Microsoft finds underwater datacenters are reliable, practical and use energy sustainably

[Lord Vile]

6 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

But again i'd expect them to cut the data/power cables right before they lift so there isn't going to be any way for it to gt an alert to anything once it starts lifting, (even if it has battery backup to operate the depth sensor). I doubt very much it can be lifted with the cables still attached.

Either way whoever owns the server will know as soon as they start to lift it. 

[CarlBar]

6 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Either way whoever owns the server will know as soon as they start to lift it. 

 

They'll know they've lost contact with it, but it will probably take a few minutes to determine it's at the server end and not something in between, and it will probably take a few minutes more before they can ask someone to take a look. Law enforcement probably won;t be able to be involved till someone gets out there and sees a salvage ship. Thats going to take time. And this all assumes they're watching the server 24/7. If they're not and only notice once whoever the end users are start reporting issues on mass it's probably going to take longer as it will take time for enough users to notice an issue and report it for them to get round to even looking into whats happening.

[Lord Vile]

31 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

They'll know they've lost contact with it, but it will probably take a few minutes to determine it's at the server end and not something in between, and it will probably take a few minutes more before they can ask someone to take a look. Law enforcement probably won;t be able to be involved till someone gets out there and sees a salvage ship. Thats going to take time. And this all assumes they're watching the server 24/7. If they're not and only notice once whoever the end users are start reporting issues on mass it's probably going to take longer as it will take time for enough users to notice an issue and report it for them to get round to even looking into whats happening.

I think you're not grasping the logistics

[CarlBar]

3 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

I think you're not grasping the logistics

 

Unless it's in sight of shore your talking someone having tot take a drive to a dock, then take a boat out at probably 15-20 knots tops. And a boat can't cast off instantly. It's all going to add up. A few minutes here, a few minutes there, it adds up to a lot of time eventually. I'dd be amazed if they could actually confirm there was some sort of ship over their module in less than an hour. And it could take considerably longer.

 

I don't think it will be super common. Getting your hands on a sutible ship and crew if you have criminal intent isn't going to be trivial. But it's certainly going to be possibble for some criminals.

[Bombastinator]

There’s the problem of satellites because being photographed doing something like that would be bad.  Might be timeable though.  Also actually lifting something like that is going to take a lot of time.  It might be made to be something that is effectively impossible if it is not actually impossible.

[Lord Vile]

26 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

Unless it's in sight of shore your talking someone having tot take a drive to a dock, then take a boat out at probably 15-20 knots tops. And a boat can't cast off instantly. It's all going to add up. A few minutes here, a few minutes there, it adds up to a lot of time eventually. I'dd be amazed if they could actually confirm there was some sort of ship over their module in less than an hour. And it could take considerably longer.

 

I don't think it will be super common. Getting your hands on a sutible ship and crew if you have criminal intent isn't going to be trivial. But it's certainly going to be possibble for some criminals.

Law enforcement boats exceed 30 knots. Plus aircraft and you're chasing a ship which has to have a winch capable of lifting the server from the sea, it's not exactly Usain Bolt. The test one was only at 117 feet and took an age to bring up.

 

It's really not trivial, it's fairly expensive.

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, Lord Vile said:

Law enforcement boats exceed 30 knots. Plus aircraft and you're chasing a ship which has to have a winch capable of lifting the server from the sea, it's not exactly Usain Bolt. The test one was only at 117 feet and took an age to bring up.

 

It's really not trivial, it's fairly expensive.

 

Law enforcement won't be called till they confirm somthing nefarious is going on. There's all kinds of equipment malfunctions and genuine accidents that could cause the same loss of connection as someone cutting the cable. meaning they have to go through the, "is it somthing at the data centre end", then get some random person to do a quick check, (which will be anything but quick time wise), and only then is law enforcement going to get involved.

 

Sure if they assume somthing nefarious the moment the cable is cut they'd probably catch the offending criminals. But they aren't, (and law enforcement would probably tell them to pound sand if they didn't have more than a lost connection as evidence of possibble criminal activity), and that means there's quite a big stretch of time in which they can be winching away without any danger of being caught.

 

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

There’s the problem of satellites because being photographed doing something like that would be bad.  Might be timeable though.  Also actually lifting something like that is going to take a lot of time.  It might be made to be something that is effectively impossible if it is not actually impossible.

 

Again no one's going to go pointing a satellite at the area until they're sure it's nefarious and not just somthing that needs a maintenance crew sending out.

[bcredeur97]

Do they actually use the water to cool the equipment inside or is it just cooler inside because the whole unit is surrounded by water (interior is all air cooled equipment). 

Like are they going for low ambient inside of it? or just using the water itself

[Bombastinator]

48 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

Law enforcement won't be called till they confirm somthing nefarious is going on. There's all kinds of equipment malfunctions and genuine accidents that could cause the same loss of connection as someone cutting the cable. meaning they have to go through the, "is it somthing at the data centre end", then get some random person to do a quick check, (which will be anything but quick time wise), and only then is law enforcement going to get involved.

 

Sure if they assume somthing nefarious the moment the cable is cut they'd probably catch the offending criminals. But they aren't, (and law enforcement would probably tell them to pound sand if they didn't have more than a lost connection as evidence of possibble criminal activity), and that means there's quite a big stretch of time in which they can be winching away without any danger of being caught.

 

 

Again no one's going to go pointing a satellite at the area until they're sure it's nefarious and not just somthing that needs a maintenance crew sending out.

