Comment by skybrian
Comment by skybrian 4 days ago
Apparently Microsoft tried it and it worked, but they shelved it?
https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/servers/microsoft-shel...
Comment by skybrian 4 days ago
Apparently Microsoft tried it and it worked, but they shelved it?
https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/servers/microsoft-shel...
They claim it did.
Microsoft finds underwater datacenters are reliable, practical and use energy sustainably - https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/sustainability/pr...
> Among the components crated up and sent to Redmond are a handful of failed servers and related cables. The researchers think this hardware will help them understand why the servers in the underwater datacenter are eight times more reliable than those on land.
> “We are like, ‘Hey this looks really good,’” Fowers said. “We have to figure out what exactly gives us this benefit.”
> The team hypothesizes that the atmosphere of nitrogen, which is less corrosive than oxygen, and the absence of people to bump and jostle components, are the primary reasons for the difference. If the analysis proves this correct, the team may be able to translate the findings to land datacenters.
> “Our failure rate in the water is one-eighth of what we see on land,” Cutler said. “I have an economic model that says if I lose so many servers per unit of time, I’m at least at parity with land,” he added. “We are considerably better than that.”
that was in 2020, and so here in 2025 MS has underwater data centres around the world!
wait, no it doesn't. why would that be, d'you think
Because despite being more reliable and energy efficient the other costs associated with it were higher. It is one thing to dunk 14.3m L x 12.7m D in the ocean for a 240 kW setup in the ocean. It is another to scale that up to a "full scale" data center that is about 200x larger that has additional electrical supply challenges.
Let's say that pod needs to be serviced once every two years. That means having a ship that services one pod every 3 days when scaled up.
From the standpoint of a single pod data center and "does this work?" - the answer is "yes, it works better than we thought it would." From the standpoint of "can we scale this to a full data center?" - the answer is "we'd need a ship servicing a twice a week, with the logistics that entails for the ship (and backup ship)." That second part becomes less practical compared to building a data center on terra firma where it's much easier to walk into a building to service it and hook up the power.
yep, just found Microsoft admitting precisely that in 2024: https://www.itpro.com/infrastructure/data-centres/microsoft-...
Cooling was great! Everything else sucked.
DCs in space will have all the stuff that sucked, but cooling will suck too.
I don't think MS ever revealed enough information to answer that. For example, I haven't seen any explanation of how heat is transferred from the servers to the skin of the container. I can guess how they did it but I don't want to make any judgement based on guesses.
Cooling worked well, everything else sucked. https://www.itpro.com/infrastructure/data-centres/microsoft-...
It didn't work, it was an utterly terrible idea and they are almost certainly lying about the sentiment that it "worked". No ability to perform maintenance is a complete nonstarter. Communications and power is a nightmare to get right. The thermal management story sucks - just because you have metal touching water doesn't mean you have effective radiation of heat. Actually scaling it up is nearly impossible because you need thicker and more expensive vessels the bigger it gets. The problems go on and on.