Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday November 03 2018, @03:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the Keep-your-head-above-water-not-your-data dept.

From Ars Technica, word that Microsoft is deploying pods with servers underwater.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that underwater server farms are part of the company's plans for future data centers.

Microsoft has been experimenting with underwater servers for some time.

Project Natick[*] put a server pod underwater off the coast of California in 2016. Naturally enough, the pod uses water cooling, dumping waste heat into the ocean around it. It's designed as a sealed unit, deployed for five years before being brought back up to the surface and replaced. Since then, Microsoft has deployed a larger pod off the coast of Scotland.

[*] [Natick is the name of a town in eastern Massachusetts which also happens to have a US Army Research Facility located in it. --Ed.]

The pod people are no longer people! Flash in the pan idea, or could it have some traction?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday November 03 2018, @01:01PM (3 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Saturday November 03 2018, @01:01PM (#757264) Journal

    khallow, as the usual apparently liberal guy who is in fact a closet commie mass murderer, has a point nonetheless. Instead of submerging equipment (the worst possible solution, in pure Microsoft fashion), you let the heat exchange get quite hot, you submerge it for 30 seconds, you make it reemerge and heat up again. Even if I don't see why growing mussles as a side business should be discounted out of principle. I've seen worse dotcom investments than that.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by rleigh on Saturday November 03 2018, @02:31PM (1 child)

    by rleigh (4887) on Saturday November 03 2018, @02:31PM (#757288) Homepage

    I'm not convinced by the submerging that much, to be honest. Why not pump the seawater from a lower depth, and run it though a heat exchanger. All the equipment can be dry and serviceable, and also not in direct contact with saltwater. You would have the benefit of a larger temperature gradient by using colder water, and you can use a sterile freshwater loop on the other side of the paraflow to minimise corrosion.

    • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday November 03 2018, @09:49PM

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Saturday November 03 2018, @09:49PM (#757395) Journal

      Well, if you make heat in cold water, you don't need to pump; the warmed water will rise, and colder water will replace it. Natural convection will do the coolant circulation for you, as warmer water is less dense and will naturally rise out of the colder mass around it. So less hardware, less energy spent. And overall, less heat produced, simply because less energy spent — the pump solution heats the water just as much, but also consumes power and generates its own waste heat.

      Ideally, the servers will get more and more efficient as the designs iterate, and less waste heat will be generated. Or we can put them out in space with huuuuuge radiators, or on the moon with heat sinks jammed into the lunar surface. Or something along those lines.

      There would be a bit of a latency issue to deal with... :)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @11:48AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @11:48AM (#757575)