Undersea & Floating Data Centres Set Sail for the Future

With the growing number of data centres around the world, there is a need to address the key challenges faced by the industry. Major challenges include scarcity of land, high energy consumption, operational efficiency, and dependance on unsustainable processes for operations. Two of the major developments to resolve these issues have been undersea and floating data centres.

Undersea Data Centres

The viability of undersea data centres has already been demonstrated by Microsoft, which deployed a few over the years as part of its Project Natick experiment. In 2018, Microsoft submerged its first submarine server off the Orkney Islands in Scotland. This contained 12 racks with 864 servers to process Azure workloads.

Project Natick by Microsoft proved that the concept of undersea data centres is feasible. The servers in the undersea data centre proved to be eight times more reliable than those on land. According to the Subsea Cloud, undersea data centres can lower latency by up to 98%, while reducing power consumption and emissions by 40%.

Meanwhile, the next move in the undersea data centre race came from China, with Chinese company Beijing Highlander launching a four-rack test vessel at the port of Guangdong in early 2021 and going live with China Telecom data on the servers later that year. Additionally, the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST) is leading a project to build a submarine living and working space for people, off the southeast coast of South Korea near Ulsan Metropolitan City. This project will also investigate the high efficiency of undersea data centres.

Floating Data Centres

A floating data centre was first launched by Nautilus Data Technologies. It consisted of vessels carrying server racks placed on a barge floating on the ocean water. The prototype showed a 30% decrease in the energy consumption required for cooling of the equipment. In addition, the barges could also be easily moved and used in any port. In the event of flooding, an ocean-based data centre will simply float above the rising water, reducing the chances of equipment being damaged.

Concerns about the effects of using salt water to cool IT equipment, or the equipment’s being in a saltwater environment, can be ruled out as some land-based data centres already use salt water for cooling. Furthermore, the vessels themselves are waterproof and the equipment within will also be fortified against any possible corrosion.

Many companies are into the development of floating data centres across the globe. Nautilus Data Technologies and Bechtel are now building a 10-MW centre in Millinocket, Maine, targeted for a December 2022 opening. Further, Keppel Data Centres Holding has announced the next steps towards a proposal, announced in 2019, to develop a floating data centre park, that may be powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Advantages of Water-Borne Data Centres

Sournce: Various Secondary Sources

Key Challenges

While we acknowledge the advantages, there are also a few challenges and concerns to be addressed. For example, oceans are technically viewed as international zones, and no country has jurisdiction over these water bodies. However, there are regulations in place to help keep peace and to essentially divide responsibility of oceans between various countries around the world.

The sea is governed by different rules and regulations and varies from country to country, generally aimed at controlling ports, fishing, mineral and fuel extraction, and defense-related activities. The governing system for subsea development permissions is underdeveloped, like the existing zoning rules for land-based buildings but is expected to evolve as the industry shifts towards undersea development.

Opportunity Ahead

Microsoft’s success with Project Natick demonstrated that it is viable to deploy data centres undersea. Projects in the US and China have shown that data centres undersea could be more efficient than those on land. After the success of Microsoft’s Natick Phase 2, observers expected the company to commercialise the deployment, and it patented the idea for a giant ‘reef’ of containers holding servers. As a result, there has been interest from leading service providers across the globe including China, with many actively pursuing the opportunity. For instance, coastal regions of China are adopting the idea of undersea data centres. The concept is included in the five-year economic plans of several Chineseregional authorities, including the provinces of Hainan and Shandong, as well as the coastal cities of Xiamen and Shenzhen.

Rising land costs and the scarcity of land, construction costs, growing emphasis on reduction of emission and environmental related issues, and efforts to bring down energy costs may bring a shift towards waterborne or undersea data centres in the future, with major coastal cities across the globe likely to benefit from this move. In India, which is charcterised by its tropical temperature and huge coastline, water-borne data centres present a great opportunity with coastal cities like Chennai, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Vizag and Kolkata likely to benefit from the development.