Microsoft has initiated a groundbreaking underwater data center project known as Project Natick, which was tested for real in Scotland in 2018. The data center was brought up after 2 years of operation, yielding impressive results that could potentially be developed into a large-scale project. However, Microsoft has officially terminated this project.
Noelle Walsh, the head of cloud innovation at Microsoft, stated that Microsoft no longer has plans to build any underwater data centers worldwide. Nonetheless, Microsoft has gleaned valuable insights into underwater system management, vibration forces, and their impact on servers, which can be applied to other areas of work.
The findings from Project Natick in Scotland revealed that out of 855 underwater servers operating for 25 months and 8 days, only 6 servers were damaged. In comparison, traditional data center servers, totaling 135, suffered 8 damaged servers. Microsoft believes that the key factor affecting operational efficiency is the temperature of the data center.
TLDR: Microsoft’s Project Natick studied underwater data centers, revealing insights into server durability and the importance of temperature regulation for optimal performance.
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