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Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

spectrum.ieee.org

131–140 of 172 posts

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#131

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…

Essentially, I think it makes sense to get better at solar than to have Steve Zissou as a server admin. 1) In the original article, these server farms would be remote administration only. 2) Such facilities would make the secret construction of one's James Bond Villain underwater base much, much easier. (Wouldn't Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Peter Thiel all make great Bond villains?)

Don't forget Larry Ellison, the original tech CEO-cum-Bond Villain http://www.josephrosenfeld.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/La...

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting question. Perhaps you should look at the cost of spacecraft engineering for an example. You can't replace the hard drive on a probe billions of miles from earth!

I think what GP is proposing is significantly different than space craft: in space, you have limited space for redundancy, so you overbuild to avoid failure of key parts. I think GP is proposing you start with, say, 11000 servers when you have a planned capacity of 10000, and just cycle off bad ones for spares (or just diminished capacity) until you redo the whole system. I believe that's how Microsoft operates their…

Space is craaazy expensive for a lot more reasons though (ionization and lack of mission-redundancy are the big ones. Every launch is expensive, so every mission/satellite must have a bazillion nines).

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#135

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…

But Marine Law seems to have a healthily deep section in the legal bookstore I visited too frequently, not long ago.

I imagine this plan means to situate in littoral waters, not treaty open seas.

But what hazard could chipping containers packed with servers be?

I guess there is rare element pollution all too plenty, oozing from recycles in countries where had currency at all, means only barely just hard, not harsh life. But relativism appeases not real concerns.

The idea i think has been mentioned a few times by others, if near/offline storage makes any sense, but to some imaginable degree, sea storage of data also offers unusual security against all but highly determined assailants.

Is there any thermal maintenance factor, that means e.g. disk drives last longer with less data loss if kept at stable temperatures? Would that be effective to do at sea - i think this already mentioned too, the narrow bands of temperature required for marine tropical fish, suggests to me that the cost of mitigating heat waves and cold seasons s sure not applicable.

Can wave power be harnessed to circulate enough air?

Can a inexpensive efficient massive area of the structure be made to be a heatsink?

(Marine fouling as mentioned, seems highly challenging, even if access to surface by buoyancy charges is easily achieved.

Can something organic, even living like a coral, be coaxed into providing natural dissipation of any heat excess?

Oh, i'm saddened now, thinking about barren, sterile coasts where coral reefs have died. But would such areas be better to offer minimal marine fouling by lack of support for life in those God forsaken waters of shame?

Are any challenges less, say, in the Great Lakes?

Or installed inline in channels parallel to canals, utilizing water flow controlled often by lock systems, adding emergency cooling capacity? The trenches might easily be dug. In London there are fiber rights of way along many canals as well. My company long looked at using arch space under rail bridges and viaducts, for they are naturally very cool places, and next to fiber and power.*

Is there a military application for designing the containers?

For forward deployment?

Oceanic monitoring of SONAR?

Or required replacement civilian facilities you need to park aways from looting?

Sounds to me like there is utility in having a reference design, and a potential number of platform customers who habitually fund conceptual capabilities.

*(If anyone is seriously interested even for long shot / entertainment value, in containerized colo under London railroad arches, I'd love to hear from you, i'll freely donate some real energy into getting further than we did before recognizing we couldn't sell it to investors as a solo undertaking. (not meaning selling to investors for the idea, but to those in us, who would balk at cost of diversion of time, if undertaken without sharing interests. That said, it was appreciated the excellent security possible, as well as a side idea about possibility to get planning permission for erecting sky poles for microwave parallel to known HTF line of sight paths, as potential backup capacity and even service to colocated compute. Variously quite a number of projects we researched as thoroughly as possible before spending real money progressing.k, i.e. time, thought, desk research, scouting, but nothing like hiring planning lawyers to approach Network Rail et.al., just modestly intelligent motivated daydreaming, as line of sight to a lot of major landmarks seemed very plausible at 1km and under. Absolutely please do drop me a line if it's even just a daydream you agree has a angle to work, email in profile...)

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#136
post #116
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a, you can put a sacrificial anode on the frame. Given that the rate of corrosion should be known, the size of it can be calculated to however long the pod is expected to be in service.

I will say that my only experience with sacrificial anodes is that they help but don't prevent corrosion entirely. We had screws starting to turn to dust from a couple hundred hours of pool water exposure even with a sizeable anode. Maybe it wasn't in sufficient contact or whatever. They're unlikely to be curealls anyway.

One thing about sacrificial anodes is that multiple seem to be required. E.g. even though the hull of a ship may be a good conductor, you don't just have one sacrificial anode.

Wikipedia ["Galvanic anode"]: The arrangement of the anodes is then planned so as to provide an even distribution of current over the whole structure. For example, if a particular design shows that a pipeline 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) long needs 10 anodes, then approximately one anode per kilometere would be more effective than putting all 10 anodes at one end or in the centre.

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#138
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Nuclear power plants usually dump their tertiary cooling water into the ocean. That's not a great situation for the local sea life (within a few hundred meters, IIRC), but doesn't have much significance beyond that. That is several orders of magnitudes more heat output than could conceivably come off a data centre. So their dismissiveness is likely warranted. A bit more concerning is the notion of relocating these da…

I don't think the plan is relocations. More than likely, MS see server numbers growing over time, at the very least for the foreseeable future, and they'll be located once, and then decommissioned, not moved.

That may change, but I doubt there are less server farms in 2020 than now.

As a side note, isn't that also Google's plan - the server farm as a single entity, where nothing is really fixed, just turned off and eventually replaced? In such a world, where a server farm exists then dies, underwater seems a great place for them. No regulations, no repairs, locally powered via means that no one can complain about (NIMBYism is a powerful force) just run until decommissioned.

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> 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…

GP was quite specifically taking about chemical corrosion, not bio-fouling. Even if the marine industry conflates these (I can't tell if that's what you're implying in the last sentence), we don't have to.

Re: Want an energy efficient datacenter? Build it underwater

#140
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The sun provides over 1GW/sq km when it's shining. The biology seems to get by fine with that.

> The sun provides over 1GW/sq km when it's shining. The biology seems to get by fine with that.

The issue is the amount of heat relative to the environment in which flora and fauna have evolved to survive, not relative to absolute zero.

It's like saying that a 313 Kelvin body temperature shouldn't bother me because I do fine with 310K (~37C). It's only a 3K difference, after all.

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