Il data center sottomarino di Natick è davvero fallito?
Natick: 855 server in azoto sul fondale delle Orcadi, sei guasti. Perché il pod sigillato regge e perché Microsoft non ne costruisce, mentre la Cina insiste.
Il pod Northern Isles è stato calato a 117 piedi, circa 36 metri, sul fondale delle Orcadi nella primavera 2018.
In questo articolo
Salta a una sezione
Che cosa conteneva il pod delle Orcadi
Perché un pod sigillato si guasta meno
- Atmosfera inerte: azoto secco al posto dell'aria, quindi niente ossigeno che ossida i contatti e niente umidità.
- Temperatura stabile: la condizione termica dentro il vessel è rimasta costante per tutta la prova.[14]
- Nessuna persona: nessuno passa tra i rack, e nessuno sposta o urta un componente.[14]
Perché a terra si vince con assistenza e flessibilità
| Aspetto | Pod sigillato (Natick) | Data center a terra |
|---|---|---|
| Guasti osservati | 6 su 855 server in 25 mesi | 8 su 135 nel gruppo di controllo |
| Assistenza | Nessun accesso; recupero in mare, un giorno intero | Tecnici in sala, con la robotica come supporto |
| Ricambio hardware | Intero parco sostituito circa ogni cinque anni | Server e rack sostituiti uno alla volta |
| Crescita | Una dozzina o più di vessel collegati per Azure | Si aggiungono sale e file di rack |
Hainan e Lingang: la Cina fa la scelta opposta
Che cosa resta di Natick
Da leggere · Energia e Reti Elettriche
Perché i cavi elettrici sottomarini usano la continua
- i guasti a lungo termine di Hainan, oltre l'annuncio aziendale;
- misure indipendenti di PUE e dell'effetto termico sul mare;
- l'esito della seconda fase di Lingang, quella che porta il cluster a 24 MW.
Domande frequenti
Che cos'è il data center sottomarino Microsoft Natick?
Perché i server sott'acqua si guastavano meno?
Perché Microsoft ha chiuso il progetto Natick?
I data center sottomarini cinesi funzionano davvero?
Un data center sottomarino scalda il mare?
Quanto costa il data center sottomarino di Lingang?
Fonti
38 riferimenti Mostra Nascondi
- DCD, Project Natick: Microsoft's underwater voyage of discovery (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«855 of those servers went into the Northern Isles canister, and worked unattended underwater for 25 months and eight days.»
- DCD, Microsoft confirms Project Natick is no more (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«"I'm not building subsea data centers anywhere in the world," Noelle Walsh, the head of the company’s Cloud Operations + Innovation (CO+I) division, told DCD.»
- Shanghai Municipal People's Government, Lingang UDC project (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«Hicloud will put an initial investment of 1.6 billion yuan (about $222.7 million) to the two-phase project, known as the Shanghai Lingang UDC project, to establish a 24-megawatt (MW) underwater data cluster»
- Microsoft Source, Project Natick (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«Microsoft’s Project Natick team proved the underwater datacenter concept was feasible during a 105-day deployment in the Pacific Ocean in 2015.»
- Microsoft Features, research project puts cloud in ocean (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«a 38,000-pound container. But in the ocean, 10 feet by 7 feet is quite small.»
- Microsoft Source, Northern Isles deployment (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«Microsoft’s Project Natick team deployed the Northern Isles datacenter 117 feet deep to the seafloor in spring 2018.»
- DCD, Northern Isles servers and power (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«It had 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes of storage in a cylinder filled with unreactive nitrogen gas. It used a grand total of 240kW of power, working out to some 20kW per rack.»
- DCD, Natick seawater cooling (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«The water we discharge is a fraction of a degree warmer than what comes in from the ambient ocean.»
- DCD, Natick PUE (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«giving it a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of only 1.07.»
- DCD, Natick sealed container pressure (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«With a sealed container, the Natick team also had to include equipment to vary pressure.»
- DCD, Natick failure counts (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«“From the 135 land servers, we lost eight,” says Cutler. “In the water, we lost six out of 855.”»
