Close-up of the process of salvaging Microsoft's data center under the sea

Recently on September 14, Microsoft officially salvaged its second underwater data center off the coast of Scotland after two years of data collection operations.
This is part of Project Natick, and it was placed on the seabed by Microsoft in early 2018 near the Scottish island of Orkney. Microsoft chose the island because it wanted data centers to run on renewable energy, and Orkney is a major hub for these energies. Microsoft's data center is located 35 meters below the sea floor and is powered by an undersea cable that runs from Orkney.

After two years of operating on the seabed, Microsoft has salvaged this data center. This Microsoft device is about the size of a cylindrical container, with a length of 12m, the outer shell covers 864 servers and their cooling infrastructure. This data center was assembled in France, then shipped to Scotland for deployment.

After 2 years lying on the seabed, the data center was covered with moss on the outside of the shell. After engineers cleaned the outer surface, and opened it to check, the servers inside were still working normally.

According to Microsoft, the undersea environment is less oxygenated, less affected by humans, making the data center on the seabed operate more stably than on land. At the same time, the ability to self-cool under water helps to increase data center performance.