Microsoft, submerged Northern Isles data center off Orkney archipelago in northern Scotland in a project to save energy used to cool servers on land.This center has a 12.2 metre long white cylinder containing 864 servers,storing 5 million movies, and be at seabed for 5 years. An undersea cable brings electricity, from Orkney's renewable energy network of wind turbines and tidal power, to the centre and carries data from the servers to the shore and the internet.
On Jun'06,2018, Microsoft, US tech giant, submerged a data center (Northern Isles data center) off the Orkney archipelago in northern Scotland in a project to save on the energy used to cool the servers on land.
This center has a 40-foot (12.2 metre) long white cylinder containing 864 servers.It can store five million movies, and can be at seabed up to five years.
An undersea cable brings electricity, from Orkney's renewable energy network of wind turbines and tidal power, to the centre and carries data from the servers to the shore and the internet. It is a big step by Microsoft.
Data centers in water near coastal cities, data would travel short distance to reach coastal communities. It is quicker to deploy a data center offshore than build on land and in sea cooling process is free, saving much costs for land-based data centres. But a disadvantage is that, if the computers on board break, they cannot be repaired, but the data center is very small compared to the giant warehouses used to store the world's information.
Shipbuilding company Naval of France built cylinder and then transported to the Orkney islands, consisting of about 70 islands. Ref. : https://www.rappler.com/technology/news/204323-microsoft-underwater-data-center-scotland --- Dated: Jun'07,2018.