Microsoft’s research Project Natick with underwater data center started in 2016 has reached the second phase. Last night, a project team has sunk a data center off the Scottish coast, over next 12 months Microsoft will monitor and record the performance of that unusual center, The Verge reported.
Microsoft is going to try the abilities of the underwater data centres. If the project becomes successful, it will enable corporations to rapidly deploy datacenters along coastal regions with much less cost when compared to traditional ‘farms’. Water cooling is the principal idea for sinking the datacenter.
In Microsoft’s plans for today’s underwater data center is deploying for five years, and Project Natick includes 12 racks with 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes of storage. All this power will be feed by an undersea cable and renewable energy from the Orkney Islands. The cable will also connect the servers back to the internet.
Ben Cutler, Project Natick’s in charge, reminds that the theory is that the cost of cooling the computers will be cut by placing them underwater.
“We think we actually get much better cooling underwater than on land,”
he said.
“Additionally because there are no people, we can take all the oxygen and most of the water vapour out of the atmosphere which reduces corrosion, which is a significant problem in data centres,”
Mr Cutler added.
Project Natick’s phase two is focused on researching whether the concept is logistically, environmentally and economically practical.
