Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

Microsoft sinks to new depths with underwater data centre experiment

Why schlep data cross-country when we live on the coast, near free cooling?

Microsoft has revealed that it's trialled an underwater data centre.

Project Natick saw Redmond sink a capsule about a mile offshore from Seattle, an approach felt to have potential because about half of humanity lives on or near coastlines. Microsoft's thinking is that it's a good idea to put data centres near their users, rather than taking data on latency-inducing cross-country journeys. Throw in the fact that immersion in water is a handy way to get temperatures down and the idea was felt to have merit by Microsoft leadership.

The company therefore constructed the capsule depicted above (here for readers on mobile devices, placed a single rack of servers inside, filled it with pressurised nitrogen, clamped heat exchangers to the hull, connected it to the Net and powered it up. The capsule, dubbed “Leona Philpot” after a Halo character, was then sunk near the California town of San Luis Obispo and chugged away doing actual work for over 100 days, at a depth of 30 feet.

Once retrieved, the capsule was in rude health, having lasted longer than expected and even giving a few barnacles a home.

This experiment was powered from terra firma. In future, Microsoft imagines it might be possible to power sunken data centres with wave energy. Trials are planned near existing wave energy generation trials. Redmond's plans now call for such data centres to have a five-year working life, as that matches that lifespan of servers in its cloud. The capsules are hoped to survive twenty years.

Cooling is one of the big big contributors to data centre operating costs, so anything that cools kit without the need for an extra input is welcome. El Reg also notes that many large cities already have good locations for such data centres, because submarine cable landing sites are generally protected zones into which shipping is not permitted and fisherfolk are prevented from doing much more than throwing over a single hook. Submarine cables are also well-armoured when close to shore, perhaps representing a good conduit for power. If cable operators allow Redmond anywhere near their precious assets. If not, Microsoft has a whole bunch of regulation to arrange to make this idea float.

Let's also consider that a densely-packed server rack can demand peak loads of 20kw or more. A location with enough wave energy to supply that much juice reliably might not be the best place to locate a data centre. If Microsoft can use waves to send the energy it needs into the grid, well and good. But the idea of co-located generation for a sunken data centre substantial enough to make a difference to a city’s citizens sounds a little optimistic.

Redmond's also not revealed costs. Nor has it explained the state of the servers once they were hauled up. As anyone who deals in matters maritime learns quickly, things left in the sea for a long time don't do well, even when sealed into tubes.

Which is not to say Microsoft's idea is foolish, but there's clearly a long way to go before we get from an impressive experiment to underwater operations. And while that work goes on, terrestrial data centres will also be improving their already impressive power usage effectiveness ratios while content delivery networks and myriad other technologies improve the delivery of content to users without the need for underwater data centres. Or the PR splashes this one's generated. ®

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like