Project Natick Northern Isles (underwater data center)

The story

In 2018 Microsoft deployed Project Natick Phase 2 off the Orkney Islands in Scotland, sinking a cylindrical vessel with 864 servers 117 feet beneath the North Sea. Filled with nitrogen rather than oxygen to eliminate humidity and corrosion, the capsule was cooled directly by surrounding seawater heat exchangers and powered by Orkney's wind and tidal grid. Retrieved in 2020, Natick proved an unexpected finding: server reliability was eight times higher than in identical land facilities. Microsoft retired the vessel after completing analysis, integrating lessons into land datacenter designs.

Notable

• Submerged 117 feet deep off the Orkney Islands in June 2018 and retrieved after two years in 2020.
• Operated 864 servers across 12 racks with 27.6 petabytes of storage in an oxygen-free dry nitrogen atmosphere.
• Demonstrated a server failure rate of only one-eighth that of standard land-based data centers.
• Powered entirely by local renewable energy from Orkney's European Marine Energy Centre wind and tidal turbines.

Expansions

• 2014: Project Natick conceived as underwater datacenter research effort
• 2015: Phase 1 vessel deployed off California for 105 days
• 2018: Phase 2 vessel (Northern Isles) submerged off Orkney Islands with 864 servers
• 2020: Northern Isles retrieved after two years of successful seabed operation