When it comes to California’s water crisis, a data center startup has an innovative solution. Rather than bringing tens of thousands of gallons of water to the data center, they’re bringing the data center to the water.
Nautilus Data Technologies says it has successfully tested a design for a floating data center that can dramatically slash the cost of running IT operations. The company has built a prototype “data barge” moored at Mare Island in Vallejo, Calif., about 20 miles north of San Francisco, and says it expects to have a production data center online by the end of 2015.
Nautilus is the latest company to pursue a water-based data center, a novel concept that has made headlines since Google first floated the idea in a 2007 patent filing. Industry experts have debated whether the idea is sheer brilliance or total madness, but several efforts to launch a commercial data barge have fizzled.
Working Proof-of-Concept
By building a working proof-of-concept, Nautilus has brought the idea closer to reality than previous efforts. The company is convinced that a floating data barge can offer extraordinary economics, slashing infrastructure costs by cooling servers with water from the bay.
“We’ve developed a way to use the natural body of water we’re sitting on to cool the data center,” said Arnold Magcale, the CEO and co-founder of Nautilus Data, who said the design allows it slash costs by as much as 40 percent by eliminating traditional cooling equipment like CRAC units and chillers.
As the company builds its first production vessel, Magcale and his team are ready to test the big question: Are customers ready to house their mission-critical IT equipment on a barge floating on the water?
Nautilus believes it is offering a timely solution to a particular problem in the California market. After four years of drought, the state has declared a drought State of Emergency, and is implementing measures to reduce water usage. Thus far there has been no effort to reign in water use by the state’s data centers, but the issue has drawn media scrutiny in the Wall Street Journal and Forbes.
“In California, we have a big issue with water,” said Ron Suchan, VP of Sales and Marketing for Nautilus. “One of the benefits of our approach is that 100 percent of the water we use is returned to the environment, not through evaporation, but directly back into the body of water. Water is going to become more expensive, both in what you use and what you’re putting back into the environment.”
Futuristic or Crazy?
It’s been eight years since the data center world was captivated by Google’s patent for a water-based data center, stirring visions of a fleet of futuristic offshore data havens powered and cooled by the waves. The company has never built the sea-going “Google Navy” described in its patents (alas, the company’s 2013 “mystery barge” turned out to be a PR initiative), but several other companies have pursued the floating data center concept.
That includes International Data Security (IDS), which spent three years trying to develop data ships that would house modular data centers. IDS was headed by Richard Naughton, a former Navy admiral with extensive experience with on-board IT. But the company struggled to find funding, and filed for bankruptcy after Naughton passed away in 2011.
Running IT operations on ships is not new. The U.S. Navy has maintained sophisticated telecom and IT infrastructure on its fighting ships for decades. Major cruise lines also incorporate advanced technology into their newest mega-ships. Both the Navy and cruise lines are sea-going enterprises, and thus have no choice about whether to operate technology on floating vessels.
The same is not true of enterprise data center companies, who have a wide variety of choices on the type and location of their data center. For many customers, housing data and equipment aboard a barge – even the most water-tight of barges – introduces a risk of water damage that isn’t found in other commercial data centers.
Magcale, the CEO of Nautilus, worked with Naughton on the IDS initiative, and believed it could work with modifications. He shifted his focus to vessels moored at major ports.
The post Has the Floating Data Center Finally Arrived? appeared first on Data Center Frontier.