?Find out why, why did Microsoft move its data centers to the depths of the seas and oceans
Microsoft Data Server
!Find out why Microsoft moved its data centers to the depths of the seas and oceans? Here's the answer
Servers are very fast computers that carry all the data on the Internet. Website owners rent servers from major companies such as Microsoft through its Microsoft Azure platform.
It is noteworthy that Microsoft is a multinational company working in the field of computer technology. Its revenues in 2016 amounted to more than $85 billion, and it employs about 114,000 employees according to statistics (2016). It is the largest software manufacturer in the world in terms of revenues as of 2016. It develops, manufactures and licenses Mada. A wide range of software for computing devices. The company's headquarters are located in the suburbs of Redmont, Seattle, Washington state, United States.
Natick Project:
Microsoft began its journey to explore the feasibility of placing data centers underwater in 2014, and launched the Natick project for this purpose.
In the first phase of the project, Microsoft engineers tried to understand how to encapsulate data centers within waterproof containers to prevent any possible leakage, and they discovered that these server capsules could be deployed in seawater.
In the second phase, Microsoft began transforming the design to enter the implementation phase, as it succeeded in manufacturing a capsule that could be installed on a cargo ship, so that the container carrying the servers would later be dropped into the seawater.
The North Sea near the Orkney Islands in Scotland was chosen as a trial site for this phase of the project, as an underwater data center in the North Sea contains 864 servers, and a total amount of memory equivalent to 27.6 petabytes.
In 2018, the data center was sealed in a steel container filled with dry nitrogen gas, submerged in the icy, choppy waters of the North Sea.
Additionally, this test mission did not use active commercial servers. Instead, flooded containers carried internal Microsoft experimental data for testing, and it is inefficient to use a data center with only 864 servers to achieve professional networking.
There are data centers with more than 50,000 servers in one location, but Microsoft believes that this approach will be scalable in the future.
?The main question is: What are the benefits of moving servers underwater
Well, the experimental container that was dumped underwater in the North Sea, containing the computer servers, was recovered in July 2020 (two years after it was placed), and the results of the experiment look very promising.
The most important advantages of placing data centers underwater are the following:
Better reliability:
It is not preferable for electronic devices to operate in the same environment in which humans live, as they contain substances that are harmful to electronics, such as oxygen, humidity in the air, and temperatures, and these substances lead to corrosion, ultimately contributing to server failure.
Creating a relatively stable environment is the primary purpose of placing an underwater data center, as it aims to improve the performance of the servers and increase their lifespan.
As part of the Natick project, Microsoft engineers designed water capsules to be devoid of oxygen and moisture and instead supplied with nitrogen, which was only possible because the capsule would not contain any human presence.
With no human presence there is no chance of someone accidentally bumping into the equipment, which often results in accidental failures. Overall, these precautions have increased reliability, with Microsoft claiming that the failure rate of data centers was reduced by 1/8, or one-eighth, after submerging them.
Humidity, temperature changes, and air negatively affect computers and lead to many malfunctions, which maintenance engineers are constantly trying to solve. It costs a lot of money in maintenance and cooling. Based on the above, Microsoft decided to solve this problem by isolating data centers from the atmosphere to underwater in order to increase Internet speeds.
Improving environmental sustainability. Dumping the data center into water will reduce the cost of cooling servers, which is a prohibitive cost for many data center operators. Servers need to maintain a stable temperature, and the temperature of deep water is usually quite constant without noticeable changes between day and night, and even between Classes sometimes.
Cloud computing has become one of the buzzwords these days, and refers to computing and processing that takes place over the Internet using remote servers, and not on our device itself “locally.” Despite its catchy and widespread name, computing does not take place within some mysterious cloud, but rather within a ground-based data center inside a dedicated building. So.
However, this may change in the near future, and instead of heading towards the clouds, we will go in the opposite direction, i.e. explore the depths of the seas.
Technology giant Microsoft is testing the possibility of placing data centers underwater. On the surface, the idea may seem superficial, but in reality, the relationship between electronics and water is similar to the relationship between cats and cucumbers (it is known that cats are very afraid of cucumbers!).
But Microsoft disagrees. Based on recent internal research, underwater is the best place to build a data center, and the deeper you go, the more genius this revolutionary idea becomes apparent.
If you have ever used a high-end smartphone or recently updated your computer, you are likely aware of the existence of what is called a liquid cooling system, which is very effective in keeping the most active processors and other electronics cool, and Microsoft is planning to exploit this principle of liquid cooling to its fullest extent. Is it possible to submerge waterproof capsules containing data centers in seawater? Why? Because it is the most effective way to improve cloud computing performance.
