Software giant Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea off the coast of the Orkney Islands in Scotland. The company wants to use the research project to develop energy-efficient underwater data centres, Microsoft announced this week.The data centre, which is around the size of a shipping container, is still a prototype. However, if anything goes wrong during this period, it won’t be possible to carry out repairs, British broadcaster the BBC reported.An underwater cable provides the data centre with the necessary supply of power from regional renewable energy sources. These include the tidal turbines of the European Marine Energy Centre, as well as wind and solar cells.Data traffic is also transmitted via this cable. The data centre houses 864 Microsoft servers and has a capacity of 27.6 petabytes – enough space, according to Microsoft, to store about five million films.Orkney is a major hub for research into renewable energy sources.

Source: The Star June 10, 2018 03:56 UTC