Microsoft ends Project Natick, the experiment of placing big metal tubes under the sea

Microsoft has ended its ambitious underwater datacenter project, Project Natick, despite achieving some impressive results, according to a report by Data Centre Dynamics. The data centre was launched in 2015, this experiment aimed to see if datacenters could work better underwater using renewable energy.


Why Project Natick mattered?
The idea was to put a whole datacenter inside a 38,000-pound container and sink it into the ocean. The goal? To create datacenters that are easy to set up, cost less, and are environmentally friendly. The first test was off the coast of California, and things looked promising.

In 2018, Microsoft took things up a notch. They placed a much more powerful datacenter under the rough waters near Scotland. This datacenter was as strong as several thousand PCs. After two years, they pulled it back up and found that it had only a few problems with servers and cables. Microsoft discovered that underwater servers could be up to eight times more reliable than those on land.

What's next?
Even though Project Natick is over, the lessons learned aren't going to waste. Microsoft’s Noelle Walsh said, "We learned a lot about operations below sea level and vibration impacts on the server." This knowledge will help other projects, like developing new ways to cool datacenters using liquid.
Project Natick might be done, but its impact will continue to shape the future of datacenter technology.