When a computer is used for a while, it generates heat. It probably won’t be noticeable, unless you’re in a small room. However, a datacentre may contain as many as 1,000 servers stacked next to and on top of each other in a very confined space, all of them running all the time. Suddenly, heat becomes a major consideration.
If the servers get too hot, they’ll slow down or crash completely so an intricate network of cooling systems has to be installed to keep the processors comfortable. Cooling a datacentre involves a vast air-conditioning network that can cost its operators more to run than the servers themselves. An alternative would be very welcome in the industry but so far none has emerged.
Microsoft thinks it has found the answer to the problem. As the New York Times reports, a research team has created a capsule that can be used to contain servers and sink them to the seabed. Surrounded by cold water all the time, the cooling is no longer an issue. The datacentre could even power itself, using integrated turbines to capture the energy of the ocean’s waves.
Under development as ‘Project Natick’, Microsoft has built a steel wrapper for the datacentre that is linked to the surface with fibre-optic cables. It recently completed a 105-day trial of one of the capsules, submerged in water in the Pacific Ocean and monitored closely from Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters.
To the surprise of even its engineers, the capsule survived the ordeal. The 100 different sensors inside failed to trigger any warnings for leaks, humidity, motion with the waves or pressure high enough to buckle the steel walls. Encouraged by its success, Microsoft has now begun building an underwater datacentre three times as large to be tested in Florida or Northern Europe next year.
Inevitably, there are some flaws with the design. It is very hard to access the servers once they are submerged, which could prove to be a problem if the hardware goes wrong. If Microsoft detects Xbox Live is about to crash offline one evening, it can currently send someone over to the datacentre to fix the broken server. When the servers are submerged off the coast, unexpected downtime recovery could become a lot harder though.
Additionally, Microsoft is designing the capsules to stay on the seabed for five years at a time but this may prove to be too long. Server hardware and demand for web applications is progressing very rapidly so each capsule may become outdated before it is due for replacement.
Other concerns include the impact on marine wildlife of placing a rack full of vibrating servers down in their habitat. In its first experiment, Microsoft’s acoustic sensors found the clicking of a shrimp swimming past the capsule was louder than the whir and buzz within, suggesting this shouldn’t be an issue, but the long-term effects are unknown.
Microsoft has a lot to gain from this technology if it turns out to be commercially viable. Its Azure cloud-hosting service is currently the fastest growing platform in the market and the company is having to work hard to upgrade datacentres and add more servers to cope with demand. This is a time-consuming process that takes two years to complete on average.
In the future, adding another datacentre to a network could be as simple as dropping a new steel capsule down to the ocean floor and connecting it up with a stretch of fibre-optic cable. Microsoft estimates the process could be complete in 90 days, letting operators react more quickly to changes in demand and service usage.
