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Data Center Under the Sea

June 7, 2018

Microsoft has been testing running servers in underwater conditions since 2013. The project is called Natick. Phase 1 was a capsule named "Leona Philpott" for a character from the Halo game franchise and was a mere 3m by 2m "sunk" underwater off the coast of California in 2015. It survived 100 days at 30 feet. The phase 2 prototype is currently "sitting" off the northeast coast of Scotland at a depth of almost 120 feet and is expected to operate for the next five years.

Why is Microsoft putting a data center under water? Computers create a lot of heat when operating. There have to be systems to cool down the hardware. Having the data center under water helps with the cooling problem. As an engineer that has had three semesters of thermodynamics, I know heat transfer is a very important thing. The current data center consists of 12 racks of 864 servers with 27.6 PB (that's petabytes) of storage.

We will have to see if Microsoft can create an energy efficient data center under the ocean without messing with the environment.

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