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The Future of Data Centers Might Be Underwater
Microsoft’s recent experiment shows that this is not just feasible, but also practical
Earlier this summer, Microsoft made an unusual call to some marine specialists asking for their help to retrieve a shipping-container sized capsule from the seafloor off Scotland’s Orkney Islands. After an intricate performance by ropes and winches attached to a gantry crane, out came a data center covered in algae, barnacles, and sea anemones. The Microsoft team was “pretty impressed with how clean it was.” While most electronics go kaput with the slightest water spillage, this one thrived in it.
This bizarre endeavor is the brainchild of Microsoft’s Project Natick team. This team is studying the feasibility and practicality of underwater data centers and they sunk the recently hauled out data center in spring 2018 for a two years-long experiment. But this was not the first time they did that.
What is Project Natick?
In most companies, outlandish ideas proposed by its employees are rarely given heed, but Microsoft is not most companies. So during ThinkWeek, an event that encourages employees to share out-of-the-box ideas, Sean James and some of his colleagues circulated an internal white paper outlining the concept of underwater data centers. Sean had previously served on board submarines for the U.S. Navy and knew a thing or two about underwater structures. His idea stemmed from this experience, and he hoped it might help tech companies handle the explosive growth in demand for data centers in an environmentally sustainable way.
Microsoft jumped on board and a small team was formed in August 2014 to pursue this concept. Within a year this team developed a Phase 1 prototype that they drowned in the Pacific Ocean off California’s coast. The capsule was fitted with hundreds of sensors to study humidity, pressure, temperature, motion, and other variables that helped the team better understand how a data center works in this novel environment.
