Startup Building Floating Data Centers

1sockchuck writes "A Bay Area startup is planning to build data centers on cargo container ships, which would be docked at piers in major Internet markets. The company, known as IDS (International Data Security) says it plans to use biodiesel to power its generators and use heat from equipment to manage temperature on board the ships, reducing their reliance on grid power. IDS is telling prospects that it hopes to eventually have more than 20 floating data centers docked at ports around the U.S."

the pirate bay

I bet you could sell server space on one of these to thepiratebay...

Re:the pirate bay

Sell? They're the Pirate Bay. Why would they buy it?

Whooosh...

We need a new rating, Whoosh, for humorless droids who feel the need to correct jokes.

I can see the marketing now...

Sick of stable data centers inland, free from the excitement that comes from not knowing whether your data center will survive the latest hurricane or tropical storm? Tired of never meeting interesting longshoreman on your way to work? Try our new data center model!

Re:

Yeah, but you have the advantage of actually using sysadmins as galley slaves.

Try Earthquake protection.

Except that they appear to be researching their locations pretty carefully. San Francisco does not have hurricanes or tropical storms as the water around it is too shallow to hold all the energy. Besides, the Bay is just that: A bay. I don't know if you've ever been to SF, but pier 50 is way south well inside the bay. It is very safe.

The land in that area is another issue. San Francisco was nearly completely leveled a couple of times in the 20th century alone by earthquakes.

I think that the data-center on ships idea is great...

Re:Try Earthquake protection.

And the 1906 disaster was caused by lack of modern building codes and fire protection as much as anything else.

I disagree. It was caused by an earthquake.

Re:Try Earthquake protection.

And the 1906 disaster [in San Francisco] was caused by lack of modern building codes and fire protection as much as anything else.

I disagree. It was caused by an earthquake.

In some fields of discourse, there is a traditional distinction between proximate and ultimate causes. A proximate cause is the immediate event that triggered a disaster. Ultimate causes are the earlier conditions that allowed the immediate event to trigger a disaster.

In this case, the 1906 earthquake was the proximate cause of the disastrous fires. The ultimate causes were the shoddy buildings and infrastructure, which in turn were permitted by the lack of building codes and the "anything goes" frontier nature of the local government.

The earlier disastrous Chicago fire [wikipedia.org] had a different proximate cause but the same ultimate causes.

And note that ultimate causes usually are plural. In languages like English that have definite articles, a common logical fallacy is to talk about "the cause" rather than "a cause" or "the causes". For most large civic disasters like these, "the cause" is usually misleading, because there are a long list of conditions that help turn what might have been a minor fire into a conflagration. California has seen a lot of these lately, with their large disastrous brushfires. These have a list of ultimate causes, starting with the climate, and ending with a buildup of dry-plant fuel from landscaping plus failure to properly thin and remove plant material.

OTOH, here in Boston, one of the largest historical disasters [wikipedia.org] had a single identifiable cause, which sounds like something that the Onion [theonion.com]'s writers would make up, but actually happened and killed at least 21 people (and several horses). And one could argue in this case that the proximate cause was the tank bursting, while there were several ultimate cause such as poor construction of the tank, poor testing and maintenance, warm temperature, fermentation, etc. But the proximate/ultimate terminology doesn't apply well in this case, because all of those causes can be grouped as a single "poor construction and maintenance" cause.

Re:Try Earthquake protection.

While some of the fires were caused by ruptured gas lines, I understand that many of the fires following the earthquake were caused by people realising that they were uninsured against earthquakes (act of God) but were insured against fire.

Seems silly, but...

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a server farm under tow!

(latency's a bitch, though)

D5!

You sunk my dataship!

Not trying to be snarly here...

I hope this idea floats, I hope they have enough liquid assets...

Oh the puns! I can't resist!

Sea air and electronics are not a good mix

I wonder just how well one of Suns' "Black Box" containers will last in a salty environment. Salt air corrodes just about everything. The container is built for it, but you'd have to be careful about not opening the doors too often. Putting a data center into a naval environment, even one just rocking at a pier, is a lot more challenging then one in a building away from the shore. There's going to be a lot of cabling going onshore and that will all have to be maintained in ways that you don't have to do when there's no water involved.

One of their founders is an ex-Navy guy so maybe they've got it all wired. However, I don't think the Navy uses off-the-shelf stuff and buying navalized equipment is a lot more expensive then the just you get at Fry's.

Perfect use for the old Queen Mary!: The numbers

This would be a *perfecct* use for the Queen Mary! The old one.

It weighs about 175 million pounds. Take it out into the open seas where there are 3-foot waves, or actually big enough waves to lift and drop the ship by three feet say every ten seconds. By my Excel calcs, if you use that lift to heave up on a big anchor half the weight of the ship, that's about 30 megawatts of electricity. Plenty enough to power tens of thousands of servers.

The front boiler and engine room spaces of the QM were cleared out long ago, leaving a huge open space for lots of server racks. All you have to worry about is shipwrecks and hurricanes and the effects of humid, salty and diesely air.

Offshoring?

Perhaps they just got a little confused about the offshoring trend...

Re:terrorism

Oh god. Oh god. I am SO excited about this! I can finally live out my dream of being a pirate hacker! I think I just found my calling in life!

