Patent ID: 7937406

Claim:
A method, comprising: selecting, by a software grid establishment component (GEC) executing on a computer processor, from a plurality of nodes, a set of grid nodes having a media access control port accessible by the software GEC; and establishing, by the software GEC executing on the computer processor without user intervention, a resource grid, wherein establishing comprises: issuing, via the media access control port, a command to each of the grid nodes in the set of grid nodes to perform a network reboot, wherein the set of grid nodes performs the network reboot using an operating system image provided by the software GEC, and wherein the operating system image comprises an operating system and a grid facilitation agent; configuring, using the grid facilitation agent, each grid node in the set of grid nodes to enable that grid node to participate as part of the resource grid, wherein configuring the grid node to enable that grid node to participate as part of the resource grid comprises: deploying a grid participation module to the grid facilitation agent operating on the grid node, instructing the grid facilitation agent to run the grid participation module on the grid node to enable the grid node to participate as part of the resource grid, wherein the grid participation module corresponding to a grid master comprises instructions for selecting a slave node to process a resource request and instructions for forwarding the resource request to the slave node, and wherein the grid participation module corresponding to the slave node comprises instructions for receiving the resource request from the grid master and instructions for processing the resource request, deploying an application for processing the resource request to the grid node when the grid node is the slave node, and instructing the grid facilitation agent to run the application when the grid node is the slave node; establishing the grid master to manage access to resources provided by the set of grid nodes, such that the resource grid formed by the set of grid nodes behaves as a single pool of resources accessible through the grid master; configuring the grid master with an identity of each slave node; and configuring each slave node with an identity of the grid master.