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Startup Building Floating Data Centers
1sockchuck writes "A Bay Area startup is planning to build data centers on cargo container ships, which would be docked at piers in major Internet markets. The company, known as IDS (International Data Security) says it plans to use biodiesel to power its generators and use heat from equipment to manage temperature on board the ships, reducing their reliance on grid power. IDS is telling prospects that it hopes to eventually have more than 20 floating data centers docked at ports around the U.S."
I bet you could sell server space on one of these to thepiratebay...
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
Sick of stable data centers inland, free from the excitement that comes from not knowing whether your data center will survive the latest hurricane or tropical storm? Tired of never meeting interesting longshoreman on your way to work? Try our new data center model!
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a server farm under tow!
(latency's a bitch, though)
wouldnt this leave them far more open to forms of terrorism? i.e. if these floating data centers hosted say, all the websites that godaddy.com host (which is alot), and someone "cut the cable" which would be alot easier to find on a ship, since it has to come out of the ship somewhere... all these websites would instantly go online, where in a building, the cable would come in, underground, directly into the rooms the data center occupies. ships are easier to sink that buildings are to destroy.
if the ships use wireless rather than wired, there would need to be a large antenna on the ship, which would:
1. be a target for everyone
2. allow people to intercept any connection.
portfolio
Float the ships off the coast, in international waters, fly a pirates flag and host accordingly.
"[...] docked at piers in major Internet markets."
Why would anyone ship data to a major internet market when you can just send it via an attachment? Duh...
and how they plan to connect to the shore? lay a fibre cable?
in a busy port that gets dredged often thats a very bad idea, now we gonna hear about trawlers responsible for datacenters being cut off
You sunk my dataship!
I hope this idea floats, I hope they have enough liquid assets...
Oh the puns! I can't resist!
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Wow another bad idea in a long chain of bad ideas. Lets pick a few reasons, lets locate a datacenter in prime industrial areas, on an unstable platform, near corrosive salt water, ....
I wonder just how well one of Suns' "Black Box" containers will last in a salty environment. Salt air corrodes just about everything. The container is built for it, but you'd have to be careful about not opening the doors too often. Putting a data center into a naval environment, even one just rocking at a pier, is a lot more challenging then one in a building away from the shore. There's going to be a lot of cabling going onshore and that will all have to be maintained in ways that you don't have to do when there's no water involved.
One of their founders is an ex-Navy guy so maybe they've got it all wired. However, I don't think the Navy uses off-the-shelf stuff and buying navalized equipment is a lot more expensive then the just you get at Fry's.
Sounds like a great way to see if your [buzzword] idea will sink or swim.
Why bother with biodiesel? Cargo ships use bunker oil, which is 1 step up from crude. They'll already have massive generators and massive fuel capacity, with readily available fuel.
If they really wanted to be green they'd deploy some sort of thermal gradient generator, sinking piping down below the thermocline of the ocean.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Ship's Register: Floating Point
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
As if having the worlds shipping subject to hijacking and piracy - Now pirates could make off with your own data center.
On the other hand, it gives a whole new meaning to the term "capital flight" - if the IRS looks like it might be about to sieze your assets, you can float the whole head office to another jurisdiction - or set it up on a tropical island with a volcano.
Sys admins will only get one pint of grog per day.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
It just seems that this type of setup will be vulnerable to all sorts of environmental and physical damage that a land-based data center wouldn't be. For instance, the physical connection to fiber would be very vulnerable to vandalism, environmental damage, and even just plain human stupidity. Depending on the port, environmentals could be quite tricky as well.
Not only that, but how would you get true redundancy? Sure, power could be done, but when it comes to multiple paths for data connections, ports might not lend for the best setup.
I can see in cities where real estate is overwhelmingly valuable that there might be some economies of scale, but it seems to me that many data centers are now being built in areas where there is tons of existing dark fiber, and land is relatively cheap. Not sure if this truly makes economic sense when it doesn't make a damn bit of difference where your server/data/systems are located. A millesecond or two in lag is all but irrelevant in the larger scheme of things.
