Patent ID: 7533168

Claim:
A grid computing system, comprising: a grid comprising one or more compute nodes each already configured to participate in the grid with current executable software to perform one or more compute jobs; a master node configured to manage the grid; and a node, wherein when the node is not configured with the current executable software to perform one or more compute jobs to participate in the grid as a compute node, the node is configured to: discover the master node in accordance with one or more peer-to-peer platform protocols; and in response to said discovering the master node, send information about the node to the discovered master node in accordance with the one or more peer-to-peer platform protocols; wherein the master node is further configured to, in response to said information about the node, send grid configuration information to the node in accordance with the one or more peer-to-peer platform protocols; and wherein the node is further configured to, in response to said grid configuration information received from the discovered master node, self-configure as a compute node in the grid in accordance with the grid configuration information, wherein after self-configuring as a compute node the node is configured with the current executable software to perform one or more compute jobs in the grid.