Leona Philpot - “underwater” way to cool Microsoft data center

New way to cool data center from Microsoft

Dip a computer under water (do not try to reproduce in real life - this would be the ticker in an advertisement). But the global giant Microsoft, this action seemed like a great idea. After all, it is known that a considerable amount of electricity is expended on powering server cooling systems, which is not that cheap. Almost half of the total power consumption of the server farm goes to cooling devices (air conditioners, chillers, etc.). Therefore, many companies have long been in search of new effective methods of cooling for their "offspring". Not so long ago, and to be precise, in August 2015, Microsoft decided to save money on electricity bills, plunging an experimental prototype of a new underwater data center on the seabed. Thus was born the prototype of the data center codenamed Leona Philpot, according to the Natick project.



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The server farm prototype was immersed one kilometer from the US Pacific coast and was successfully operated for four months. Leona Philpot was supplied with a large number of heat exchangers, which in turn transferred excess heat from the servers to cold water.



Microsoft engineers argue that this method of optimizing the temperature regime of the server hardware is one of the most efficient and at the same time cheap methods for cooling server farms. In addition, it has several advantages. Since about half of the population of our planet lives 200 km from the coast (whether it is the sea or the ocean), the location of the data center at the bottom of the sea will also contribute to good connectivity.





Microsoft claims that such autonomous units can be ready for operation within 90 days, that is, it will take only three months to deploy an “underwater” data center, instead of the usual two years (at least one year) of standard construction.



The company will not “submerge” its engineers and personnel together with the data center. This situation is planned to be solved in this situation: autonomous underwater units with servers on board will have a service life of 5 years (work non-stop without physical maintenance), and then successfully rise to the surface to fix / replace possible problems, checks, etc. etc.