Communications of the ACM
Microsoft's Underwater Datacenter Resurfaces After Two Years
Software giant Microsoft retrieved an underwater datacenter that it sunk off the coast of Scotland two years ago, and is analyzing its performance data.
Credit: Microsoft
Microsoft has retrieved an underwater datacenter that it sunk off the coast of Orkney in Scotland two years ago, and is analyzing its performance data.
Initial findings indicate Project Natick's servers had a lower failure rate than a conventional datacenter, with just eight of 855 servers having malfunctioned.
The Microsoft team said this may be due to the installation being unmanned, and being filled with nitrogen rather than oxygen.
Project Natick partly sought broader insights about energy efficiency in cloud computing.
Technical team member Spencer Fowers said, "We have been able to run really well on what most land-based datacenters consider an unreliable grid. We are hopeful that we can look at our findings and say maybe we don't need to have quite as much infrastructure focused on power and reliability."
From BBC News
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