Bill
What's with the current trend for mobile datacentres?
First Google with their datacentre on a truck, and now these guys... Surely the main idea of the Internet was that it wouldn't matter where you put your data!
Are the land prices that expensive that it's worth giving up all the advantages of a bog-standard datacentre in a building?
I can understand being able to move the data center around but why not but some cheap land and just build infrastructure for the center (these are supposed to be permanent anyway). Surely that is cheaper then buying a ship and the upkeep (not to mention that the boat could sink. Also dock space is still a form of real estate with rents that fluctuate, obviously dock space is also limited.
Yes, cut off GoDaddy's interference and the website would suddenly be accessible, rather than overloaded on a crammed server and unavailable!
You just wait until my mortgage company puts its records on one of those things. Torpedos away! Oppps, sorry Mr. Stork, all of your records were destroyed... guess you just don't have to make that payment any more!
This is my sig.
...for off-shoring?
The only semi-practical application I can perceive would be use as a co-location site when docked in port, and in the event of an impending disaster, the ship can leave port and move the servers out of harm's way. Still, this seems impractical. Most co-location data facilities I've visited are built like bunkers and can withstand up to a category five hurricane.
Bandwidth also presents a problem. The co-location facility my office uses supports several thousand businesses in my area, and has abundant bandwidth to service them all. How feasible would it be to provide an optical carrier connection to a cargo ship in port? What about bandwidth out at sea? The only type of connection I can picture out at sea is satellite. It's been a while since I researched satellite connections, and bandwidth was nowhere near as high as we can get from an OC connection, let alone a DS-3 or even a T1. Has satellite networking really improved that much, or is there some other type of long-range, high-bandwidth wireless connection that I'm not aware of?
~Mike (Titan_X)
I would use the floating data centers to build an offshore casino with blackjack and hookers.
Actually, forget the casino and the hookers.
If at first you don't succeed, call it version 1.0.
This is the kind of crazy stuff I expected during the dot-com era of the late 1990's. Maybe they should call it Titanic Datacentres. One bad storm or nasty leak in a boat and all your infrastructure sinks.
that Joseph Hazelwood is still looking for a gig.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
A problem with a heat sink.
This idea is akin to the kind popular in the late '90s, I honestly hope no venture capitalists are stupid enough to be sponsoring these guys. How could they possibly have a tangible backbone connection? what happens when the ship has to leave dock and they don't have any internet lest a satellite connection. I'm sure their customers will absolutely love the 5sec latency.
:(
Maybe this is targeted at emergency scenarios. An example might be when Katrina knocked out much of the power/comms in New Orleans. They could drop one of these cargo containers at the dock and get the network back online quickly. That seems to be the only viable model for this, as it can't compete with land-based data centers in price and stability.
Anyone worried that we have to find novel ways to use cargo containers?
This idea has so many different problems, it is not even vaguely amusing.
1) They are going to "use heat from equipment to manage temperature on board the ships"? Huh? Unless these things are parked in the Arctic, "temperature management" in a data center always involves getting rid of the heat, not using it. The heat is a problem, not a solution.
2) It's a ship. In a storm, it moves. That's bad.
3) Ooh... ventilating a ship with air saturated with salt spray! Why didn't I think of that? Even if they mostly recirculated air, their chillers are going to get corroded to junk pretty quickly.
4) What exactly is a "major internet market" if you are referring to a geographical location? As long as you can get a fiber drop, you can get all the bandwidth you need. Google is building all sorts of data centers in the middle of nowhere, where Real Estate is practically free.
SirWired
Wow. This idea is completely out-of-the-box.
