Why Microsoft Has Underwater Data Centers

eight million data centers around the world are processing our entire online lives thousands of times a second but microsoft may have just rewritten this growing industry and it may be for the better with our reliance on cloud-based services expected to be at an all-time high in 2021 due to a huge shift online pushed forward by the ongoing pandemic the need for the most energy and time efficient data centers is crucial moving forward microsoft has just reached the end of a two-year stage two experiment sinking our data to the ocean floor and here's why this is big news on the 9th of july 2020 the tech giant reeled up what it calls its northern isles a 12.2 meter long steel cylinder from the seabed the giant tube remained feet below the surface for two whole years gathering data which would later be analyzed by engineers the company chose to locate this long-term experiment 10 miles off the coast of scotland in the orkney isles archipelago here 100 of the energy comes from environmentally green sources such as wind and solar the problem with data centers on land is that they are subject to a battering from all directions from the oxygen and humidity in the air land-based facilities face the serious threat of corrosion while temperature fluctuations prove to be costly for the cooling systems required to keep the servers at peak operational temperature of course the constant full traffic from cleaning and maintenance teams can also be a cause for concern with bumps jostles and genuine accidents jeopardizing the equipment's longevity sinking this facility in an airtight waterproof container alleviates some of these concerns consistently cool temperatures for example help with thermoregulation that means less energy required to keep the computers cool a plus for the environment as well as our pockets about one-fifth of a data center's energy requirements are destined for keeping a cool temperature but this is reduced to a minimal amount when surrounded naturally by seawater the flexibility of project natick the code name given to this research exercise helps alleviate concerns that traditional land-based data centers have over natural disasters and other attacks after all breaking into a conventional data center with its highly trained armed security seems easy compared to reaching it on the sea floor more than 50 of the world's population lives within 120 miles of the coast that's about two hours by car while conventional warehouses are located miles away from cities often in the middle of nowhere having access within a stone's throw means a shorter distance for data to travel saving energy and providing lightning-fast access to consumers due to the shift in cloud-based computing experts believe it would be more beneficial in terms of energy and providing a stable access to customers to have multiple smaller data centers dispersed among populations rather than drawing from one external warehouse they will still be the right time and the right place for housing data on land but it will inevitably become less common the project envisions its offshore submerged vessels being powered by partnering wind farms previously thought of as an unreliable source of electricity the uninterrupted winds at sea make it the perfect pairing however along with the fiber optic cable linking the tubes to land which are necessary to transfer data an entwined power line could provide a backup source thought up at microsoft's thinkweek 2014 an annual event where employees share advanced new ideas the project required a multinational effort to make it happen the cylinder for example was built by french shipbuilder naval before being loaded with its servers and sent on its way to its scottish residence there the european marine energy center hooked it up with its underwater cables before it was sunk in june 2018. the unit whose internal diameter measures 2.8 meters required endless negotiating and communication to sink resulting in an entire day's work everyone involved had to wait for calm waters to perform the seafloor surgery whether that is not typical for the region of the north sea out inside 864 servers with a combined output of 27.6 petabytes that's 27.6 million gigabytes enough storage to retain nearly 5 million movies or the equivalent of over one hundred thousand macbooks so the northern isles spent just over two years under the sea gathering data along its journey what do we know about the project was it a success another full day of retrieval pulled up the same white container with a thin covering of algae barnacles and sea anemones a quick wash resulted in surprisingly clean bodywork emerging from underneath from this one experiment the various teams of engineers and researchers at microsoft have deduced that syncing a data center like this is eight times more reliable than housing computers in land-based warehouses although why they're not sure despite a handful of failed servers which were taken offline no maintenance was carried out for the duration of the testing stage they believe that being filled with dry nitrogen may have something to do with its extraordinary success a substance that is less corrosive than the oxygen that forms part of the air on land rather than the frequent maintenance required by their land-based counterparts these ocean dwellers are built to survive half a decade before returning to the surface for a full health check at present other than knowing that project natick was largely a success we know very little else teams are still busy researching and dissecting the information that was gathered many citizens may share a concern that exploiting an environment that has remained virtually untouched for millennia is a huge no-go but we must remember that even in their thousands these data centers would hypothetically take up less than a single percent of the seafloor cloud expert paul johnston estimates that nearly two percent of the planet's entire carbon footprint comes from data centers so any effort to reduce this will surely be a good thing yes say the critics but what about their effect on the seas temperature an inherent lack in a cooling system such as that of a conventional data center is great but this is because the ocean's naturally cool waters help disseminate this heat nevertheless the effect this is said to have on the surrounding water is negligible of course even a single degree can cause devastation to the seascape but the change measured a few meters downstream is said to be a fraction of a degree barely noticeable with even the most advanced measuring tools furthermore microsoft believes it has found a benefit to sinking these structures on the seafloor fish and other aquatic life adore solid structures especially ones with nooks and crannies take a look at shipwrecks which have transformed into ocean havens that is exactly the effect that these are destined to have the north sea had already claimed the data center as one of its own with soft sea life shown to be attached upon removal we can only imagine how efficient other sea life will have interacted with it during its time spent on the sea floor while we await a full debrief of the project work is already being carried out restoring the seabed to its original state we are assured too that the steel pressure vessel the heat exchangers the servers and in fact all of the other components are being recycled either for their materials or for full use in another area of the company's operations right now it's clear that microsoft is rewriting what we know about data centers and although it may take some time for this change to become widespread the human population will reap its environmental economic and social benefits for years to come vital in today's climate it's promising to see that even one of the world's most dominating companies can show some compassion towards the environment maybe it's the lightning-fast access to cloud-based services or it could be the lighter environmental impact but whatever it is let us know why you're most excited about this new generation of data center or maybe why you still have some reservations

Channel: Tech Vision

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Keywords: microsoft, data center, data centers, underwater data center, microsoft underwater data center, microsoft data center, project natick, microsoft underwater data center cleaning, data center tour, data center underwater, data center cooling, data center microsoft, bill gates, data, server, server room, underwater server room, water cooling

Id: LmfvUiJ6tB8

Length: 7min 0sec (420 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021