Company
Date Published
Author
Jes Olson
Word count
2367
Language
English
Hacker News points
6

Summary

The Dolphin project is a fleet optimization system developed by the Fleet Optimization Engineering team at DigitalOcean. Its primary goal is to ensure that Droplets (virtual machines) are distributed across servers in a way that maximizes performance and minimizes downtime. The system uses a combination of machine learning algorithms, event storming, and deliberate design to achieve this goal. Dolphin consists of three main components: the Monitor, which detects potential issues; the Rebalancer, which moves Droplets to resolve these issues; and the Workload Journey Manager, which enforces rules to prevent excessive migration. The system has been successful in reducing downtime and improving performance for DigitalOcean's customers. Its technology can also be used to address other operational challenges, such as full disk storage issues, by automatically detecting when a server is running low on disk space and moving Droplets away from it.