Data centres have become an essential component of our worldwide infrastructure. They currently require sufficient capacity, such as memory and speed, to prevent society from grinding to a halt.
Capacity planning presents data centres with an enormous challenge. What hardware should organisations buy and install to be able to continue processing the growing amount of data? Planning too broadly means vast sums of money down the drain. Planning too tightly runs the risk of the data centre not coping with peak loads. A solution for this was nevertheless devised, thanks to the graduate internship of Georgios (‘Jorgos’) Andreadis at Solvinity.
Open source tool “Capelin”
Under the supervision of his educational supervisor Vincent van Beek MSc, IT engineer and researcher at Solvinity, Jorgos and his team developed “Capelin” – the first open source data centre capacity planning tool. With the aid of this freely available tool, it’s possible to make a substantiated estimation of the required capacity of a data centre. It also includes the latest technological developments, such as Cloud and IoT.
A more accurate estimation of modern workloads means a data centre can be arranged more efficiently, while reducing the risk of disruptions. Energy consumption can also be reduced by up to 50%. The result being a lower total cost.
‘It can be hard finding an IT organisation willing to take part in a study of which the impact is is still unclear’, Jorgos added. ‘Thanks to the cooperation and knowledge of Solvinity, we were able to test this data study in practice, and then finalise this within nine months. The Solvinity engineers were very helpful and approachable, which helped me immensely.’
Best Graduate 2020
Jorgos was not only awarded a rare 10 for his thesis; it was also proclaimed ‘Thesis of the Year 2020’ of the TU Delft, resulting in him graduating as Best Graduate 2020.
If you’re also interested in a career or internship at Solvinity, you can view vacancies or submit an open application here.
