A Microsoft trial of underwater data centres which could in future be co-located with offshore wind farms has found much lower failure rates than equivalent on-land servers.
Initial results from the Project Natick trial at the European Marine Energy Centre in the Orkney Isles off Scotland show reliability increases with the server failure rate an eight of that on land.
Microsoft’s special projects research group project manager Ben Cutler said he was already thinking through co-location options and that offshore wind farms would have enough power for data centres even at low wind speeds.
As a last resort, a powerline from shore could be bundled with the fibre optic cabling needed to transport data, he added.
Sub-sea data centres could allow energy-efficient cooling and allow data centres to be located near coastal cities worldwide.
The data centres were lowered to 36 metres deep in spring 2018 in a sealed container filled with dry nitrogen and were removed this summer for analysis.
Corrosion from oxygen and humidity, temperature fluctuations and bumps and jostles from people who replace broken components have all been theorised as variables that can contribute to equipment failure on land.
Microsoft said one of the reasons for locating the trial in Orkney had been the large amounts of wind and solar in the grid there.
“We have been able to run really well on what most land-based data centres consider an unreliable grid,” said Microsoft’s special projects research group principal member of technical staff Spencer Flowers.
“We are hopeful that we can look at our findings and say maybe we don’t need to have quite as much infrastructure focused on power and reliability.”
The underwater data centre was manufactured by Naval Group and its subsidiary Naval Energies with deployment, maintenance, monitoring and retrieval supported by locally-based Green Marine.
Full analysis following the trial remains ongoing.