I have questions:
1. Why locate off-shore when there is plenty of space on land?
2. Who is going to pay the port fees? Not including the tow fees necessary to periodically reposition the vessel.
3. Why take the hit on maintenance? Periodic dry docking, corrosion management, bilge checks...
4. Why pay additional expenses for a vessel agent? (They are NOT cheap).
5. What about mooring? evacuations due to hurricanes? environmental impact (ballast water & bunkering)?
6. Why take the risk associated with being in navigable water (vessel collision, dredging)?
7. Insurance?
8. On the subject of decommissioned cargo ships -- Most cargo ships are decommissioned only after they are in such sad shape that the operators fear that metal fatigue may jeopardize the vessel, or the safety systems have deteriorated to the point that the cost of repairs (to make them pass coast guard inspection) are too high. Why not use deep sea barges like Odysea, Crowley TMT, or Land Bridge uses? Less maintenance, and you won't have to hire three tugs to reposition the damn thing.
Just asking...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Startup Building Floating Data Centers
That's nice, but is there a demand for data centers that store only one type of number? What if we need to store integers?
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
How many datacenters have been subject to terrorist attacks so far? The only one that comes close was
9/11, and even that wasn't primarily an effort to destroy data or disrupt networks.
To sink a ship, you need a bomb. The same bomb would do quite a lot of damage to the average datacenter building.
Besides, if you need your datacenter to be really secure, there's always the 'old military bunker' option instead.
There are just so many fundamental problems with this concept I don't know where to start. Power is such an easy shot-- where the hell are you going to get enough biodiesel to run a data center of any size for starters. Moving the data center around also would use a whole lot of "less environmentally friendly" bunker oil, and fundamentally the only problem it addresses is a real-estate one.
Oh, and it doesn't address the real-estate problem very well, because protected berths with access to good fiber are pretty expensive in and of themselves.
The sad thing: This proves we are in an economic bubble and the pop is coming!
If this works, it could be feasible to have data centers in space. If WIFI coverage could ever extend that far, what stands in the way of having a solar powered server in low orbit?
Well, on site support and maintenance might be problematic, but don't kill the dream with logic just right now.
Well... maybe it won't work after all, not until maintenance or reliability becomes less of an issue. I'd hate to be the one to send a million dollar space mission up to replace a fried motherboard...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
I don't remember the Terrans being able to build floating data centers. Is that like a barracks where nerds are created?
Kinda like a really big thumb drive.
Reminds me about the serverhosting on Sealand.
With countries all over the world putting more and more restrictions and regulations on hosting servers, I can see the benefit of a floating datacenter: in the case of legal/authoritative problems just sail to international waters.
As other comments note there are major problems to overcome. Reliability will be a lot worse. Satellite connections are painfully slow and expensive, while UMTS/HSDPA/wimax/cables limit your range and provide points-of-failure on land. Having your own dormant volcano like in Cryptonomicon is probably an easier route.
Plus, think of all the pirate-jokes you'd have to endure. Arrgg!
This sig is intentionally left blank
3) They dehumidify the air before chilling it. The heat exchangers use seawater cooling that require periodic cleaning, but nothing exceedingly difficult. In short, corrosion due to ventilation is not a problem.
over the railing it goes.
Vescere bracis meis.
...was absolutely correct when he said: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
The only way I can foresee this being useful is if they locate the ship in international waters but close enough to shore to still have a really kick ass connection.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
{{ Insert joke about a float not being large enough to store all of your data, here }}
I'd be a little worried about the union implications. Given their ties to the mafia, I wouldn't be surprised if these "data centers" were some kind of money laundering operation. The containers are empty and they pay a $100/hr gantry crane operator to move them around once a day.
Except that they appear to be researching their locations pretty carefully. San Francisco does not have hurricanes or tropical storms as the water around it is too shallow to hold all the energy. Besides, the Bay is just that: A bay. I don't know if you've ever been to SF, but pier 50 is way south well inside the bay. It is very safe.
The land in that area is another issue. San Francisco was nearly completely leveled a couple of times in the 20th century alone by earthquakes.
I think that the data-center on ships idea is great...
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
They better have a good disaster recovery plan. Imagine a whole data center lost in one fell swoop as it sinks to the bottom of the sea!!! That's one major loss of carrier.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
This is a really novel concept, but I'm still left scratching my head. Why the hell would you actually want to do this?
