Microsoft declares its underwater data center test was a success

Underwater pods can reduce latency by moving cloud services closer to customers.

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[kerbaldroptest]

Honestly this whole cloud thing is really misleading. Why not blimps!?

 

[samcantrell]

Honestly this whole cloud thing is really misleading. Why not blimps!?

I guess we could say we're "uploading data to the waves" which would give a whole new meaning to "surfing the 'net."

 

[Obsydia]

Cool, interesting, and something I didn't know even existed before reading this. Good job on the three-fer, Jim.

 

[Frennzy]

Welp. Microsoft has truly reached a new low. They're tanking. Totally underwater.

 

[OrangePeelsLemon]

Disappointed that you didn't mention a "deep dive" into the topic anywhere in this piece.

 

[Honeybog]

I can’t tell if the association with the name‘s meaning for crossword players was intentional or not, but I hope it was.

 

[traumadog]

Seafloor-based pods don't require expensive commercial real estate, and they get nearly free cooling from the surrounding tons of seawater.

I've built water cooling setups for my PC's, and even watched Linus watercool a whole room in his old house/office, but this is truly next-level...

 

[Skyfire77]

Just don't store your stuff in Pod Six; those guys are jerks.

 

[traumadog]

While this is great for cooling, especially up there, I can't see any other meaningful benefits to doing this.

There's so many factors which could take the thing offline, stormy weather, shipping, fishermen, leaks.

Cool idea but just doesn't seem worth the hassle

Why not? I mean, we already run undersea data cables across the Atlantic, which are marked as no-anchor zones anyway. Why not add a data center next to it, especially for latency reasons.

 

[earthlingkc]

Another energy saving method is underground caves, naturally 58 degrees saving cooling costs. A friend has worked in this data center, which is like an underground city with roads, streetlights, neon storefronts and even a train line goes through it...

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/arc ... ubtropolis

edit: Google also signed a deed to build a $600M data center in same complex but not clear if above or underground. The 'Project Shale' name implies underground.

https://huntmidwest.com/google-affiliat ... ss-center/

 

[vavoom]

I wonder if being underwater would provide any protection from CMEs/geomagnetic storm type events?

 

[Jeff S]

On the topic of power and reliability, it occurs to me that they could potentially build flow batteries inside one of those cylinder 'pods'. So, maybe your data center looks like a lot of nearly identical looking pods - but in a ratio of 3 or 4 data pods, and one battery pod.

Scale it up to maybe 500 pods for a large datacenter - with 100 battery pods and 400 data pods, or something like that. Maybe you don't even need 1 to 4. Maybe it's like 1 to 10, as servers get more and more power efficient. And since you don't need active cooling, you save a lot of power on hvac that you don't need.

Are any of the pods used for data storage instead of compute? Seems like maybe you could build some pods are that are big enterprise storage arrays.

 

[H. Pylori]

Wow. My underwater basket weaving degree may be useful yet...

 

[traumadog]

With enough data centres like these, all the excess heat will go straight into the sea, further contributing to climate change. The only place these data centres wouldn’t contribute further to climate change is if they were buried deep down in earth’s crust but then cooling would be an issue.

I think I prefer the idea of city center data centres where the excess heat is put to use for central heating systems

Thing is, all of this heat would have gone into the atmosphere already.

At least using the ocean as a heat sink consumes way less energy than running on-shore AC for the facility, thus being a relative net gain overall.

 

[Dilbert]

While this is great for cooling, especially up there, I can't see any other meaningful benefits to doing this.

There's so many factors which could take the thing offline, stormy weather, shipping, fishermen, leaks.

Cool idea but just doesn't seem worth the hassle

Do you really think you just came up with reason why this is a bad idea that MS engineers working on this 24/7 for years did not?

They know the challenges.

Also a DC going offline at this scale doesn't matter. Another one will pick up the workloads.

 

[Kyuu]

With enough data centres like these, all the excess heat will go straight into the sea, further contributing to climate change. The only place these data centres wouldn’t contribute further to climate change is if they were buried deep down in earth’s crust but then cooling would be an issue.

I think I prefer the idea of city center data centres where the excess heat is put to use for central heating systems

The heat is going into the environment one way or the other anyway. Even if the heat is redirected to heating a building, the heat then goes from the building into the environment.

Also, the amount of heat the oceans absorb from these would be negligible compared to what they absorb from solar radiation every single day. You might see some minor local heating in the immediate environment, but that's not really a concern compared to the reduced energy usage (and therefore reduced CO2 emissions) needed for the cooling system.

 

[SixDegrees]

While this is great for cooling, especially up there, I can't see any other meaningful benefits to doing this.

There's so many factors which could take the thing offline, stormy weather, shipping, fishermen, leaks.