Raiding ship to ship, carrying off booty in binary, sword fights, parrots, wenches! ARRRRGH

*head asplodes*

Re:terrorism

...programming in Sea+

Re:

I haven't read it yet..

Maybe the idea is they can move to the most secure location.... What if the US suddenly goes under marshall law? What if your hosting inte China and they just outlawed the web? They can simply "float" away...

Re:terrorism

They can still use pier to pier connections.

ambiguous

"Sir, the datacentre's gone down!".

"ok, please clarify exactly what you mean by that.."

Re:well

and how they plan to connect to the shore? lay a fibre cable?

piering agreements.

Re:Vulnerabilities and economies of scale...

I'm going to reply to your post, because you made some salient points. It would do us well to remember that the US Navy has a lot of floating data centers. If anyone here thinks that those Naval war vessels are not brimming with electronics, I urge you to think again. In a barge type setup, you can create climate controlled spaces with little difficulty.

As for redundancy, I think you are unsure of how vulnerable land based data centers are currently. Even if you bring in large circuits from competing companies, the chances that the local municipality has organized that they both run main fibers along the same railway is high. Power redundancy? Are you serious? Battery backup and generator backed UPS is all you have anyway.

With a barge setup, your redundancy plan can be to move the whole data center to another area with fiber connections waiting to fire up. In fact, in case of a hurricane, I'd assume that would be the plan anyway. Sure, that means a 24hr downtime, unless you have redundant barges in your plan, in which case it's all a mute argument. If you think 24hr downtime is a long time, try figuring out what Californians just suffered when so many parts of a normally dry network infrastructure were sitting under 3+ feet of water. My company just suffered from that storm last weekend, so don't tell me that land based data centers are less vulnerable.

I think it could well work out wonderfully.

Re:Vulnerabilities and economies of scale...

'm going to reply to your post, because you made some salient points. It would do us well to remember that the US Navy has a lot of floating data centers. If anyone here thinks that those Naval war vessels are not brimming with electronics, I urge you to think again. In a barge type setup, you can create climate controlled spaces with little difficulty.

The Navy is not exactly hurting for money, and they justify the expense since the electronics are located near its users. This venture is needlessly placing the data center on water, when the data users are mostly land based.

As for redundancy, I think you are unsure of how vulnerable land based data centers are currently. Even if you bring in large circuits from competing companies, the chances that the local municipality has organized that they both run main fibers along the same railway is high. Power redundancy? Are you serious? Battery backup and generator backed UPS is all you have anyway.

You will have more options on land. First of all, why place the containers on a ship when a container yard will do? Need to move the data centers to another location... Hire a truck!

With a barge setup, your redundancy plan can be to move the whole data center to another area with fiber connections waiting to fire up. In fact, in case of a hurricane, I'd assume that would be the plan anyway. Sure, that means a 24hr downtime, unless you have redundant barges in your plan, in which case it's all a mute argument. If you think 24hr downtime is a long time, try figuring out what Californians just suffered when so many parts of a normally dry network infrastructure were sitting under 3+ feet of water. My company just suffered from that storm last weekend, so don't tell me that land based data centers are less vulnerable.

You are looking at least a 48 to 72 hour downtime (if you are lucky). Being on a large container vessel (TFA is talking about decommissioned container ships), you will need to sail far enough away from the hurricane. Keep in mind the current state of hurricane predictions, the time it takes to disconnect from shore, scheduling a bar pilot, tow, bunkering, and sailing to destination. Once you reach the destination, waiting for bar pilot to board, tow, mooring, and making data connections to shore...

If you think 24hr downtime is a long time, try figuring out what Californians just suffered when so many parts of a normally dry network infrastructure were sitting under 3+ feet of water. My company just suffered from that storm last weekend, so don't tell me that land based data centers are less vulnerable.

You could have co-located your data center in another region and switched to them during your emergency... Save the expense of vessel movement and the additional risks involved in ocean transportation. Better yet, use a container and truck your data center to another location further inland... Container based data centers are a neat idea, Container shipped based data center is an idea that went too far.

Re:Port Fees?

There are really not ANY benefits to running a data center on a ship that I can think of other than the ability to use pirate lingo.

Mister Smith, secure them backup tapes; I won't be havin' me data slidin' about on deck. Mister Taylor, re-run those CAT-5 cables and make it quick. There'll be no tangled rigging, or loose arrrr-J45's on my ship. Mister Martin, ye be throwin' them Cisco routers overboard, and invite their mangy sales crew over for a good plank walkin' - they be too slow for the likes o' me.

Mister Jones, if it weren't for them lying, theiving scoundrels at the I-arrr-S, I'd have no deal with the likes of ye accountin' folks. Apparently, the lot of 'em don't understand the meanin' of "parlay". But enough of me rambin' - just make sure ye decimal points be just, or I be keelhaulin' the lot of ya.

And as for the rest of ye lilly-livered scalawags, there'll be no drinkin', boozin', torrent-n' or World o' Warrrrcraft until after businessin' hours.

Arrr Meetin' be o-journ'd.

Buzz-word 2.0 compliant

Because "bio-diesel" sounds niffy, cutting edge, and enviro-friendly. Just the sorta thing that a bay-area tech exec who has money to spend will latch on to. Not to mention that bio-diesel will help them achieve enterprise-level scalability, lower TCO, and higher ROI by leveraging eco-friendly synergies.