Effective Scheduling of Tasks in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is an extension of parallel computing, grid computing and utility computing. It is distributed in nature hence it is a pool of independent resources which are distributed on remote locations. Cloud Computing has developed from distributedcomputing and progressed through numerous stages. Althoughmany definitions are given for cloud computing however the definition given by NationalInstitute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is broadly accepted. Cloud computing is amodel for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool ofconfigurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, andservices) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort orservice provider interaction.Cloud computing is the result of improvement in numerous technologies includinghardware virtualization, multi-processor chips, distributed computing, autonomiccomputing and datacenter automation. Grid computing allows aggregation of distributedcomputing and storage resources and provides transparent access to these resources. Gridcomputing mainly focuses on accelerating a wide variety of scientific applicationsincluding climate modeling and protein analysis. But grid computing fails to deliverresources with diverse software configuration. Virtualization technology is introduced toovercome these drawbacks. Utility computing enables consumers to use services on payper-use basis. Autonomic computing solves the problem of managing large datacenters byperforming various tasks including service level management of application, automation ofVM provisioning and hands-on disaster recovery.Cloud computing appeared as the typical computational technology without theneed for the consumer to know the minute details of the implementation and functioning ofthe network. It's gaining more and more attraction every day because of the unlimitedscalability and the capability to deliver the services instantly over the web. The beauty ofthe cloud computing lies in the fact that system resources (i.e. storage, processing poweretc.) are available as and when consumer needs them and only need to pay for the usage.