Cool idea but just doesn't seem worth the hassle

You should consider reading the article before commenting.

 

[uriel222]

I know they aren’t putting these this far out, but if they DID put them in international waters, which country owns the data? Are these things “flagged” like ships?

 

[yakinabe]

With enough data centres like these, all the excess heat will go straight into the sea, further contributing to climate change. The only place these data centres wouldn’t contribute further to climate change is if they were buried deep down in earth’s crust but then cooling would be an issue.

I think I prefer the idea of city center data centres where the excess heat is put to use for central heating systems

Climate change is caused by sunlight heating the earth, which is then "trapped" by greenhouse gases. The amount of waste heat generated by human activity (including data centers) is minuscule compared to the amount of heat in sunlight.

Anyway, wouldn't a city data center only contribute to the "heat island effect" in summer?

 

[Jeff S]

With enough data centres like these, all the excess heat will go straight into the sea, further contributing to climate change. The only place these data centres wouldn’t contribute further to climate change is if they were buried deep down in earth’s crust but then cooling would be an issue.

I think I prefer the idea of city center data centres where the excess heat is put to use for central heating systems

While technically correct (which is the best *kind* of correct ;-) ), I mean, how much heat is produced per pod? Computing equipment over time is getting more and more power efficient. Would all the data centers needed in the world, come close to producing enough heat to have an impact on the environment, either locally or more globally?

Keep in mind that it sounds like the whole purpose here is, instead of having a massive data center in one place producing lots of heat in that one place, they intend to have hundreds or thousands of these centers, presumably each data center won't be too big, scattered all over the world. When dispersed like that, is the little bit of heat from each one enough to matter?

Also, keep in mind that the problem of global warming isn't really about the heat that humans produce with our machines. It's about all the GHG gasses we are releasing into the atmosphere, which is causing the multiple-orders-of-magnitude larger heat from the sun to accumulate instead of quickly radiating back out into space.

 

[Sukasa]

We hit the last one rather sooner than expected

 

[niwax]

I knew Jim Salter is really knowledgeable and hands-on about this server stuff, but actually pursuing a navy submarine career to comment on underwater datacenters is something else!

 

[TheShark]

It takes significant time and specialized effort to acquire and develop commercial real estate for a traditional data center in a major city—building a sealed pod and deploying it on the seafloor nearby should be considerably simpler and faster

so what sort of rules are there around storing your stuff on the seafloor? This has got 'tragedy of the commons' written all over it if everybody just starts dumping pods full of servers wherever they want.

 

[SixDegrees]

The failure rate of one-eighth that of normal servers is impressive, and as the article notes is probably due in large part to the nitrogen atmosphere in the container, which greatly reduces oxidation. It's not all about cooling.

 

[tutis]

With enough data centres like these, all the excess heat will go straight into the sea, further contributing to climate change. The only place these data centres wouldn’t contribute further to climate change is if they were buried deep down in earth’s crust but then cooling would be an issue.

I think I prefer the idea of city center data centres where the excess heat is put to use for central heating systems

The heat is going into the environment one way or the other anyway. Even if the heat is redirected to heating a building, the heat then goes from the building into the environment.

Also, the amount of heat the oceans absorb from these would be negligible compared to what they absorb from solar radiation every single day. You might see some minor local heating in the immediate environment, but that's not really a concern compared to the reduced energy usage (and therefore reduced CO2 emissions) needed for the cooling system.

My point about “recycling” the heat is that you don’t need to produce two units of heat (1 as a byproduct from the data center, the other for keeping buildings at liveable temperature). Byproduct heat of data center is subtracted in part from energy required to heat a building; this leading ultimately to less overall heat dumped in the atmosphere. What am I missing?

 

[MisterGrumps]

How does the cooling actually work? Is the pod itself essentially a heatsink for all the servers, or is there internal cooling/airflow that then routes to the edge of the pod to cool? Can they go as extreme as not even having fans on the servers?

 

[Sukasa]

Couldn't they just seal datacenters and pressurize them with nitrogen on land? That seems like that'd get you basically all the benefits of this setup without having to, you know, actually submerge the thing in the ocean.

Article goes into it a bit more; you gain the lower land cost (almost free, compared to paying for the land space), you get the cooling (convection? through the walls) that far outstrips the comparable cooling you'd get in air, and you also gain security benefits (nobody around to try and break in)

 

[Albino_Boo]

It's worth pointing out that the Orkney Islands have two 33kV sub sea power connections to the mainland with the capacity of 40 MW. So the Orkney Islands is connected to the UK's power grid and ultimately to continental Europe. There is also a failsafe diesel generator.