As far as I can tell, this company is banking on the cost of maintaining a whole ship to somehow be less expensive than paying rent on office space for a conventional data center. Are real-estate prices are really out of touch with reality in port cities? Does anyone have any idea as to where the cost benefit is here? Are data services really worth that much, or is this just sheer novelty (e.g. Snow Crash fans)?
The part that set off my crap detector is that wouldn't we have this kind of in-port utilization on cargo ships already if this was somehow cheaper than renting downtown?
I could understand why they would do this if they planned on stationing them in international waters, but since these will still be under US jurisdiction... What's the point?
Japanese electronics companies used to have cargo ships with mainframes which performed data processing tasks in international waters near San Francisco. (Back when Japanese labor costs were low, and computers were rare enough that there was benefit to having a mobile computer.)
Now, when my home page goes down, I'm going to create an alternate home page that shows my site under water ! Or how about some new smtp error codes : error 551 mail server temporarily under water. error 552 bilge pump down
In the abstract, hosting a DC at the port of Lagos Nigeria might not make any sense, but real estate prices in the SF bay area are the most expensive in the nation. A ship has GOT to be cheaper than commercial rents in the area.
That's what I call "water cooling"...
a container ship filled with 9-track tapes... :-)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Wouldn't placing your datacenter on the water makes it susceptible to hurricanes, typhoons, or tsunamis?
Seems like the safest place for a datacenter would would be underground in a geologically stable area, like Heath, Ohio.
What?
We need a new rating, Whoosh, for humorless droids who feel the need to correct jokes.
Infuriate left and right
Yea.. this is about as good an idea as the last person who came up with it...
ImagePut - Free, Simple, Fast Image Hosting
"Sir, the datacentre's gone down!".
"ok, please clarify exactly what you mean by that.."
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
I suppose that memory leaks won't be the only leaks they'll be worried about.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
They wouldn't buy the ship because they are pirates... who traditionally steal things... including ships... typically for money...
You know it's a joke... it get less funny as you explain it.
It weighs about 175 million pounds. Take it out into the open seas where there are 3-foot waves, or actually big enough waves to lift and drop the ship by three feet say every ten seconds. By my Excel calcs, if you use that lift to heave up on a big anchor half the weight of the ship, that's about 30 megawatts of electricity. Plenty enough to power tens of thousands of servers.
The front boiler and engine room spaces of the QM were cleared out long ago, leaving a huge open space for lots of server racks. All you have to worry about is shipwrecks and hurricanes and the effects of humid, salty and diesely air.
...if an earthquake levels the buildings that house the backbone connections at the other end of the fiber coming from the boat. Or severs the fiber itself.
Good luck finding women in the IT field *and* willing to work on a ship.
Since this is an ocean going ship it will be required to have Type 1 Personal Flotation devices aboard for all personnel.
USCG Type 1 PFDs have 22 pounds of buoyancy located on the chest so that you float face up even if you are unconscious. The resulting profile caused them to be nicknamed Mae West vests.
So this would be the perfect site for the western internet exchange point.
Yes, what would they use for cooling? I don't know...What are they floating on? I can't remember...Oh yeah! It's water!
All kidding aside, the Navy has no problems cooling it's own electronics and other larger heat generating hardware (think nuclear reactors) at the pier; they use seawater. However, the Navy is at least smart enough to use distilled water, which comes either from their own distilling plants or from the pier, in the water that runs to the electronics. They then use the seawater to cool the distilled water.
This story made me remember of an old story about a company that would rent or built a ship and employ programmers to make them code there, very near US west coast but in international waters to avoid being bound by US work laws.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
I wonder what they will use to monitor power usage for the servers. Possibly FieldView? http://energy-options.com/product_fieldview.aspx
Brings a whole new dimension to a blade server.
