What is a farm, not a grid or cluster?

Question

I am trying to understand what “farm” means when calculating, so if a farm can be represented as a cluster, there must be something that the farm no matter what the cluster is.

How is it different from the grid?

Do these concepts have a common meaning when it comes to, for example, web servers, is this just one common scenario, or are they completely different from the context? If so, what are the different meanings (or the most common)?

Also, should I ask about this somewhere else? (If so, my apologies).

Answer 1

I will go:

A server farm is a group of servers that may or may not be clustered, which together provides higher processing power for a specific purpose than a single server. An example is a web farm, which usually consists of several load-balanced web servers, each with the same content and configuration.

While a farm can be clustered, a cluster usually consists of servers that are configured in a fallback scenario, for example, active / passive, which means that, say, 1/2 of the servers are active and the rest of the activation is activated only when Servers located on a valid service are no longer available. Therefore, when a server in a cluster fails, this is not a problem because another server takes over.

A grid , this is usually a configuration of computers that work together (in parallel) to solve a complex problem, such as calculating organic chemistry or playing chess against a world champion. The work is divided into parts, and each computer takes on the part and reports its results to the main node, which then synthesizes the final result.

Hope this helps.

Some links:

Defining a server farm on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_farm

Computing cluster definition on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_(computing)

Wikipedia definition of grid computing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_computing