Microsoft has retrieved its data center from the ocean floor after 02 years

In order to do experiment on energy efficiency in cloud computing, Microsoft had dropped its data center off the coast of Orkney in Scotland two years ago. This data center has now been retrieved from the ocean and now its results will be measured by Microsoft researchers. This data centre was placed around 117 ft deep underwater in spring of 2018.

With its safe retrieval, it has been concluded that these servers have low failure rate as compared to conventional ones. Only 8 out of total 855 servers failed which is very low as compared to conventional servers. The less chances of the failure are attributed to the fact that there were no humans involved.

In this capsule, nitrogen was pumped rather than oxygen and due to this nitrogen, there was less corrosion when this capsule was pulled out. For this experiment, Microsoft selected Orkney because they thought that it was centre of renewable energy research and also climate conditions were moderate. There were less costs of cooling the computers because they were under water with self-cooling system.

After full day operation, the data center capsule was pulled out to the surface of ocean. There were coating of barnacles, sea anemones and some algae which were removed later by power wash. But the data center was safe inside and was functional properly. Now this data is closely monitored by researchers to check for desired results. This project was named as Project Natick.

The researchers are hopeful that results from this underwater project will be cost saving as well as environmental friendly.