A proper data center for locating various high-end servers, needs to have a good cooling system to cool all the servers in order for them to perform absolutely well. To provide good cooling system definitely involves pretty huge cost for paying electricity bills to support coolers. Now, a new Silicon Valley startup called International Data Security (IDS) has a much better approach of cooling servers in the data center i.e. making use of natural resources, which they have ships floating in the sea carrying your servers and make use of sea water to keep your servers perfectly cooled!
IDS has unveiled their plan of setting up a fleet of data-serving cargo ships, which these ships will come equipped with SAN (Storage Area Network), NAS (Network Attached Storage) facilities and also with amenities such as private offices, overnight accommodations, and galley services.
IDS has some good ideas of saving money in their plan, such as they plan to buy decommissioned ships and refurbish them from that on. Besides, using sea water for cooling servers will save at least 30% from their total energy consumption.
The floating data centers will also come with good backup gen set, which they have their own built-in generator set for additional power. During disasters, the generators without consuming the fuel of the ships, providing nearly a month of continuous operation.
Source [ArsTechnica]
January 15th, 2008 at 8:31 am
emm… doesn’t sound convincing to me… it’s bloody hot out there in the ocean… and they have to use satelite feeds for communications… data centre will required more than satelite speed… unless it is military grade satelite feeds… but if it park at the harbour and connected through cables to the mainland… maybe it wil work… but I will prefer it to be on the LAKE or DAM… less salty and cooler
January 15th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Yeah swordie, I see your points here
January 13th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Interesting idea swordie.
however, the ocean provide dynamic positioning while the lakes would only provide static positioning.