Microsoft retrieves data centre after two-year experiment

Microsoft retrieves data centre from rock bottom of the ocean after two-year experiment
A mere eight out of a complete of 855 servers were found to possess failed when the container was retrieved from the ocean bottom , proving that storing data under water significantly lowered the speed of failure.

Microsoft retrieves data centre from rock bottom of the ocean after two-year experiment

In a recent blog post, Microsoft revealed that the underwater data centre had a lower rate of failure than a standard one. (File photo)
In the spring of 2018, Microsoft plunged a shipping container-sized data centre, full of 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes of storage, to rock bottom of the Scottish sea near Orkney Islands . After retrieving the info centre — now coated in algae and barnacles — the software major announced on Tuesday that its two-year experiment has confirmed the viability of storing data many feet deep within the ocean, BBC reported.

Launching the ultimate phase of its ambitious Project Natick, Microsoft deployed a team of marine specialists to reel up the info centre and power-wash it before inserting variety of test tubes through a valve at the highest of the vessel to gather air samples for analysis.

In a recent blog post, Microsoft revealed that the underwater data centre had a lower rate of failure than a standard one. A mere eight out of a complete of 855 servers were found to possess failed when the container was retrieved from the ocean bottom .

“Our failure rate within the water is one-eighth of what we see ashore ,” Ben Cutler, a project manager who led Project Natick, said during a handout , consistent with BBC. consistent with the team, the reduced failure rate was thanks to the atmosphere of nitrogen, which is a smaller amount corrosive than oxygen, also because the absence of a person’s crew.

The research team behind Project Natick also found that keeping the mammoth cylindrical data centre underwater also significantly lowered the value of cooling computers. The team was also curious about the sustainability of storing data under water and whether it’ll bring down the quantity of energy wont to run computations on huge collections of knowledge , Vice reported.

One of the explanations the team selected Orkney Islands to conduct the experiment was because the grid here is totally powered by wind, solar and experimental green energy technologies. “We are ready to run rather well on what most land-based data centres consider an unreliable grid,” Spencer Fowers, a member of the technical team, said within the press statement.

“We are hopeful that we will check out our findings and say maybe we don’t got to have quite the maximum amount infrastructure focused on power and reliability,” Fowers added. within the future, Microsoft says that it hopes to run the underwater data centres by swapping out servers every five years. If a server occasionally fails, it’ll simple be taken offline.

“As we are moving from generic cloud computing to cloud and edge computing, we are seeing more and more got to have smaller data centres located closer to customers rather than these large warehouse datacenters call at the center of nowhere,” Fowers explained.

Next abreast of the Project Natick team’s agenda is to point out that servers can easily be removed and recycled once they reach the top of their life, the Verge reported.

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