Water, a natural coolant:
Traditional ground-based data centers consume a large amount of energy to keep the servers cool from the pressure and great effort exerted by the servers. Old data centers use mechanical cooling that relies on heavy-duty AC air conditioners, which in turn consume enormous energy, as some heavy air units use The amount of energy equivalent to the consumption of the servers themselves.
Modern data centers are also better because of the benefit of free air conditioning - in other words, they use outside air and evaporated water to cool the servers without having to consume a lot of energy. However, the downside to this is that they are at the mercy of the ambient air temperature and supply Water.
Today, an underwater data center can simply use the water surrounding it to dissipate the heat emanating from the servers, as water is known for its high thermal capacity, which means that it can store a lot of thermal energy without a noticeable change in its temperature. To understand this, let us remember the swimming pool, in which the water remains. Relatively cool even during scorching summers compared to the concrete surface next to it. Following the same principle, an underwater data center needs a well-designed heat exchanger to easily transfer heat to the surrounding seawater. This saves a huge amount of energy that would normally be spent just maintaining... Cooler electronic equipment.
Because sea or ocean water has so much capacity to absorb heat, data server storage facilities are easy to expand and improve, and this leads to another positive thing: the deeper you go into the sea water, the colder it gets. If the server enclosures can be placed at a depth of 150 meters from the surface The sea can get excellent cooling even in warm tropical areas.
Better economic feasibility:
Data centers are usually located in remote, sparsely populated areas, and companies prefer such locations because of the lower land value and subsequent operational costs. Although this saves money, the business model is not without some drawbacks.
Because data centers are located in remote areas that are difficult to reach, the data (which we need to communicate over the Internet) needs to travel a longer distance, which results in greater latency consumption, which contributes to a decrease in processing speed.
In contrast, about 44% of the world's population resides within 150 kilometers of the coastline, and therefore it is commercially preferable to place data centers near the coast. When we deploy them and submerge them in water off the coast, they will be closer to areas with a relatively higher population density, and this reduces the average The distance between the server and users, thus reducing response time.
It is interesting that the speed of building a group of waterproof server containers and submerging them in the sea may be greater than the speed of obtaining land and building an integrated data center on it. When starting to build a land-based data center, you will need to own a property, which is often expensive, and companies will also need to evaluate Feasibility of other conditions such as the topography of the area, availability of skilled labor, reliable electricity, compliance with local laws and regulations, etc.
Microsoft headquarters
The server pods required for underwater operation can be built using an assembly line method for later shipping and deployment at sea with minimal hassle, and Microsoft claims they can have these server pods ready in just 90 days! Then compare that period to the year or two needed to build a ground-based data center.
Underwater data center challenges:
Despite all of the above advantages, water is not an elixir through which we can solve all the technical and logistical problems associated with data centers. There are some new challenges that appear when you immerse a data center in seawater.
Maintenance:
Now you can't send a team of divers into the deep sea every time a piece of equipment stops working, so it's up to engineers to design underwater server clusters that are durable and can be repaired remotely.
Fortunately, as mentioned above, the reliability of data centers has increased significantly when placed and submerged in the North Sea, and Microsoft actually plans to design its data centers in water so that these centers will not need any effective maintenance for five years.
Marine life:
Some of you may be skeptical of the idea of filling the oceans with more man-made equipment like server pods, after all a coastline crowded with server pods doesn't seem like a good thing for healthy marine life.
However, according to marine ecologist Andrew Want, these data centers submerged in seawater would not pose a significant risk to marine life.
He goes on to explain that when a large structure like a server pod is submerged underwater, it will undergo a process called biofouling, where a layer of microscopic material builds up on the surface.
Biofouling is an undesirable phenomenon resulting from the accumulation and growth of microorganisms, plants, animals and algae on the surfaces of objects immersed in seawater.
This surface becomes an artificial coral reef, and fish usually gather around these “coral reefs”, which enhances biodiversity rather than threatening it.
the heat:
Some skeptics might worry about the heat that would dissipate from the server pods, but you only have to compare the size of a vast ocean to the size of those pods or even to the size of a huge string of them.
You will find that the environment is too large for the heat emission from the servers to make any significant difference, as the temperature change due to it is minimal.
There are also cables to transmit data under the surface of the water, which in turn emit heat into the seawater, but the resulting thermal effect is also minimal.
Although tracking down a server located near the coastline is not imminent, it is certainly a possible option for tech companies.
If this trend towards water data centers continues, we may soon witness a qualitative shift in how the management of our “cloud” data moves from the land to the depths of the sea!
Source : websites