Project Natick’s origins stretch all the way back to 2013. Following a three-month trial in the Pacific, a submersible data center capsule was deployed 120 miles off.
In brief: We’re still seeing companies testing underwater data centers, but Microsoft has decided to call time on its experiment, Project Natick. It sounds as if placing the 40-foot-long tube filled with 12 racks of servers off the coast of Scotland was a success, but Redmond is now focusing on its land-based data centers.
Project Natick’s origins stretch all the way back to 2013. Following a three-month trial in the Pacific, a submersible data center capsule was deployed 120 miles off the coast of Scotland in 2018. It was brought back to the surface in 2020, offering what were said to be promising results.
Microsoft lost six of the 855 servers that were in the capsule during its time underwater. In a comparison experiment being run simultaneously on dry land, it lost eight out of 135 servers.
Microsoft noted that the constant temperature stability of the external seawater was a factor in the experiment’s success. It also highlighted how the data center was filled with inert nitrogen gas that protected the servers, as opposed to the reactive oxygen gas in the land data center.
