Microsoft Has Underwater Data Centers.
By - Sameer Khan
Microsoft Has
Underwater Data Centers
Ten million data centers around the
world are processing our entire online lives thousands of times a
second but Microsoft may have just rewritten this growing industry
and it may be for the better with our reliance on cloud-based
services expected to be at an all-time high in 2021 due to a huge
shift online pushed forward by the ongoing pandemic the need for
the most energy and time-efficient data centers is crucial moving
forward Microsoft has just reached the end of a two-year stage two
experiment sinking our data to the ocean floor and here's why this
is big news on the 9th of July 2020 the tech giant reeled up what
it calls its northern isles a 12.2-meter long steel cylinder from
the seabed the giant tube remained feet below the surface for two
whole years gathering data which would later be analyzed by
engineers the company chose to locate this long-term experiment 10
miles off the coast of Scotland in the Orkney isles
archipelago here 100 of the energy comes from environmentally green
sources such as wind and solar the problem with data centers on
land are that they are subject to a battering from all directions from
the oxygen and humidity in the air land-based facilities face the serious
threat of corrosion while the temperature fluctuations prove to be costly
for the cooling systems required to keep the servers at peak
operational temperature of course the constant full traffic from
cleaning and maintenance teams can also be a cause for concern with
bumps jostles and genuine accidents jeopardizing the equipment's
longevity sinking this the facility in an airtight waterproof
container alleviates some of these concerns consistently cool temperatures
for example help with thermoregulation, which means less
energy required to keep the computers cool a plus for the
environment as well as our pockets about one-fifth of a data
center's energy requirements are destined for keeping a cool
temperature but this is reduced to a minimal amount when surrounded
naturally by seawater the flexibility of project Natick the code
name given to this research exercise helps alleviate concerns that
traditional land-based data centers have over natural disasters and other
attacks, after all, breaking into a conventional data center with its
highly trained armed security seems easy compared to reaching it
on the seafloor more than 50 of the world's population lives within
120 miles of the coast that's about two hours by car while
conventional warehouses are located miles away from cities often in
the middle of nowhere having access within a stone's throw means a
shorter distance for data to travel saving energy and providing
lightning-fast access to consumers due to the shift in cloud-based
computing experts believe it would be more beneficial in terms of
energy and providing stable access to customers to have
multiple smaller data centers dispersed among populations rather
than drawing from one external warehouse they will still be the
right time and the right place for housing data on land but it will
inevitably become less common the project envisions its offshore
submerged vessels being powered by partnering wind farms previously
thought of as an unreliable source of electricity.
The uninterrupted winds at sea make it
the perfect pairing however along with the fiber optic cable linking the tubes
to the land which are necessary to transfer data an entwined power line could
provide a backup source thought up at Microsoft's ThinkGeek 2014 an
annual event where employees share advanced new ideas the project required a
multinational effort to make it happen the cylinder, for example, was built
by French shipbuilder naval before being loaded with its servers and sent
on its way to its Scottish residence there the European marine energy center
hooked it up with its underwater cables before it was sunk in June 2018.
the unit whose internal diameter measures 2.8 meters required
endless negotiating and communication to sink resulting in an
entire day's work everyone involved had to wait for calm waters to
perform the seafloor surgery whether that is not typical for the
region of the north sea out inside 864 servers with a combined
output of 27.6 petabytes that's 27.6 million gigabytes enough storage
to retain nearly 5 million movies or the equivalent of over one
hundred thousand MacBook’s so the northern isles spent just
over two years under the sea gathering data along its journey
what do we know about the project was it a success another full day
of retrieval pulled up the same white container with a thin
covering of algae barnacles and sea anemones a quick wash resulted
in surprisingly clean bodywork emerging from underneath from
this one experiment the various teams of engineers and researchers
at Microsoft have deduced that syncing a data center like
this is eight times more reliable than housing computers in land-based
warehouses although why they're not sure despite a handful of failed
servers which were taken offline no maintenance was carried out for
the duration of the testing stage they believe that being filled
with dry nitrogen may have something to do with its extraordinary
success a substance that is less corrosive than the oxygen that
forms part of the air on land rather then the frequent
maintenance required by their land-based counterparts these
ocean dwellers are built to survive half a decade before returning
to the surface for a full health check at present other than knowing
that project Natick was largely a success we know very little else
teams are still busy researching and dissecting the information
that was gathered many citizens may share a concern that exploiting
an environment that has remained virtually untouched for millennia
is a huge no-go but we must remember that even in their thousands
these data centers would hypothetically take up less than a single
percent of the seafloor cloud expert Paul Johnston estimates that
nearly two percent of the planet's entire carbon footprint comes
from data centers so any effort to reduce this will surely be a good
thing yes say the critics but what about their effect on the seas
temperature an inherent lack in a cooling system such as that of a
conventional data center is great but this is because the
ocean's naturally cool waters help disseminate this heat
nevertheless the effect this is said to have on the surrounding water
is negligible of course even a single degree can cause
devastation to the seascape but the change measured a few meters
downstream is said to be a fraction of a degree barely noticeable
with even the most advanced measuring tools furthermore Microsoft
believes it has found a benefit to sinking these structures on the
seafloor fish and other aquatic life adore solid structures
especially ones with nooks and crannies take a look at shipwrecks
that have transformed into ocean havens that is exactly the effect
that these are destined to have the north sea had already claimed
the data center as one of its own with soft sea life shown to be
attached upon removal, we can only imagine how efficient other sea
life will have interacted with it during its time spent on the
seafloor while we await a full debrief of the project work is
already being carried out restoring the seabed to its original
state we are assured too that the steel pressure vessel the heat
exchangers the servers and in fact all of the other
components are being recycled either for their materials or for
full use in another area of the company's operations right now it's
clear that Microsoft is rewriting what we know about data centers
and although it may take some time for this change to become widespread
the human population will reap its environmental economic and social benefits
for years to come vital in today's climate it's promising to see that even one
of the world's most dominating companies can show some compassion towards the
environment maybe it's the lightning-fast access to cloud-based services or it
could be the lighter environmental impact but whatever it is let us know why
you're most excited about this new generation of data center or maybe why you
still have some reservations.
~ Microsoft
Comments
Post a Comment