Cooling has become one of the major problems facing many datacenters. They seem to be planning on dumping much of that heat into the water dockside. With the number of BTUs a datacenter puts out I wonder how long local governments will allow them to do so for very long.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I read that article to say that they did not want to sell because TPB only raised $20,000, which is much less than the asking price of one billion dollars. I bet if TPB put even one percent of the asking price on the table, those moral objections would have evaporated in a heartbeat. Moreover, he appears to be hoping for a movie deal with Hollywood. He could kiss that aspiration goodbye if he sold to them... which is probably also worth more than 20 grand.
So no, I stand by the assertion that they did not sell because TPB couldn't raise the money.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
I think they could air condition the server rooms and take care of this issue. However, I don't think this idea makes much sense. Ships are very expensive to maintain and keep from rusting away. With all the work associated with wastage (rusting), keeping a ship painted etc. I can't understand how this could be cheaper than an office building. They will also probably need a master (captain) 24/7 on the vessel, even though it is tied to the dock unless they do some monkey business with their ship class. As for the idea of using diesel power; the power company can make electricity cheaper than you can. That's why they're the power company. Large datacenters pay the industrial rate (cheaper), not the consumer rate.
I don't see any huge advantages either. You're still in US waters so you're still under US law. They claim to use extra heat from the engine to heat the ship, but with all that electrical equipment there shouldn't be a need to. Electrical rooms in ships can get very warm. If anything they will need extra AC above what a shore facility would need. Plus, in the event of a disaster like a hurricane or earthquake, the fiber line to shore will probably have issues anyway somewhere.
I could go on, but these are the biggest issues. Why yes, I am a marine engineer.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Perhaps they just got a little confused about the offshoring trend...
Sealand is more of a pylon-nation than an island-nation, don't you think?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Engineering for quake resistance is no problem. In SF it's simply that PG&E cannot deliver any more power in the city. Our colo facility is half empty and cannot add new customers, and other providers are in this pinch.
The ships are going to have to be self powered, and the ports are in marginal neighboorhoods that are already bitching about "environmental racism", biodiesel or not.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Then clearly they didn't want to sell to TPB because they needed to construct additional pylons...
I always knew the lyrics to "A Pirate Looks at 40" would come in handy someday.
Yes I am a pirate, two hundred years too late The cannons don't thunder, there's nothin' to plunder I'm an over-forty victim of fate Arriving too late, arriving too late
I've done a bit of smugglin', I've run my share of grass I made enough money to buy Miami, but I pissed it away so fast Never meant to last, never meant to last
And I have been drunk now for over two weeks I passed out and I rallied and I sprung a few leaks But I got stop wishin', got to go fishin' Down to rock bottom again Just a few friends, just a few friends
I go for younger women, lived with several awhile Though I ran 'em away, they'd come back one day Still could manage to smile Just takes a while, just takes a while
Mother, mother ocean, after all the years I've found My occupational hazard being my occupation's just not around I feel like I've drowned, gonna head uptown
Because "bio-diesel" sounds niffy, cutting edge, and enviro-friendly. Just the sorta thing that a bay-area tech exec who has money to spend will latch on to. Not to mention that bio-diesel will help them achieve enterprise-level scalability, lower TCO, and higher ROI by leveraging eco-friendly synergies.
One interesting issue will be what country the ships will be registered in. Will they pick a country that does not recognize most copyrights and patents and attempt to act as a data haven, as Sealand did?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
A green datacenter solution that uses less energy by dumping heat pollution in to the bay? Does this not sit well with anybody else?
Also, it seems they have a rather narrow deployment plan as they specifically mention lowering "PG&E" energy costs. Isn't this a west coast energy company (known for rolling black-outs)?
Are real-estate costs and disaster-proofing really a problem? Find a higher altitude piece of land in the midwest far from any levies or rivers, build a concrete bunker, place a few generators and batteries, buy a fuel agreement and you're good to go! The result is high, dry, continually powered, and in no danger of sinking or being rammed by an out-of-control ship. My employer has built such a bunker for the dispatch and control of heavy and important commercial vehicles. It is rumored that a metal telephone pole hurled by a midwestern tornado will bounce off without interfering with operations. (They did build it right next to a river though.....do'h!)
Dumbest.
Idea.
Today.
