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 Osamabobama on Wednesday September 16 2020, @11:17PM (3 children)
You will likely find that CDs are too buoyant to make a decent anchor from any quantity.
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(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 17 2020, @02:22PM (2 children)
Science to the rescue!
*tests in the sink*
Technically, no. They sink, so you could make an anchor from them. Whether it would fit in the boat or you'd be able to lift it is another question that I don't have the ability to test at the moment though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday September 17 2020, @11:02PM (1 child)
I just looked up the density of polycarbonate; it's about 1.2 g/cm3. That will sink, of course, but won't have the same affinity for the bottom as normal anchors. It will tend to drift.
I suppose that just makes the design problem more difficult, though. I propose a college design contest for engineering students to construct an effective anchor entirely of compact discs. I suspect a Danforth design could do well, but it would depend on the specific test cases chosen.
There must be something that can be done with all the surplus CDs that are laying around, right?
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(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday September 18 2020, @03:33PM
I think we hit peak utility by using them as coasters but it'd be interesting to see what folks came up with.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.