Let's talk about Microsoft, a multinational technology company based in Washington, United States, developer of manufacturing licenses and provider of software support for personal computers, servers and electronic devices, founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates.
In 2019 Microsoft became the third company in the United States to be valued more than a trillion dollars of course after Apple and Amazon.
Let's test your brain and I want to tell you about the Microsoft servers that I find extremely interesting the fact that they were under water. Yes, as you are reading it, all the data centers were submerged and it turns out that it was a very great idea.
The project called "Project Natick" has been one of the most curious. The purpose was to submerge a data center with 864 servers deep in the ocean. The idea was to test if it was easier to keep them there or on the surface. This was in 2018 and two years later they brought it up again And apparently it was a success
Most of us know that when we store some type of file in the cloud or on an internet page, our data actually ends up on a physical server, in this case Microsoft, but a physical server must be maintained. And that is why this test looked for different ideas to keep them stable and thus persevere our data.
These servers were submerged at a depth of 35 m for approximately 2 years and after taking them to the surface they detailed that they considered it a success.With this experiment the possibility was raised that in depth the data would be more stable and efficient since in The land is exposed to many external factors that do not occur at the bottom of the sea, Of course, at the beginning it requires much more maintenance and consumption of resources for them but the experiment confirmed in a certain sense that it was much more stable submerged
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According to the details provided under the water, only one eighth of failures were suffered compared to when it was in Tierra Firme, normally problems such as oxidation, humidity, temperature control are faced on the surface since they vary considerably this is because we are day or night or in the changing of the seasons.
On the other hand, submerged in the sea, the temperature is always constant and the capsule that kept them was hermetically closed to the outside but not everything was positive there were negative parts one of those was that when the data center failed, they should repair it meters deep from the water then it was like one of the few negative parts like everything and despite this they consider the idea of having those submerged at the bottom of the world much more effective in coastal areas that have a considerably close body of water.
The next step for Microsoft has been to show that these centers after completing their life cycle can easily be recovered, changed or recycled in the future, it would not be strange to see many more followers emerged in the water.
All these ideas arose from the need to reduce the heating suffered by these servers and the research engineers thought of a way to cool them and thus increase their productivity and reduce the high energy demand after collecting this data they concluded that than submerged They kept better. Because the nitrogen in it helps to reduce corrosion in a positive way, in addition to this there are no people there damaging things.
This entire project took place on the shores of Orkney due to its mild climate the white cylinder emerged from the cold water covered with algae and anemones but despite this dirty aspect of the exterior they worked properly the project seems sustainable since all the energy that is used in this place it comes from wind and solar energy, the leaders of this project gave their words where they could explain that they could work really well and they hope to be able to see different findings and thus see that they will not need so much infrastructure focused on energy and reliability.
one of the data center industry consultants has said that the project has great potential believes that organizations that could face a natural disaster or attack could find this form of storage very attractive consider being able to move all data centers to a safe place without having high costs in building construction is very flexible and effective for the moment they agreed on what type they wanted to design whether large or small,
It remains the hope that this data storage works in order to be more sustainable and in line with the environment both on Earth and on water.
One of the long-term goals for Microsoft is to produce capsules that can be safely deposited on the seabed without the need for maintenance for a period of 5 years.The next step or challenge is to expand the program to locations off the coast of Florida and somewhere in northern Europe this to see the reaction in different aquatic environments and see if it is just as positive as on the California coast.
Traditional data centers and their metallic components are very vulnerable to the environment that surrounds them, that is why the researchers of this project saw it as positive to be able to isolate dry and nitrogen-rich air within the center, which reduced the possibility of corrosion.
The submerged object was just over 12 meters long and about 3 meters in diameter, very similar to a commercial container and inside it housed 12 server racks with 27.6 pentabytes of disk storage capacity, it is so powerful How several thousand high-end consumer PCs and has enough storage for about 5,000,000 movies
Despite all this, Microsoft has not yet announced that this is a commercial product, it is still a positive experiment for the moment, another aspect to highlight according to the data that Microsoft gave is that currently about half of the world population lives in areas coastal areas and having data centers in the sea would shorten the transmission distance and with it the latency, the response times to deliver the information would be shorter, which would make the backbone of the internet more robust and fast for the moment. wait for Microsoft to publish more results of its initiative, which looks quite viable and sustainable for the future of the internet.