"I threw up my hands in disgust and wondered if it had been such a good idea to have eaten my hands in the first place."
Rating != tag, cockfag. The word "Flamebait" is a rating and is capitalized. The tag "ohnoitsembeddedjanitor" isn't. Score parent -1, fLamEbAIt.
...to sink the Benchmark.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Anyone remember the old Verbatim ads in magazines? Reminds me of the small ship moments away from being pummeled by a giant wave (Perfect Storm style) with the caption, "At least our data will be safe."
I don't really see how they plan on using onboard generators to create power in an attempt to be grid-independent; many port authorities are pushing for legislation that forces ships to, when docked, use electricity that is landside provided, as running the ships generators needlessly pollutes the air. One can argue that the biodiesel generators are cleaner than the ships' generators - but I don't think that your average PA is going to make an exception for that.
Literally!
to floating point operations!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I wonder if it'll use one of those kite things we saw in slashdot a few weeks ago?
so.... you're a girl, huh?
But those processors mostly keep burning more and more electricity even though they take less space, so these days the problem is electricity, including per-square-foot density problems and total power demand including cooling, which is why companies like Google have been looking at locating data centers in places where power's cheap.
It's amusing how we keep recycling technical problems. Virtualization has been one of the main buzzwords of the past few years, but it's really just a way to re-invent timesharing, using 2000s microprocessors instead of 1970s minicomputers. A decade and a half ago, if you wanted to locate computers and datacomm gear in a telco office to reduce your communication costs or make your services more reliable, you went through a big detailed study on how much power and cooling you needed, how many square feet, how many phone and data lines, etc. Within a few years the hosting market had evolved enough that we knew that a standardized customer network looked like 19" rack-mounted PCs and Cisco routers, and the power and cooling needs per square foot were pretty much the same for everybody, and it changed a bit with 1U servers but we could still usually stretch the available power. But now? We're back to servers that are increasingly customized and non-standard (disks vs. routers vs. blade servers are much different power densities, etc.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
So these guys are going to have similar worries about their connections from the pier to their boats, because some guy named Bubba's going to go fishing, or make a wrong turn in his bass-boat and drop the anchor to slow down, plus the land segment of their fiber feeds is still going to have backhoe risks, and maybe Bubba's going to drop his cigarette while he's fishing and catch the pier on fire...
But if they do it well, they should be able to minimize the risks, keep their cables armored well, and run enough diversity from shore that a single failure won't take them out. It shouldn't be too tough, because they're basically parked in the water rather than out moving around.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
B1 Damnit you've sunk my SQL servers. I guess this brings a new meaning to the phrase "my network was attacked"
The most common outdoor-plant problem we worry about in the telecom industry is "Bubba the Backhoe Driver" (Flooding and earthquakes can be worse, but backhoes are constant problems, especially for local distribution networks.) These guys have to worry about the sequels "Bubba Goes Fishing" and "Ooops, Where's My Anchor?", but for ships that are basically docked next to the pier, you take pretty similar precautions, and as always you build diverse connections that are far enough apart and have enough slack to handle big waves.
Wireless doesn't begin to have enough capacity for a significant data center - fiber's the only realistic choice. You can get up to a few hundred Megabits/second of bandwidth on wireless, compared to hundreds of gigabits on fiber. Also, wireless works better if the antenna's not rocking up and down or rising and falling with the tide. (Also, interceptions's not a problem, because you obviously need to encrypt, and it's not rocket science any more.) What wireless (and satellite) are useful for in data centers is providing an alternate path for management access, so you can monitor and fix problems with your telecom gear. (Here at The Phone Company we've traditionally used satellite - it's really practical if the main telecom gear is having problems, though data centers are more likely to have problems with their computers or data switches just because they have more of them.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
These ships aren't sailing the high seas ("Yarrrrr! Belay the Starboard Fiber Optic Extension Cord!"). They're docked by a pier in big cities, attached to land by their data cables, and have to deal with a lot of land-lubber laws like environmental regulations and local sales taxes as well as Coast Guard rules about water safety. In some jurisdictions a subpoena might get delivered by Port Authority cops rather than regular city cops, but that's basically a turf issue like whether they're using Longshoreman's Union vs. Teamsters; it's not like they're under Admiralty Law.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
No, it's like hosting in a land-based trailer park, only you move it with a tugboat instead of a tractor-trailer.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Heating's a silly concern in a data center environment; computers generate far more excess heat, and the problem is getting rid of it all. If you're floating on water, and your local environmental laws permit it, you could probably use the water as part of your cooling system. (Obviously you're not going to run salty seawater or sludgy Bay water into your cooler, but you might drop radiators into it or something.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Robert X. Cringely described that long ago
my sstream of consciousness
CERT-advisory on limpet mines.
