Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

Post by Qworg » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:42 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #156

Qworg wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works because of how hard drives work - the heads are extended by slightly heating the bar the heads are connected to. If you're head crashing, you need a little less length, hence freezer.

This isn't quite true, the heads are kept from crashing by air pressure and a crash does irreversible damage. The "clicking" sound is either the heads flicking back and forth as the drive tries to seek, or the central motor trying and failing to start platters spinning which are jammed on the bearing. What freezing the drive may achieve is either un-sticking it from the bearings (see also the "bang drive on edge" tec…

Post by vortico » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:45 PM UTC

comboy wrote: post #161

nabla9 wrote: post #145

If you want maximum energy efficiency, build city centers in cold climates where the excess heat can be used. Yandex has data center in city of Mäntsälä, Finland and they provide 50 percent of the heating needs. Even more advanced concept, combined district heating and cooling. With combined district heating and cooling and integrate data centers into them. Data center heat can be used in cold regions for heating. Co…

It's all very clever, but think about the cost and complexity. Installations, management, real estate, physical security etc. I'm quite confident that even making optimal use of the excess heat you would end up with less money than with their solution. I don't think companies want maximum energy efficiency. They want maximum cost efficiency.

Post by trillic » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:53 PM UTC

Double_a_92 wrote: post #139

kryptiskt wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your data center isn't registered and flying a flag, won't it be salvage and belong to whoever recovers it?

Yeah but what are the odds of somebody finding it?

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 12:59 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #23

cm2187 wrote: post #12

> Additionally because there are no people, we can take all the oxygen and most of the water vapour out of the atmosphere which reduces corrosion, which is a significant problem in data centres First time I hear corrosion is a problem in datacentres. I never noticed any corrosion on any machine at home or work. Does it have to do with the cooling of datacentres?

I think part of it is that even problems that are small/unnoticeable at the individual level become big when multiplied by a huge N. For example, I don't think I've ever had a hard drive fail in ~30 years in computing, well without being dropped that is, yet look at the Backblaze reports: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-benchmark-stats-20...

Post by tiredwired » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 1:02 PM UTC

alexghr wrote: post #36

At what point does this become a problem? They're using the naturally cool sea water to regulate the temperature in the container, but that heat needs to go somewhere... it heats the water. If this becomes a popular alternative to classic server farms, at what point does it start to increase the temperature of the sea? I know, the oceans are big, but so is our data.