In the final product, you could build the data center underwater in-place, and have the servers partially accessible - they only need to be connected to the structure in one end, and can be surrounded by water on all other sides. (Visual idea - the data center parts are like fingers on the main structure).
Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years
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Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years
#12I must ask, apart from the renewable energy factor, why do it in Orkney? There are many islands and archipelagos in Scotland, the Hebrides which are closer to the mainland but still out of the way of fishing. Many of them are going to be setup with tidal and wind generators. Would be interesting to see how it was tethered to the shore with networking and power. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/mar/17/10me…
It's a place where a lot of research around this theme is conducted.
Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years
#13Very interesting to see a lower failure rate. Is it simply a function of possibly better thermals than your average datacenter? Less EMR?
Impossible to touch it. Better (oxygen poor) environment for circuitry.
Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years
#14In the final product, you could build the data center underwater in-place, and have the servers partially accessible - they only need to be connected to the structure in one end, and can be surrounded by water on all other sides. (Visual idea - the data center parts are like fingers on the main structure).
Any seal in that construct would be a single-point-of-failure for the whole, not just one fraction.
Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years
#15Very interesting to see a lower failure rate. Is it simply a function of possibly better thermals than your average datacenter? Less EMR?
The container was filed with Nitrogen, so no pesky Oxygen corroding everything.
Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years
#16Why heat the oceans indirectly when you can just place the heatsource directly in them? Much less chance of losing precious ergs. Seriously though, what is the direct ecological impact of doing this at scale, would the local increase in temperature have an immediate effect on the life around it? If so how much of an impact? What about the effect on surface life and life in intermediary layers of the water? After all,…
From what I remember, the impact was pretty minimal. Water has a huge capacity for heat so the temperature was elevated only when very close to the data center.
Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years
#17Why heat the oceans indirectly when you can just place the heatsource directly in them? Much less chance of losing precious ergs. Seriously though, what is the direct ecological impact of doing this at scale, would the local increase in temperature have an immediate effect on the life around it? If so how much of an impact? What about the effect on surface life and life in intermediary layers of the water? After all,…
Another question to ask is what the effect of pumping these data centers full of cold air is, and how the excess heat from that may be affecting the atmosphere.
Not to discredit your point or anything, it's a very good one. I think we just also have to answer it in conjunction with what we are currently doing. Maybe we can sink some data centers and have little to no impact while also realizing energy and cost savings?
Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years
#18It would be nice to see some numbers on energy used to power this versus a regular set of servers. Also nice if they discussed the energy/cost involved with deploying and retrieving these capsules and how well that would amortize if this became a commercial solution.
From https://natick.research.microsoft.com/
Phase 1 demonstrated the feasibility of the subsea datacenter concept, including our ability to remotely operate a Lights Out datacenter* for long periods of time, operating with a highly efficient PUE (power usage effectiveness is total power divided by server power; lower values are better, 1.0 is perfect) of 1.07, and using no water at all, for a perfect WUE (water usage effectiveness is the liters consumed per megawatt of power per minute; lower values are better, 0 is best) of exactly 0 vs land datacenters which consume up to 4.8 liters of water per kilowatt-hour.
For Phase 2, our goals are to:
Develop one full scale prototype subsea datacenter, which could be used as a modular building block to aggregate subsea datacenters of arbitrary size
Gain an understanding of the economics of undersea datacenter TCO (total cost of ownership is the full lifetime cost of a datacenter including manufacture, deployment, operations, and recovery) should we proceed to commercial deployment.
Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years
#19Why heat the oceans indirectly when you can just place the heatsource directly in them? Much less chance of losing precious ergs. Seriously though, what is the direct ecological impact of doing this at scale, would the local increase in temperature have an immediate effect on the life around it? If so how much of an impact? What about the effect on surface life and life in intermediary layers of the water? After all,…
Another question to ask is what the effect of pumping these data centers full of cold air is, and how the excess heat from that may be affecting the atmosphere. Not to discredit your point or anything, it's a very good one. I think we just also have to answer it in conjunction with what we are currently doing. Maybe we can sink some data centers and have little to no impact while also realizing energy and cost saving…
Slightly off-topic, but this is how I feel when people discuss the risks of nuclear power. You can talk all you want about the disasterous consequences of a reactor meltdown, but what about the disastrous consequences of sticking with fossil fuels?
I agree that switching to wind and solar would be better, but it's not obvious whether we can switch without transforming the world economy in ways people seem unwilling to do. Nuclear reactors can generate much more energy, and I really think it’s time to get behind them.
Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years
#20It seems an additional hurdle is anti-fouling. Those barnacles and algae act as an insulator, making the cold-water cooling advantage less and less of an advantage.
If the surface were that hot, would sea creatures still want to live on it? I have no idea what their range of tolerance is, but I'd assume that they're well adapted for living on relatively cool rocks. And if it's not that hot, then it seems like there's not a cooling problem. (To be clear, I'm speculating without any real knowledge of this subject, and welcome the inevitable corrections.)
The ocean is host to a very wide number of creatures and bacteria, some live in arctic cold waters, others on volcanic vents, and every range in between. There's a good saying for this, roughly translated, that nature doesn't love an empty spot — if one type of plant or bacteria won't live in an area, someone else will quickly settle in.