As of 2024, Microsoft no longer has active data centers underwater.
If you recall, the tech giant had its experimental research and development called Project Natick. It was first proposed in 2013 to determine how an underwater farm server could help reduce cooling costs while promoting environmental sustainability. The first prototype was deployed during the initial phase in 2015, followed by a second phase in which hundreds of servers were submerged 117 feet below. By 2020, Microsoft declared that underwater data centers were reliable and practical.
But it seems Microsoft is already ready to move on. Noelle Walsh, the corporate vice president at Microsoft’s Cloud Operations + Innovation division, confirmed that there are no plans to build more underwater data centers. She said her team worked on the project, yielded results, and gained knowledge about operating servers below sea level. The company will leverage the knowledge gained from the experiment and apply it elsewhere.
See also: How to get free Microsoft Office in the Philippines
One interesting result gathered from the experiment was from the use of nitrogen to fill one of the tube-shaped data centers instead of oxygen. Nitrogen proved beneficial for the maintenance of the servers. The relatively more stable temperature underwater also helped the servers last longer. Merely six out of 855 submerged servers failed over 25 months of being left unattended, translating to a 0.7 percent failure rate. Meanwhile, in a different experiment on land, Microsoft saw eight out of 135 servers fail, resulting in a 5.9 percent failure rate.
This article, Microsoft discontinues underwater data centers, was originally published at NoypiGeeks | Philippines Technology News, Reviews and How to's.
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