 

[samcantrell]

Couldn't they just seal datacenters and pressurize them with nitrogen on land? That seems like that'd get you basically all the benefits of this setup without having to, you know, actually submerge the thing in the ocean.

I think the major benefit is the built-in liquid cooling, not the nitrogen atmosphere.

 

[traumadog]

With enough data centres like these, all the excess heat will go straight into the sea, further contributing to climate change. The only place these data centres wouldn’t contribute further to climate change is if they were buried deep down in earth’s crust but then cooling would be an issue.

I think I prefer the idea of city center data centres where the excess heat is put to use for central heating systems

The heat is going into the environment one way or the other anyway. Even if the heat is redirected to heating a building, the heat then goes from the building into the environment.

Also, the amount of heat the oceans absorb from these would be negligible compared to what they absorb from solar radiation every single day. You might see some minor local heating in the immediate environment, but that's not really a concern compared to the reduced energy usage (and therefore reduced CO2 emissions) needed for the cooling system.

My point about “recycling” the heat is that you don’t need to produce two units of heat (1 as a byproduct from the data center, the other for keeping buildings at liveable temperature). Byproduct heat of data center is subtracted in part from energy required to heat a building; this leading ultimately to less overall heat dumped in the atmosphere. What am I missing?

The energy needed to transport said heat from one location to another. Besides, the amount of heat generated by a server center is likely small compared to the amount needed for residential warming - especially with the historic construction methods we have had.

I'd say a bigger reward for the effort for residential heating is to take what you would spend on energy transfer and use that money on developing more passive homes.

That would be a net win overall, especially since passive homes would take less to cool as well.

 

[Danation]

I know one of the main guys working on this, and he is pretty excited about the project. He travels around a lot (and obviously makes a fair amount of money on this.) I don't really have anything to add that the article didn't cover, but it's cool to see somebody I know in an Ars article!

 

[ColdWetDog]

With enough data centres like these, all the excess heat will go straight into the sea, further contributing to climate change. The only place these data centres wouldn’t contribute further to climate change is if they were buried deep down in earth’s crust but then cooling would be an issue.

I think I prefer the idea of city center data centres where the excess heat is put to use for central heating systems

The ocean is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the abyssal plain to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to the ocean.

 

[tutis]

With enough data centres like these, all the excess heat will go straight into the sea, further contributing to climate change. The only place these data centres wouldn’t contribute further to climate change is if they were buried deep down in earth’s crust but then cooling would be an issue.

I think I prefer the idea of city center data centres where the excess heat is put to use for central heating systems

Climate change is caused by sunlight heating the earth, which is then "trapped" by greenhouse gases. The amount of waste heat generated by human activity (including data centers) is minuscule compared to the amount of heat in sunlight.

Anyway, wouldn't a city data center only contribute to the "heat island effect" in summer?

in the building where I live, there are solar panels and sun “water tubes”. Both are used to heat water which is the circulated into deep underground closed circuit. Surrounding rocks there are heated throughout the summer as an energy store. In the winter, water is run through this circuit to heat up and is then circulated throughout the building for heating. Not sure how scalable this system is but it works for us. Also, people need hot water throughout the year

 

[julesverne]

With enough data centres like these, all the excess heat will go straight into the sea, further contributing to climate change. The only place these data centres wouldn’t contribute further to climate change is if they were buried deep down in earth’s crust but then cooling would be an issue.

I think I prefer the idea of city center data centres where the excess heat is put to use for central heating systems

Thing is, all of this heat would have gone into the atmosphere already.

At least using the ocean as a heat sink consumes way less energy than running on-shore AC for the facility, thus being a relative net gain overall.

While it's true that the heat would have gone into the environment anyway, the OP's point is likely that the posited central heating will have to be achieved be other means without the servers thus effectively doubling the heat load to the environment.

 

[ColdWetDog]

Couldn't they just seal datacenters and pressurize them with nitrogen on land? That seems like that'd get you basically all the benefits of this setup without having to, you know, actually submerge the thing in the ocean.

Except for all the water cooling. And not needing expensive, hard to develop land.

 

[Statistical]

With enough data centres like these, all the excess heat will go straight into the sea, further contributing to climate change. The only place these data centres wouldn’t contribute further to climate change is if they were buried deep down in earth’s crust but then cooling would be an issue.

I think I prefer the idea of city center data centres where the excess heat is put to use for central heating systems

Thermodynamics fail.

Global warming is not caused by humans creating heat. There is nothing humans could do that would produce even the tiniest fraction of the thermal energy that reaches the Earth from the sun.

Global warming is caused by GHG which increase the percentage of the thermal energy from the sun which is trapped. The sun is so off the charts powerful compared to any heat sources produced by humans that even the tiniest increase in the greenhouse effect can raise global temperatures.