Servers are very afraid of heat, especially when a large number of servers are gathered together, the heat generated must be evacuated in time. Therefore, 41% of the annual electricity cost of a data center is used for cooling, otherwise, the data center will have heat dissipation problems, operational failures occur, with disastrous consequences.
In 2014, Microsoft conducted an experiment off the California coast of the United States, in which nearly 300 computer servers were placed in a 17-tonne steel airtight cabin, and lowered to the seabed. More than 100 kinds of sensors are installed in the cabin, mainly to detect the airtight pressure as the servers are underwater, and to be able to detect whether there is leakage, component damage, or interference, such as by submarines.
Why did Microsoft do this?
In our normal understanding, the most dangerous element for electronic equipment is water. But a high-speed server can heat up critically, and there are hundreds of servers in one farm, so temperatures can become dangerous. Heat dissipation needs can cripple server farms.
Over the years, the cost of server cooling by various enterprises has become an astronomical figure. The electricity bill for an entire data center averages about 20% of total electricity costs and 41% of that goes on cooling. So companies are constantly looking for cost-saving heat dissipation methods. Microsoft’s “water cooling” move was undoubtedly a smart idea, to utilize the low temperature of the upper seabed to achieve ‘cool data.’
After confirming the feasibility of the underwater datacenter concept, a second experiment was launched in the Orkney Islands in Scotland in June 2019. This time the appearance of the data center was designed to look like a submarine up to 12 meters long. Compared with the previous version, it was able to accommodate more than 864 servers.
Where does Huawei hide its data?
The world’s largest data center is located in Gui’an New District in Guizhou, in southwest China. The data centers of Huawei, Apple, Tencent, and other companies are located in a mountain. Even China’s national big data center is located here.
The most famous among them is the Huawei Qixinghu Data Centre, which has an area of more than 400,000 square meters. A large mountain has been hollowed out, and more than 600,000 storage servers are hidden inside, in the remote mountain province, which is also home to Maotai (liquor) and known for its Yeti sightings.
Who is better?
Although it seems that the heat dissipation method used by Microsoft is more advanced, the “underwater server” method is currently still in the experimental stage, and there is no guarantee that it will be used on a large scale in the future. Huawei’s heat dissipation method is obviously more mature, as it uses natural heat dissipation.
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