Underwater Data Centers
“If you compare NASA’s annual budget to explore the heavens, that one year budget would fund NOAA’s budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years.”
— Robert Ballard, Ocean Researcher
Back in 2011, Google bought a small paper mill in Finland which, people thought would house a Datacenter, but what people weren’t aware of was, that Google had bought it to build the first sea water cooled server farm.
Why should a data center need cool water?
Data centers house huge computers that store millions of petabytes of Information. As the processing is in massive scale, these computers get heated up. If left alone, just like an over worked machine, they will burn up and catch fire, in turn losing precious data. The truth is, keeping data centers cool is an expensive and an arduous task. Companies need hi-tech and powerful cooling systems that need to run 24X7, 365 days a year. This is expensive and also these cooling systems are prone to damage and need to be repaired and maintained which is always a constant challenge.
To counter this, a very smart person decided why don’t we put data centers in the ocean. It has a lot of space, and it’s a natural coolant. Genius. Today’s article is about underwater data centers.
In 2013, Sean James and employee of Microsoft who had served in an US Navy Submarine wrote a research paper on testing under water data centers. His paper was read by the top brass of Microsoft and they decided to pursue it. This project was called Project Natick.
Putting data centers under the sea has multitude of benefits for the company and common consumers as well. Microsoft claims that the data centers could be powered by natural forces like tidal waves and wind near oceans. This could bring the cost of energy dramatically low.
The Image above is from Project Natick’s website where a camera was sent down to show the data centers. As you can see, there are crabs along the data center’s wirings.
The team behind project Natick
The research has also mentioned that 50% of the world’s population are in the 50 Km radius of an ocean. This means servers closer to where people are mean faster Internet speeds and downloads for the consumer.
How about the real estate costs? Let’s do a Q&A with you guys. Where do you think cost is cheaper?
1. A sea facing property on land or
2. The sea
If you guessed “2”, then you are right. The costs of storing these data centers plummet considerably.
The future of this research is dependent on a lot of factors
The durability of the data center under water
Will the data centers be protected from rough waves, leaks and sea life. Will it depreciate faster than when on land?
The cost of repairs
Data centers will have to be fixed or maintained every once in a while, does that mean Microsoft or other tech companies will have to create a new job description like “Data Center Engineer and Deep Sea Diver”. If the cost of repairs and maintenance sky rocket and take too much time, the future of the Natick project can be in jeopardy.
But overall, it’s these kind of innovations that push humanity to be more efficient and work well without surroundings. Using nature’s strength to our advantage could be an eco-friendly way to push for innovation as well as care for our world.