Aim of the paper is to develop a concise but comprehensive analytical model for the well-known Grace Hash Join algorithm on cost effective cluster architectures. This approach is part of an ongoing project to develop algorithms for the design of quasi-optimal query execution plans for parallel database systems. We try to concentrate on a limited number of characteristic parameters to keep the analytical model clear and focused. We believe that a meaningful model can be built upon only three characteristic parameter sets, describing main memory size, the I/O bandwidth and the disk bandwidth. We will justify our approach by a practical implementation and a comparison of the theoretical and real performance values.