{"id":41978,"date":"2021-04-07T10:40:21","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T10:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=9114a564ff9e8f3abd80ad58ece9b7c9"},"modified":"2021-04-07T10:40:21","modified_gmt":"2021-04-07T10:40:21","slug":"microsoft-is-submerging-servers-in-boiling-liquid-to-prevent-teams-outages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/microsoft-is-submerging-servers-in-boiling-liquid-to-prevent-teams-outages\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft is submerging servers in boiling liquid to prevent Teams outages"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Sabina Weston<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
7 Apr, 2021<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Microsoft<\/a>\u00a0has revealed that it’s been experimenting with\u00a0a \u201ctwo-phase immersion cooling technology\u201d to prevent its data centre servers from overheating and causing outages across its\u00a0cloud<\/a>-based communications platforms such as\u00a0Microsoft Teams<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At a Microsoft\u00a0data centre<\/a>\u00a0on the bank of the Columbia River in Washington state, engineers are submerging servers in a steel holding tank filled with boiling liquid.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nUnlike water, which is seen as precarious to electronic equipment, the liquid used by Microsoft engineers is harmless to the server\u00a0hardware<\/a>\u00a0as it\u2019s designed to cool its processors by carrying away the heat as it boils.<\/p>\n

The liquid has been engineered to boil at 50 degrees Celsius, which is 50 degrees cooler than the boiling point of water.\u00a0The lower temperature has been specifically chosen in order to carry away the heat while allowing Microsoft\u2019s servers to operate at full power without the risk of failure due to overheating.<\/p>\n

According to Microsoft\u2019s data centre advanced development group VP Christian Belady, \u201cair cooling is not enough\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s driving us to immersion cooling, where we can directly boil off the surfaces of the chip,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Husam Alissa, a principal hardware engineer on Microsoft\u2019s team for data centre advanced development, said that the tech giant is \u201cthe first cloud provider that is running two-phase immersion cooling in a production environment,\u201d which is the next step in Microsoft\u2019s long-term plan to keep up with the increasing demand for\u00a0cloud computing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The demand has been fuelled by the rise of remote working, which depends largely on the reliability of\u00a0collaboration<\/a>\u00a0tools such as Teams or communication\u00a0tools\u00a0such as\u00a0Exchange<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, according to Marcus Fontoura, chief architect of\u00a0Azure<\/a>\u00a0compute, two-phase liquid immersion cooling enables increased flexibility for the efficient management of cloud resources, allowing them to manage sudden spikes in data centre compute demand to the servers in the liquid-cooled tanks. The servers run at elevated power without risk of overheating due to\u00a0 \u201coverclocking\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor instance, we know that with Teams when you get to 1 o\u2019clock or 2 o\u2019clock, there is a huge spike because people are joining meetings at the same time,\u201d Fontoura said. \u201cImmersion cooling gives us more flexibility to deal with these burst-y workloads.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using specially-designed liquid to cool the servers is not only cheaper than air cooling but also more sustainable than using water, allowing Microsoft to meet its\u00a0commitment to replenish more water<\/a>\u00a0than it consumes by 2030. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sabina Weston<\/p>\n

7 Apr, 2021 <\/p>\n

Microsoft\u00a0has revealed that it’s been experimenting with\u00a0a \u201ctwo-phase immersion cooling technology\u201d to prevent its data centre servers from overheating and causing outages across its\u00a0cloud-based…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41979,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41978\/revisions\/41979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}