You don’t point satellites.  They come pre pointed and they generally never stop sending data.  They tend to spend only a small window of time over a particular area though.  A very predictable amount of time.  Changing that timing is call retasking, and for that, no they wouldn’t. 

[Bombastinator]

46 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

Do they actually use the water to cool the equipment inside or is it just cooler inside because the whole unit is surrounded by water (interior is all air cooled equipment). 

Like are they going for low ambient inside of it? or just using the water itself

My guess would be some sort of fluid heat exchanger.  Fluid inside because of crushability issues, captive fluid inside because ocean water is full of wacky critters. 

[Intergalacticbits]

I think it would be better to put tiny data center boxes in every refrigerator sold.

They are running all the time in most homes anyway.

It's like everything digital in a way. It is not about big giant things but billions of little things all connected. 

It would give companies the incentive to put in high speed connections to every home.

To run the last mile everywhere.

A good thing for people. 

[jagdtigger]

7 minutes ago, Intergalacticbits said:

They are running all the time in most homes anyway.

If your fridge runs all the time call a repair tech because thats not normal......

[Bombastinator]

17 minutes ago, Intergalacticbits said:

I think it would be better to put tiny data center boxes in every refrigerator sold.

They are running all the time in most homes anyway.

It's like everything digital in a way. It is not about big giant things but billions of little things all connected. 

It would give companies the incentive to put in high speed connections to every home.

To run the last mile everywhere.

A good thing for people. 

Refrigerators are not magical devices of coolness.  It’s an insulated box with a heat pump

[DavidKalinowski]

On 9/17/2020 at 1:01 PM, jagdtigger said:

If your fridge runs all the time call a repair tech because thats not normal......

 

On 9/17/2020 at 12:53 PM, Intergalacticbits said:

I think it would be better to put tiny data center boxes in every refrigerator sold.

They are running all the time in most homes anyway.

It's like everything digital in a way. It is not about big giant things but billions of little things all connected. 

It would give companies the incentive to put in high speed connections to every home.

To run the last mile everywhere.

A good thing for people. 

If the fridge is running, better go and catch it...

 

I'll see my self out..

[Bombastinator]

On 9/17/2020 at 1:01 PM, jagdtigger said:

If your fridge runs all the time call a repair tech because thats not normal......

I concur.  Plugged in and running are not the same thing.

[jagdtigger]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

Plugged in and running are not the same thing.

He wrote "running all the time"......

[Belgarathian]

On 9/15/2020 at 1:43 PM, Kisai said:

 

Well I can think of some long-term problems.

 

1 - Fire. If something fails and explodes, and takes out the entire unit. Can probably be solved by not having the unit filled with O2 but something else that doesn't burn. 

2 - Damage from shipping (eg anchors), or communications lines being severed. You can't just send someone down there to fix it, you have to retrieve the entire whole thing.

3 - Theft, nothing really stopping someone from just hauling it up and running off with it.

4 - Must be maintained at large expense , just how long do you think one of those containers will last before it corrodes straight through?

 

Advantages

1 - More secure from law enforcement and criminals wanting to sabotage individual machines.

2 - Likely lower cost of operating if it can be tied to tidal power.

3 - Lower failure rate of hardware if appropriate hardware is selected from the beginning. 5 years is not really a long time in terms of data center life. 15 years is more of a typical time, as hardware is typically never retired until no longer bootable, and the thing that fails with servers the most is the hard drive, and SSD's are nowhere near as reliable as HDD's given the same length of time. Presumably this can be solved by having two spare drives in each server for each SSD in case there are premature failures.

 

So all of your long-term problems are moot...

 

1. They're filled with an inert gas, Nitrogen which helps with longevity and will previous fires
2. They're not deployed in shipping channels, but there is a small potential for smaller craft and fishermen to cause damage however depending on the local authorities these are usually marked as no-go zones. Similar to where fiber and power cables make land. 
3. True, but you'd need some very expensive and specialised equipment to do so. Also you'd know pretty quickly once someone unplugged your sever, certainly enough time to get someone to respond to site before they'd made away with your container.
4. You don't maintain them.... You drop them in the ocean and pull them up a few years later. Any failures that occur are accounted for and compensated for in software I guess? Or there is more redundancy? Also most hardware is replaced regularly anyway, so you'd pull the container up, slide in the new racks and cables, and put the container back down. Corrosion wouldn't be an issue, it would take decades for corrosion to do enough damage.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Belgarathian said:

So all of your long-term problems are moot...

 

1. They're filled with an inert gas, Nitrogen which helps with longevity and will previous fires
2. They're not deployed in shipping channels, but there is a small potential for smaller craft and fishermen to cause damage however depending on the local authorities these are usually marked as no-go zones. Similar to where fiber and power cables make land. 
3. True, but you'd need some very expensive and specialised equipment to do so. Also you'd know pretty quickly once someone unplugged your sever, certainly enough time to get someone to respond to site before they'd made away with your container.
4. You don't maintain them.... You drop them in the ocean and pull them up a few years later. Any failures that occur are accounted for and compensated for in software I guess? Or there is more redundancy? Also most hardware is replaced regularly anyway, so you'd pull the container up, slide in the new racks and cables, and put the container back down. Corrosion wouldn't be an issue, it would take decades for corrosion to do enough damage.

Corrosion is pretty easy to deal with..  the harder one is marine life.  There are whole classes of sessile marine life that like to stick to things, and they tend to glue them in place.  Leave it long enough and a coral reef could grow over the top of it. Attached marine life can double or quadruple the weight of a submerged object pretty quickly.