoeW

P.S. sorry for any grammar mistakes, or spelling issues. :thumbsup