sungrid

Sun Grid was a grid computing platform developed by Sun Microsystems to enable distributed computing across multiple machines and administrative domains. The goal was to improve utilization of idle CPU cycles, storage, and software licenses by pooling resources into a single grid. The platform combined middleware, a resource management system, and tools to submit, monitor, and manage jobs across the grid. The core component was Sun Grid Engine (SGE), a queue-based scheduler that allocated resources according to policies such as fairness and priority. A master scheduler coordinated tasks while execution daemons ran on individual compute nodes. Users submitted tasks with commands such as qsub and monitored progress with qstat and qdel.

The system supported parallel environments for multi-processor jobs and integrated with Sun's Solaris OS and hardware stack. Security and access control were implemented through standard user accounts and groups, with policy-driven resource limits. The platform was marketed to researchers and enterprises seeking to increase throughput for compute-intensive workloads.

In the wake of Sun Microsystems' acquisition by Oracle in 2010, the Sun Grid Engine technology lived on as Oracle Grid Engine and later influenced the Open Grid Scheduler project. The Sun Grid line of products contributed to early standards in grid resource management and helped shape subsequent cluster schedulers.

See also: Grid computing, Sun Grid Engine, Oracle Grid Engine, Open Grid Scheduler.