Microsoft Has Underwater Data Centers

Ten 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 are 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 the 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 the facility in an airtight  waterproof container  alleviates some of these concerns  consistently cool temperatures for  example  help with thermoregulation, which 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 seafloor 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 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 the land which are necessary to transfer data an entwined power line could provide a backup source thought up at Microsoft's ThinkGeek 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 then 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 that 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 seafloor  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.