New April 1st RFC - floating point transfers over sub-nets.
The network is obviously pier to pier-based, you need good piering agreements.
Connection reset by pier.
The data center is down due to wetware failure.
Special offer - free salt for all your crypto needs.
Careful with that firewall, closed ports are bad.
"Digital Pirates" just acquired a new meaning.
The Dreaded Backhoe will be replaced by people phishing on the pier and people dropping <A>s
Sneakernet replaced by flippernet.
Overclockers rejoice, think of the extreme water-cooling possibilities.
Forget the Boston Tea Party. The Boston LAN Party will be way cooler.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
Now if the ships have vsat or some new super fast wireless/sat system to be able to operate even if all land lines where cut. That could be cool. To bad laser links are not farther along. Will their be a casino on board? Nothings better than a casino on a boat? What about belly dancers? I have some fond memories being on a ship with belly dancers.
That was a good post. Better than I deserved. That's what I get for being a smarty-pants.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
If the heat generated from a data center is really so much, why not use it to power a small steam generator? obviously its not going to power the entire center but it would reduce it and eliminate the problem. Figure locate your datacenter next to a power company, they give you power, you give them heat.
While data centers get toasty, they don't get hot enough to generate steam. Your computer will melt before that happens.
Read up on "Carnot Efficiency" to discover why obtaining useful work (other than heat) from air only say, 20F or so above-ambient is not very practical.
SirWired
Whoops. Of course they don't need to use air chillers... some well-designed seawater pumps would indeed do nicely.
SirWired
Is it just me, or did anyone else think that this is the first step of an attempt to store data in international waters? I wonder what laws apply to privacy and the storage of data in international waters... not to mention pornography.
506 Server Underwater
So if you go to any port on the westcoast and look at the docks you will see that they are packed. Why is this? Because we on slashdot love our electronics and the rest of the country loves thier cheap crap from Walmart. As a result nearly all US (esp westcoast ports like Long Beach, Seattle, San Franciso, Portland) are operating at or capacity. Most ports have massive expansions underway already. Sure they found a dock in San Fran but long term there is no way a port would give up insanely valuable deep water dock space for a large ship for this venture. Nor is there a way that the tourist related businesses are gonna accept a rusting retired container ship next to thier cruise ship terminal. Hell in Seattle they were unhappy about modern cargo ships being by it. You might of course get some smaller space a a secondary or tertiary dock on a barge though.... Or one of the small west coast ports.
This is about the third post in a short while that are echoes of Neal Stephenson's writings. I believe this scenario came from "Diamond Age" or "Snow Crash". Can't 'member which - it's been awhile. Of course in his book the data havens were located in the Caribbean I think.
I think it's noteworthy that sci-fi writers still have teh power to excite the imagination and stimulate new developments in the real world.
Regards....
How the heck are they connected to the Internet?
Diverse understea cables are out. What, LOS wireless??
As a result, I predict that Google will soon make a bid to buy back the Louisiana Purchase from the US so they can use the Mississippi River watershed for hydro power. You heard it here first!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
I am not a pirate, but what happens when they slip their mooring head out into international waters and put all your data up for auction. Yo Ho Ho and bits of eight me hearties.
Been following this one, Looks like they've launched their site. Pretty basic and not much about the service.
http://idsstar.com/IDSSTAR/