I'm trying to learn cloud-computing, especially the idea of distributed operations (Grid Computing?) for a project I'm working on. We'll need to perform distributed fault-tolerant operations over a very large data set, which we will also be responsible for storing and maintaining in an optimized way.
If I'm trying to learn from books or white-papers, what types of things should I look out for and focus on to help me gain this knowledge as efficiently and effectively as possible?