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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'd think the main interest would not be for classical permanent hosting but for special events like big convention or sport competition. These things are already potential target and usually receive corresponding protection. However, I think they might suffer from Google competition with their server on a truck solution (plus their general expertise in deploying full solutions).
The problem isn't as bad as you might think. Three years ago I moved permanently to my yacht and have been living there with all my gadgets and electronic equipment ever since. Initially I was worried about corrosion, but problems have yet to occur. If you keep sensitive equipment indoors there isn't really a problem.
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.
In some fields of discourse, there is a traditional distinction between proximate and ultimate causes. A proximate cause is the immediate event that triggered a disaster. Ultimate causes are the earlier conditions that allowed the immediate event to trigger a disaster.
In this case, the 1906 earthquake was the proximate cause of the disastrous fires. The ultimate causes were the shoddy buildings and infrastructure, which in turn were permitted by the lack of building codes and the "anything goes" frontier nature of the local government.
The earlier disastrous Chicago fire had a different proximate cause but the same ultimate causes.
And note that ultimate causes usually are plural. In languages like English that have definite articles, a common logical fallacy is to talk about "the cause" rather than "a cause" or "the causes". For most large civic disasters like these, "the cause" is usually misleading, because there are a long list of conditions that help turn what might have been a minor fire into a conflagration. California has seen a lot of these lately, with their large disastrous brushfires. These have a list of ultimate causes, starting with the climate, and ending with a buildup of dry-plant fuel from landscaping plus failure to properly thin and remove plant material.
OTOH, here in Boston, one of the largest historical disasters had a single identifiable cause, which sounds like something that the Onion's writers would make up, but actually happened and killed at least 21 people (and several horses). And one could argue in this case that the proximate cause was the tank bursting, while there were several ultimate cause such as poor construction of the tank, poor testing and maintenance, warm temperature, fermentation, etc. But the proximate/ultimate terminology doesn't apply well in this case, because all of those causes can be grouped as a single "poor construction and maintenance" cause.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.