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Watch Fish Swim By Petabytes of Data At Microsoft's Underwater Data Center (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report fro Motherboard: In June, Microsoft announced that it had placed a self-sufficient, waterproof data center off the coast of the Orkney Islands in Scotland. The data center, loaded with 864 servers capable of handling 27.6 petabytes of data, represented the culmination of nearly four years of research and development on the project, codenamed Natick. The underwater data center is the first of its kind. It's a proof of concept that aims to cut down on one of the biggest costs of running a data center on land -- cooling -- and can be rapidly deployed anywhere in the world. Due to the experimental nature of the project, however, Microsoft needed to keep a close eye on its pilot project. In order to monitor the environmental conditions around the tank, it placed two cameras nearby that livestream from the bottom of the ocean 24/7.
Parsing that headline took time. Time flies like an arrow.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The last I checked most phones would fail and lose water-proofing if they start ringing underwater. Or their touch sensor won't work, or some sort of handicap like that.
... warming of the oceans....
like use less CPU, by installing Linux on all the servers (they can keep the ugly colored logo though, nobody's gonna check what's inside the box down there)
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
does it have the Control-Alt-Supr or reboot button?
How fast can they change a SSD or a memory module down there?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Who's using a phone under water?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
``microsoft follows standards like schools of fish follow migrating caribou''
Now you can see microsoft following standards in real live action.
Hmm, wish it didn't have to be so ugly. a glass tube with server lights a-blinkin would have been much cooler.
it's so delightful to see them gobble it up
so long as it makes the FP!
I'll never use their creations, any of them, again. ever. done. out.
until an ocean floor trawler rips up rheir power or fiber.
Or sea life (like underwater squirrels) try eating the cables. /s
to be honest
Isn't "Orkney Islands" like saying "the La Brea tar pits" or "Rio Grande river", given that "ey" means island?
I've always heard them referred to as just the Orkneys.
I'm drowning, you insensitive clod!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
and tune into Linux
People who use boats often for work or pleasure often find they have dropped their phone in water. They drop it into shallows, which is usually the case as they drop phones accidentally when climbing / alighting the boats. In such scenarios, it is easy to retrieve the phone, but it would just be a brick by the time it is retrieved. The possibility of communication is vital in such circumstances where they might be traveling over water, possibly alone.What is the point of spending thousands of dollars on communication technology if the communication device is lost when it is needed the most? Precious, unreproducible data such as personal photos of events could be lost too. All this despite years of evolution of the technology?
" and can be rapidly deployed anywhere in the world."
Like to the Sahara?
All this can be avoided.
Waterproof cases are a thing. If you spend a lot of time in/around boats on the water, perhaps you should consider buying one?
To breach this thing. The ocean doesn't like to be warmed.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
That heat will create a micro eco system. It'll attract smaller organisms, which will attract larger, yada yada.
I wonder if Microsoft did an environmental impact study to what happens when they turn it off. There'll be a kill off?
2nd, I'd expect to see it being a fishing spot?
Everyone's worried about the warming of the oceans, so Microsoft puts a giant heater in one!
Yeah, yeah - I know. But there was a day when someone said "a bit of plastic dumped in the ocean's not going to matter, is it?". It's called learning from your mistakes; maybe we should try it some time.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
after the power and fiber lines are cut by a trawler or someone disconnects Natick from the Orkney power grid in Scotland...
Microsoft files two things that same day...
1. Microsoft breaks the Guinness Book of World Records creating the largest diving brick..
2. Microsoft files with the USPTO their designs for the Microsoft Diving Brick 1.0
we need more ocean diving bricks this size to help rebuild the coral reefs...
JD gives you another one by mtn287
That's some of the crappiest UW video I've ever seen.
SUN did the datacenter-in-a-box thing years and years ago, so it's not surprising MS could do an underwater version but, jaysus, you could practically fake that video in an aquarium. In any case, what's the $ equation? Shrinking power envelopes have done more to conserve energy than anything else, I don't see any real value here unless it's being sold to the IRS to safeguard my tax liabilities post-WW3. Wouldn't want to miss a quarterly...
MS nothingburger, but congrats to the Engineers.
Flood it with seawater, and everything electronic inside is toast.
100% uptime, until the first disk fails.
In Scotland. Yeah, right.
Have gnu, will travel.
Nothing could go wrong with this scenario, nothing, I tell you!
100% uptime until the cows come home!
wait...cows?
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
But all I saw were three pulsing dots while I waited for it to load. I got sick of waiting after 15 min and gave up. Which company was this for again? Oh, yeah, the ever dependable Microsoft. You can depend on it to break.
Nothing to see here, move along please.
Deep in the hearts of many open-source advocates is the desire, even if only for a moment, to see Microsoft go underwater.
Hell, many open-source advocates probably applauded, even if silently, as the USDOJ tried - and failed - to send Microsoft to the bottom of the corporate abyss, in pieces, to sleep with the fishes.
That said, the fact that Microsoft is running data centers underwater, surrounded by fish, is just too f-cking ridiculous for words.
I mean...seriously? This isn't what I meant when I said I wanted Microsoft to go underwater...or to go sleep with the fishes.
When it's obsolete, they can just unplug it and walk away. Who's going to notice & do anything about it?
Parmasean Cheese. It's what's for dinner.
Good point. But somehow they have not caught on.. Yet .. think about it .. the computing and the technologies packed into mobile communications have been growing at a phenomenal rate. But proper waterproofing is still a "high premium" and still questionable if it truly works! We definitely have been prioritizing the wrong stuff. That is the point I want to stress.
Using cases would get annoying. Really.
Also, if they can make a datacenter waterproof, why not a humble mobile phone?