Microsoft finds underwater datacenters are reliable, practical and use energy sustainably

[V_R]

Microsoft finds underwater datacenters are reliable, practical and use energy sustainably - Source

Microsoft retrieved the Northern Isles underwater datacenter from the seafloor off Scotland's Orkney Islands. Project Natick is proving the concept of underwater datacenters is feasible as well as logistically, environmentally and economically practical.

news.microsoft.com

 

[Ian]

Ooooh, I was reading about this on the BBC just this morning. This is the bit that surprised me:

“Our failure rate in the water is one-eighth of what we see on land,” Cutler said.
“I have an economic model that says if I lose so many servers per unit of time, I’m at least at parity with land,” he added. “We are considerably better than that.”

There is no way I would have thought that this could be cost effective - at least not unless they do this on a huge scale. I wonder if they could only do this by making pods that last ~5 years or so, then refurbish them after that (allowing any hardware failures to accumulate in the meantime).

 

[nivrip]

There is no way I would have thought that this could be cost effective -

Something to do with cooling? I imagine these huge servers create a lot of heat.

Iceland next where the Bitcoin servers are?

 

[Ian]

Something to do with cooling? I imagine these huge servers create a lot of heat.

Iceland next where the Bitcoin servers are?

Yeah must be!

Hopefully they can put a few off the coast near me, the sea is pretty cold right now .

 

[V_R]

I read the BBC article too, they said this in regards to the reliability of them....

The team is speculating that the greater reliability may be connected to the fact that there were no humans on board, and that nitrogen rather than oxygen was pumped into the capsule.

"We think it has to do with this nitrogen atmosphere that reduces corrosion and is cool, and people not banging things around," Mr Cutler says.

Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

Microsoft's unusual experiment in the sea off Orkney seems to have provided some valuable lessons.

www.bbc.co.uk

As usual its the human that's the weak link.....

its fascinating stuff though.