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Every time you like something on Facebook, it causes a computer in a cloud data center somewhere in the world to do something. That computer uses electricity to let the world know you like the sleepy puppy video or what you dinner looked like.

As you may have noticed if you left your laptop on your lap for too long computers also produce heat. Facebook (FB), Twitter (TWTR), Instagram, and all the other time-wasters have millions of computers generating excess heat that needs to go somewhere. It is estimated that Facebook alone has hundreds of thousands of servers.

Keep servers cool

One of the ways to keep servers cool is to keep them wet. As count-intuitive as that seems, there are companies that use liquid immersion to cool their servers according to the Register. This approach uses data centers featuring large ‘baths’ filled with a dielectric liquid into which racks of equipment are submerged.

Mineral oil has been used in immersion cooling before Perhaps the best-known proponent of liquid immersion cooling is Green Revolution Cooling. Its CarnotJet system allows rack-mounted servers from any OEM to be dunked in special racked baths filled with a dielectric mineral oil blend called ElectroSafe (PDF), an electrical insulator it claims to have 1,200 times more heat capacity by volume than air.

Green Revolution Cooling claims cooling energy reductions of up to 95 percent, server power savings of 10-25%, data center build-out cost reductions of up to 60% through simplified architecture, and improved server performance and reliability as a result of less exposure to dust (and moisture).
Microsoft has taken this technology to the next level. Now, Microsoft is experimenting with locating entire data centers underwater.

Microsoft underwater data center

ComputerWorld is reporting that Microsoft has designed, built, and deployed its own sub-sea data center in the ocean, in the period of about a year. The Redmond, WA firm started working on the project in late 2014. Microsoft employee, Sean James, who served on a U.S. Navy submarine, submitted a paper on the concept.

The eight-foot diameter steel prototype vessel, named after the Halo character Leona Philpot, operated 30 feet underwater on the Pacific Ocean seafloor, about 1 kilometer off the California coast near San Luis Obispo for 105 days from August to November 2015, according to Microsoft. Microsoft engineers remotely controlled the data center and even ran commercial data-processing projects from Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service in the submerged data center.

The sub-sea data center experiment, called Project Natick after a town in MA, is in the research stage and Microsoft warns it is “still early days” to evaluate whether the concept could be adopted by the company and other cloud service providers. Microsoft says,

Project Natick reflects Microsoft’s ongoing quest for cloud data center solutions that offer rapid provisioning, lower costs, high responsiveness, and are more environmentally sustainable.

Microsoft believes that using undersea data centers can serve the 50% of people who live within 200 kilometers of the ocean. They say that deployment in deep-water offers “ready access to cooling, renewable power sources, and a controlled environment.” Moreover, a data center can be deployed from start to finish in 90 days.

Microsoft is weighing coupling the data center with a turbine or a tidal energy system to generate electricity, according to the New York Times.

Environmental impact

A new trial is expected to begin next year, possibly near Florida or in Northern Europe, Microsoft engineers told the NYT.

Some users questioned whether an undersea data center could have an environmental impact, including the heating up of the water around the data center. But Microsoft claimed on its website that the project envisages the use of data centers that would be totally recycled and would also have zero emissions when located along with offshore renewable energy sources. MSFT told Computerworld

No waste products, whether due to the power generation, computers, or human maintainers are emitted into the environment … During our deployment of the Leona Philpot vessel, sea life in the local vicinity quickly adapted to the presence of the vessel.

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I have covered some other alternative ways to deal with data centers on Bach Seat, including HP’s plans to use cow manure to generate electricity and Microsoft’s plan to use sewer gas to power a data center in Wyoming.

Underwater data centers are an attractive idea, there are challenges. One is a concern is the saltwater could corrode the structures. This issue can be resolved by locating the data centers in the freshwater Great Lakes. The Great Lakes basin is projected to reach a population of about 65 million by 2025.

The region includes:

• Chicago,
• Cincinnati,
• Cleveland,
• Detroit,
• Indianapolis,
• Kansas City,
• Louisville,
• Minneapolis,
• Montreal.
• Ottawa,
• Pittsburgh,
• Quebec City.
• Toronto.

Related article

• KnC Miner to Setup Another Data Center in the Arctic (newsbtc.com)

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.