Microsoft now has a data center at the bottom of the Scottish sea
Data now lives in a cloud and under the sea.
Microsoft has sunk a massive data center to the bottom of the Scottish sea, The Verge reported Wednesday. It's a strategy intended to keep things cool, as the center can heat up dramatically if stored at a regular temperature.
It's not the first data center to take the plunge, either. Microsoft sunk a center off the coast of California in 2015, starting a new project to experiment with subsea data storage. Underwater data can be more environmentally friendly, reports The Verge, because companies don't have to use energy to cool the hot-running centers down.
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But Microsoft can't just sink a center and call it a day — the center holds 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes of storage, which will eventually be used up. Project operators will have to haul the center back up in five years, but they hope that by then, tech companies will have a better idea about whether the method is a sustainable long-term solution. Read more at The Verge.
