SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the anticipation-was-breathless dept.
Microsoft's underwater server experiment resurfaces after two years:
Back in 2018, Microsoft sunk an entire data center to the bottom of the Scottish sea, plunging 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes of storage 117 feet deep in the ocean. Today, the company has reported that its latest experiment was a success, revealing findings that show that the idea of an underwater data center is actually a pretty good one.
[...] The benefits are big. Microsoft says the underwater data center had just one-eighth the failure rate of a land-based data center, a dramatic improvement. That lower failure rate is important, given that it's much harder to service a busted server when it's in an airtight container at the bottom of the ocean.
Next up for Microsoft's Project Natick team: showing that the servers can be easily removed and recycled once they reach the end of their life.
From the report:
Datacenter Designation "Northern Isles" (SSDC-002).
Pressure Vessel Dimensions 12.2m length, 2.8m diameter (3.18m including external components); about the size of a 40' ISO shipping container you might see on a ship, train, or truck.
Subsea Docking Structure Dimensions 14.3m length, 12.7m width.
Electrical Power Source 100% locally produced renewable electricity from on-shore wind and solar, off-shore tide and wave.
Electrical Power Consumption 240 KW.
Payload 12 racks containing 864 standard Microsoft datacenter servers with FPGA acceleration and 27.6 petabytes of disk. This Natick datacenter is as powerful as several thousand high end consumer PCs and has enough storage for about 5 million movies.
Location European Marine Energy Centre, Scotland, UK.
Internal Operating Environment 1 atmosphere pressure, dry nitrogen.
Time to Deploy Less than 90 days from factory to operation.
Planned Length of Operation Without Maintenance Up to 5 years.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Wednesday September 16 2020, @04:27AM (16 children)
Uhhh...this is America, could you please give that to us in Football Fields, please?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fakefuck39 on Wednesday September 16 2020, @06:14AM (12 children)
it's cute euros think we don't use metric. we use both, where more convenient. it's as easy as learning to blind-type on a keyboard in a different language. i blind-type in english, french, russian, and hangul. it took an hour to learn french, a week to learn the russian layout, and korean took about a month, but because I was too old to learn new tricks at that point.
for science we use SI units. for everyday life we use the much more convenient units. I love how you have 24 hour time. tell me how your watches look? oh, you use both, but instead of adding am and pm to a standard time, you now convert your 12-hour watch to 24 hour time. awesome. how pray tell do you euros have the brain capacity to use two time systems?! and the funny thing is, there's literally no convenience reason to use 24h time, because instead of "hours" we can say "pm" - 16 hours 30 becomes 4:30 pm. not even saving a word with that 24h system. yet euros use 2.
an average foot in a shoe is about a foot. super easy to measure things. inches with those fractions? super easy, because you can always keep dividing w/o losing precision or going into stupid shit like - I got 1/8 of a meter, now let me divide that by half. holy shit I now need a $40 scientific ruler with fractions of millimeters to measure something the length of my thumb.
you want a shot? awesome - 50ml. wtf? you want a small drink? it's 5 shots. you want a large drink? Oh, that's a 3rd of a liter - 333ml. we can't measure that with shots. How about - a shot is 1oz, a small drink is 8 of them, a large drink is 12 of them. done.
temperature? for science k/c is great, and we use it. for every day life? hey, how hot does 100 degrees feel? stick your finger in there and find out. here's an idea - 100 is about what you feel like - it's your body temp. and zero - that's right about when it's too cold to go outside. how's about a scale where we know what 0 and 100 feel like - that sounds pretty damn more convenient. and btw, out thermometer can increment in degrees. a C thermometer needs half-degrees because while one fucking f is not noticeable, a single c is.
(Score: 5, Touché) by maxwell demon on Wednesday September 16 2020, @09:36AM (8 children)
For example when programming Mars landers. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday September 16 2020, @11:54AM (7 children)
Refresh my memory, who was it who landed the first probe on Mars?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:14PM (6 children)
Ahem, Wikipedia says it was the Russians (before my time)
> On 2 December 1971, the Mars 3 lander became the first spacecraft to achieve a soft landing, but its transmission was interrupted after 14.5 seconds.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:33PM (2 children)
"Soft" landing. Like when my soon-to-be wife's Jeep got rear-ended, but could still drive. Yet, the insurance company marked it as totaled, because the frame was slightly bent. Except, in that case, it was still functional and could be driven for a lot longer than 14.5 seconds.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:03PM (1 child)
Just sayin'...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Freeman on Wednesday September 16 2020, @05:10PM
Though, by some definition of "soft landing" you are correct. Still, the USA has been very successful with regards to mars probes / rovers. Some might say eerily successful. Opportunity [xkcd.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:48PM (2 children)
Ahem, when the world sets standards and Russians completely ignore them, yeah - they're gonna be first. That "first," much like the first man in space, doesn't quite count. It's like saying the nazis were first in some medicine breakthroughs - by testing on and killing a bunch of humans. My family, although American for 25 years, is originally from Moscow BTW, and my gramma was in the KGB, in charge of high altitude photography.
Russians were first because they launch a bunch of badly designed and poorly built shit, taking every shortcut they can. When something doesn't succeed they try to hide it ever happened. When they succeed they lie about details and announce it to the world. They destroyed lots of expensive equipment and killed a crazy number of cosmonauts to get those successful launches. Even the first man in space didn't land, since his craft was not built to withstand landing. The guy jumped out of the flaming capsule at high altitude. Once he landed with every bone broken, they dragged him back to the crashed capsule and took pr photos of him "landing." Yeah, no shit you're first if you launch a man into space without ability to land. And no one knows home many died before him.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday September 17 2020, @03:18PM (1 child)
Killing people is a nasty business - I recall a story on SN a few days ago about a Chinese rocket crashing on a school. Also a few years back a story about a Russian test rocket exploding and killing a bunch of people
Breaking equipment, not so much. Do what it takes to get it done. SpaceX have not been so careful about not blowing stuff up, and good for them.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday September 17 2020, @10:07PM
SpaceX is a private company. Most of Russia's population was literally starving to death, and they were pissing away billions on this underdeveloped destroyed equipment for a chance it makes it. When SpaceX loses money, it's not coming out of your food budget - they can do whatever they want.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 16 2020, @12:34PM (1 child)
'Nuff said.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:52PM
This American is from Europe originally, raised on the metric system. He's lived in several EU countries. It's cute you take the opinion of someone who knows both cases very well from decades of using both, and ignore it with "nuff said" and just stick to your own uneducated opinion. it's what keeps you stupid. stay stupid. we need farmers to grow corn.
not being condescending to europeans (which would include myself). being condescending to you though, you retard.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Thursday September 17 2020, @04:24AM
>Euros
Stopped reading there, I was bottle-fed with blended burgers (100% "beef"). I am 100% American. Love it or leave it, USA! USA! USA!, I stand for the Pledge, etc. B) Not even slightly sarcastic - I love all that shit.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 16 2020, @03:56PM (2 children)
5 million movies?
The MPAA is going to want to have a talk with them.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Osamabobama on Wednesday September 16 2020, @11:22PM (1 child)
How many movies are there? I've heard that Bollywood is prolific, but that number seems like somebody rounded up from 'all of them'.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Thursday September 17 2020, @04:26AM
How many videos are on youtube? Are "home movies" movies? Hmm.