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Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#51

Post by walrus01 »

Xylakant wrote: post #43
walrus01 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To metals. Not so much to plastics. I'm guessing you've never experienced the joys of owning a 30 to 40 ft sized, completely non metal (fiberglass hull) sailboat kept in salt water, with all of the great fun of paying to haul it and have the marine growth scaped off, pressure washed, double or triple coat bottom paint re-applied, etc. Just because it's not metal doesn't mean it doesn't attract the category of what…

Though marine fouling is primarily of concern for fiberglass boats because it massively increases drag which admittedly is less of an issue for a datacenter. It's still an issue for the pods as mentioned in the article, but I'd expect it to be less grave than on a boat.

But I require a datacenter with a hull speed of at least 7.5 knots.

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#52

Post by Xylakant »

baking wrote: post #50
Xylakant wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though marine fouling is primarily of concern for fiberglass boats because it massively increases drag which admittedly is less of an issue for a datacenter. It's still an issue for the pods as mentioned in the article, but I'd expect it to be less grave than on a boat.

Marine fouling of the heat exchangers is probably the biggest technical hurdle.

Yes, as well as keeping all kinds of marine life out of there.

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#53

Post by baking »

jpm_sd wrote: post #45

This is ridiculous. Data centers contain thousands of racks like the single rack shown in the demo "pod" and they all require hands-on human maintenance from time to time. This becomes quite a bit harder when your server rack is in a sealed steel tube on the seafloor. Splitting the data center into thousands of "pods" will also greatly increase the cost of cabling and connectors for power and data distribution (we're…

If one server goes down and they are not able to restore it remotely they will just write it off. If a large number go down due to some common failure, it might make sense to haul the whole thing up and refurbish it.

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#54

Post by Xylakant »

walrus01 wrote: post #51
Xylakant wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though marine fouling is primarily of concern for fiberglass boats because it massively increases drag which admittedly is less of an issue for a datacenter. It's still an issue for the pods as mentioned in the article, but I'd expect it to be less grave than on a boat.

But I require a datacenter with a hull speed of at least 7.5 knots.

let me double check the hull speed formula for datacenters.

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#55

Post by noir_lord »

tshannon wrote: post #36
stephengillie wrote: post #31

Edit: Great points! Space would be a terrible location for data center hosting, not only due to latency and heat radiation issues, but also due to the difficulty in mitigating solar radiation. What about putting the data center in some kind of low Earth orbit? Something within the magnetic field, but far enough out to radiate heat? Would the latency still be a factor if your web server and CDN were hosted "in a cloud…

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that radiating heat is actually really hard in space. It seems counter intuitive, because space is so cold, but it's mostly a vacuum. To transfer heat, you need a medium for the heat to transfer through. I believe some heat can be lost due to radiation, and so they have these big metal fins as heat sinks to radiate as much heat as possible, and reflective material on the…

> I believe some heat can be lost due to radiation.

In hard space all the heat is lost as radiation (minus and incredibly tiny loss from hitting the very few particles in space), the dark side can be treat as a blackbody for a rough approximation.

One of the reasons that the side exposed to the sun is mirrored is to reflect as much of the radiation falling on that side as possible as the heat is so hard to get rid off, people think the shiny part is gold but it's actually usually mylar or something stacked in a layered insulation.

Space is a horrible environment to make things work, metals spontaneous weld themselves (vacuum welding), radical differentials in temperature depending on orientation, your electronics are constantly hammered by high energy radiation, micro impacts by things travelling at velocities that make a sniper rifle look like a slingshot, it's fascinating as a layman what it takes to keep stuff working reliably up there at all.

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#56

Post by munificent »

deftnerd wrote: post #22

The article mentions that one of the benefits is that they don't have to deal with building codes being different in different places. It's truly an "off the shelf" data center that doesn't have to be customized for the laws, zoning, and codes in that area. But who is in charge of the seabed around the United States? I imagine that I can't just drop a big metal container on the ocean floor without informing someone o…

> otherwise there would be a lot of things just dumped out there.

There are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_debris

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#57

Post by ch4s3 »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #30
jefflombardjr wrote: post #24

I'm all for exploring new approaches, however: a) Salt water is highly corrosive. Wouldn't maintenance costs be high? b) Isn't marine biology highly sensitive to heat pollution? For high latency services like Amazon Glacier, wouldn't it make sense to host in a place like Iceland? Really cheap hydrothermic/clean power. Highly educated local talent pool, and relatively consistent cool temperatures. If you're maintainin…

> Salt water is highly corrosive. To metals. Not so much to plastics. > Isn't marine biology highly sensitive to heat pollution? Isn't land-based biology highly sensitive to heat pollution?

Plastics are good, but you need to have tubes going into the thing, as well as some means of accessing the inside even if you only access it on a ship/land. That means rubber and metal will have to be on the exterior somewhere.

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#58

Post by longerthoughts »

jefflombardjr wrote: post #24

I'm all for exploring new approaches, however: a) Salt water is highly corrosive. Wouldn't maintenance costs be high? b) Isn't marine biology highly sensitive to heat pollution? For high latency services like Amazon Glacier, wouldn't it make sense to host in a place like Iceland? Really cheap hydrothermic/clean power. Highly educated local talent pool, and relatively consistent cool temperatures. If you're maintainin…

> b) Isn't marine biology highly sensitive to heat pollution?

Impact on the marine environment is briefly mentioned in the last couple of paragraphs of the article, although they're a little dismissive and don't provide any evidence supporting their claim of negligible impact.

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#59

Post by knicholes »

stephengillie wrote: post #31

Edit: Great points! Space would be a terrible location for data center hosting, not only due to latency and heat radiation issues, but also due to the difficulty in mitigating solar radiation. What about putting the data center in some kind of low Earth orbit? Something within the magnetic field, but far enough out to radiate heat? Would the latency still be a factor if your web server and CDN were hosted "in a cloud…

There is also a high cost to get something into space, a risk of it blowing up or crashing while heading to space, dealing with very, very long wires (space is ~160km-2,000km) as opposed to the 50 and 200 meters that'd be used for servers under the water.

Also is the issue of having these very long cables running through airspace. Airplanes would have to be made aware of these wires. I can also imagine a lot less electromagnetic interference going on under the water.

Also, heat transfer becomes more difficult. No longer is there conduction of hot metal to cold water. In space, you have one main option for transferring heat. Radiation. I think this is addressed in your edit, but yeah, there's the Sun adding energy while you're struggling to radiate out your own server heat...

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#60

Post by sithadmin »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #28
frandroid wrote: post #25

So hum, how do you prevent your data center from being stolen.

Same as on land?

Securing a datacenter from intruders on land doesn't require military-grade underwater sensor equipment and response techniques.

Securing a datacenter from intruders underwater would.

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