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 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.