- Microsoft Source, failure rate (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«“Our failure rate in the water is one-eighth of what we see on land,” Cutler said.»
- Microsoft Source, causes of failures on land (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«On land, corrosion from oxygen and humidity, temperature fluctuations and bumps and jostles from people who replace broken components are all variables that can contribute to equipment failure.»
- DCD, steady temperature in the vessel (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«The temperature in the underwater vessel was steady, and there were no passing people.»
- Microsoft Source, lights-out datacenter (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«In a lights-out datacenter, all servers would be swapped out about once every five years.»
- Microsoft Source, deployment and retrieval (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«The procedure took a full day on each end.»
- Microsoft Source, scaling for Azure (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«which may require linking together a dozen or more vessels the size of the Northern Isles.»
- DCD, Walsh on focus (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«"I would say now we're getting more focused," she said.»
- DCD, Walsh on robotics and people (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«We are learning from other industries on robotics, but we're also very cognizant that we need people.»
- ITPro, Seymour on flexibility (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«“It's just probably not the easiest way to be flexible in a very fast-changing world,” he added.»
- ITPro, servicing underwater (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«Servicing data centers in these environments would present a similar challenge, with workers required to travel underwater to perform system alterations or fixes.»
- MERICS, China commercializing underwater data centers (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«the difficulty of maintenance that may require lifting entire modules to the surface Their environmental impacts, particularly on marine ecosystems during heatwaves, also remain understudied.»
- DCD, Lingang up and running (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«It was officially launched in June 2025, completed in October, and began full commercial operations last week following successful initial trials in February.»
- Shanghai Municipal People's Government, seawater cooling (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«The UDC's natural seawater cooling system reduces refrigeration energy consumption from 40-50 percent of the total power use to under 10 percent»
- DCD, Lingang PUE claim (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«Chinese media reports claim the facility achieves a PUE below 1.15.»
- Shanghai Municipal People's Government, Hainan UDC (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«Put into operation in December 2022, the Hainan UDC hosts data modules at a depth of over 30 meters under the sea.»
- MERICS, Hainan cabins (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«Each cabin, located 35 meters underwater, has 24 server racks capable of holding up to 500 servers (ultra-large data centers hold over 10,000 servers).»
- DCD, Hainan expansion (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«In February 2025, HiCloud added a further data center module to its Hainan UDC cluster, containing 400 high-performance servers.»
- Shanghai Municipal People's Government, Hainan failures claim (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«Su confirmed with Xinhua the UDC's stable performance since its launch, with zero server failures and no need for on-site maintenance.»
- Microsoft Source, offshore wind co-location (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«Cutler is already thinking of scenarios such as co-locating an underwater datacenter with an offshore windfarm.»
- DCD, Natick as research platform (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«“While we don’t currently have data centers in the water, we will continue to use Project Natick as a research platform to explore, test, and validate new concepts around data center reliability and sustainability, for example with liquid immersion.”»
- Upsite, data center trends (Uptime survey) (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«During the 2020s, PUE has hovered between 1.59 and 1.55. In 2024, it was 1.56.»
- DCD, Northern Isles retrieval (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«In July 2020, it was time to retrieve the capsule and assess the results.»
- DCD, Natick control group (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«“We split them between the land and the water, and ran the same workload in both places.”»
- DCD, land servers location (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«The remaining 135 servers toiled in a couple of racks of a normal data center, alongside hardware running Microsoft's Azure cloud.»
- DCD, no maintenance for either group (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«Neither group got any maintenance, he says, although “there was a lot of normal data center work activity going on all around [the land-based servers].”»
- Lingang government, phase 1 demonstration (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«The first phase, a 2.3-MW demonstration facility, is designed with power usage effectiveness (PUE) below 1.15 and a green electricity supply rate exceeding 90 percent.»
- DCD, Lingang phase 2 target (si apre in una nuova scheda)
«Following this, the partners plan to scale capacity to 24MW during the project's second phase.»