How do data centers use water?

Data centres consume water across two main categories: indirectly through electricity generation (traditionally thermoelectric power) and directly through cooling. In 2014, a total of 626 billion litres of water use was attributable to US data centres4.

Why does Microsoft have underwater data centers?

By putting datacenters underwater near coastal cities, data would have a short distance to travel, leading to fast and smooth web surfing, video streaming and game playing. The consistently cool subsurface seas also allow for energy-efficient datacenter designs.

What is Microsoft data center underwater called?

Project Natick
Watch this video about Microsoft’s findings from Project Natick, the experimental undersea datacenter.

Who has a data centre on the seabed?

Microsoft
Microsoft began testing its first underwater data centre in 2015, with a 105-day deployment in the Pacific Ocean. In 2018, it deployed a pod of nearly 900 servers on the seafloor at the European Marine Energy Centre, near the Orkney Islands, Scotland.

Do data Centres use a lot of water?

The average data centre uses a lower estimate of 500,000 litres per day, according to figures gathered by the Sunday Business Post. One data centre in Dublin filled that it could use up to 4.5 million litres of water a day, although such volumes would only be necessary for around 5 per cent of the year.

Is the cloud storage under the sea?

Undersea cable systems sound like a thing of the past. The reality is that the cloud is actually under the ocean. Since they use light to encode information and remain unfettered by weather, cables carry data faster and cheaper than satellites.

Is there a difference between data centers and data farms?

A server farm is just the collection of computer servers. It is the server hardware connected together for a purpose. You could have several server farms in the same building. A data center is the physical infrastructure, including the building, electricity, cooling, networking.

Why do data centers need water?

– Data centers use more water to generate the electricity that keeps them running than they use water to cool them. – In all, data centers throughout the United States consumed a combined 626 billion liters of water in 2014, a number that is projected to hit 660 billion by 2020.

Are there servers under the ocean?

Microsoft recently retrieved the Project Natick data center module, a 40-foot container that houses 864 servers in 12 racks that spent two years on a seabed 117 feet below the ocean’s surface off the coast of the Orkney Islands in Scotland. …

Why do data centers need so much water?

– Data centers use more water to generate the electricity that keeps them running than they use water to cool them. – Data center water consumption has been growing at a slower rate than it had in 2007.