Microsoft has deployed the first datacenter in the Scottish Sea in an effort to test more sustainable and efficient solutions for storing vast quantities of data. Datacenters typically generate a lot of heat, which could be solved by placing them underwater to benefit from natural cooling effects and controlled environments.
Project Natick
Project Natick started back in 2015 as a research project to investigate the potential benefits that undersea datacenters could provide to cloud users all over the world. The idea behind the project is that nearly 50% of the world’s population lives within 120 miles of the coast. By putting datacenters underwater near coastal cities, data has short distances to travel and can thus ensure rapid provisioning and reduce latency.
Why do we need to think of alternative solutions to store our data?
The demand for datacenter resources is growing industry wide exponentially as corporations progressively shift their networks and data to the cloud. Bent Cutler, a project manager within Microsoft’s Project Natick, puts it this way “When you are in this kind of exponential growth curve, it tells you that most of the datacenters that we’ll ever build we haven’t built yet”, underscoring the need for novel innovations what’s about to become or already is the most critical piece of our infrastructure.
First of Many
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, plans to deploy more underwater data centers in the future, not only because they are designed to operate independently without direct supervision for up to 5 years, but also they are very fast to manufacture. “It was very fast to build the entire supply chain of it, from start to finish, it took us 90 days”, said Nadella. After this 5-year period, the datacenter vessel will be retrieved again, reloaded with new computers and redeployed in an effort to target a lifespan of at least 20 years. Moreover, the datacenters are intended to be fully recycled from the material of the vessel to recycling at the datacenter’s end of life. Research has shown that Natick datacenter consume no water for cooling or other means and are in turn not harmful for marine ecosystems.
Are we on the right way to store our data in the oceans?
Its without question that we need storage for all the data we possess and our demand for datacenter is increasing exponentially right now, the trend depicting an even higher increase in the future. Cities are growing and datacenter are swallowing tons of energy and space – it is yet to see whether the ocean is our best alternative.
Related:
- Check out the Project Natick research page
- Read the Microsoft Green Blog to learn about Microsoft’s environment and sustainability initiatives
- Read about Phase 1 of Project Natick
References
BBC News. (2019). Microsoft sinks data centre off Orkney. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44368813 [Accessed 17 Sep. 2019].
Loughlan, J. (2016). News Briefing: Energy – Microsoft trails underwater data centre. Engineering & Technology, 11(2), pp.17-17.
Microsoft Stories. (2019). Under the sea, Microsoft tests a datacenter that’s quick to deploy, could provide internet connectivity for years – Stories. [online] Available at: https://news.microsoft.com/features/under-the-sea-microsoft-tests-a-datacenter-thats-quick-to-deploy-could-provide-internet-connectivity-for-years/ [Accessed 17 Sep. 2019].
Microsoft Projects (2019). Project Natick. [online] Natick.research.microsoft.com. Available at: https://natick.research.microsoft.com [Accessed 17 Sep. 2019].
The Verge. (2019). Microsoft sinks a data center off the Scottish coast. [online] Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/6/17433206/microsoft-underwater-data-center-project-natick [Accessed 17 Sep. 2019].
When I see the title, I thought the title might be a kind of metaphor. But when i finished reading, I find out that it really mean that. Really nice post to read!
Thanks for your feedback, Zikan. Glad the title spoke your interest.
Best,
Eva
This was very interesting to read and I actually never heard of anything similar before.
However, I think there are far more potential down sights of this. Even though you said that no water is consumed for cooling there are major concerns regarding global warming. As the ocean tends to get warmer an additional heating by Microsoft datacenters might actually be harmful to that. Of course no single datacenter might have such an impact but thinking of the future where this might be a new kind of standard: the environmental effects could be immense. Also, the heat generated by the data centers is basically wasted, maybe there is a way to capture that heat and use it further?
Dear Sophie,
I really appreciated your feedback on my blog post. I think global warming is indeed a huge concern and actually, I think the idea behind the underwater datacenter is to take off the burden on the environment we pose with conventional datacenters. They swallow let alone tons of energy just for cooling activities; a problem that we do not have with datacenters undersea. I like you being critical, whether datacenters cause additional heating in the oceans and have updated my blog post with further references and studies showing that underwater datacenter have no impact on ocean climate, in fact they are neutral.
Hi Eva, thanks for your post! Really interesting to read about this, since I have never heard of underwater datacenters before. It sounds like it is indeed a sustainable and efficient way to deploy data centers. I am curious if this is going to be the future of how we store data. From the previous comment and your reply, I understood that deploying a data centre underwater is more eco-friendly than deploying it on-land, so that might be a driver for more data centers under water. Besides, I saw that some cities in The Netherlands recently announced that they want to stop building data centers, because they take too much space and consume too much energy (Dutch IT Channel, 2019). Putting data centers underwater would be a solution for both issues. Let’s see if in the future more datacenters will be placed underwater!
https://dutchitchannel.nl/631040/actieplan-op-komst-als-reactie-op-tijdelijke-bouwstop-datacenters.html
Hi Arnaud, thanks for sharing your perspective on my post!
Yes, I am also curious to see whether data centres under water are the way to go, thanks for sharing the source!
Hi Eva, thanks for the interesting insight! I found an interesting statistic: “a 2016 US government study found that data centers in the United States consumed 70 billion kWh of electricity in 2014, equal to 1.8% of the country’s total energy consumption for that year” (Greig, 2018). Researchers are actually estimating data centers to be responsible for 2% of the greenhouse gas emissions annually, which will increase as the population grows and more computing power is needed. So deploying data centers under water will be a way to begin conquering these problems.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/heres-why-microsoft-is-building-a-massive-data-center-underwater/
Hi Noelle, thanks for sharing the US government study. I did not know that data centres are responsible for 2% of the greenhouse gas emissions annually – a trend that is most likely going to have an upward slope. We’ll see what the future will bring.