Startup Building Floating Data Centers 256
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 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:the pirate bay (Score:5, Funny)
Whooosh... (Score:5, Funny)
I can see the marketing now... (Score:5, Funny)
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Try Earthquake protection. (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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Wha? The '89 Loma Prieta earthquake caused some serious damage but "nearly completely leveled" is a bit of a stretch. And the 1906 disaster was caused by lack of modern building codes and fire protection as much as anything else. Other cities of that era suffered similar disasters without an earthquake as the root cause (Chicago, for instance.)
There is no reason a data center built from the ground up to su
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This was only 6 to 10 years ago, so obviously there are still some people who think that "modern building codes" don't cut it for earthquakes and are willing (or legally required, like we were) to take some pretty expensive countermeasures.
T
Re:Try Earthquake protection. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Try Earthquake protection. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Good response. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Try Earthquake protection. (Score:4, Funny)
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But is it any more economical doing it that way versus buying some real estate in the middle of South Dakota to house your data center? Or some other centrally located hurricane and earthquake safe area. You'll spend more for data con
Electricity is the problem in ALL datacenters (Score:3, Interesting)
But those processors mostly keep burning m
Seems silly, but... (Score:5, Funny)
(latency's a bitch, though)
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Never underestimate the bandwidth of (Score:3, Funny)
terrorism (Score:2, Interesting)
if the ships
Re:terrorism (Score:5, Funny)
Raiding ship to ship, carrying off booty in binary, sword fights, parrots, wenches! ARRRRGH
*head asplodes*
Re:terrorism (Score:5, Funny)
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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 (Score:2, Insightful)
ed
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I think it's because there is no subpoena power for email servers on a ship.
AIK
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Marshall Plan: An early U.S. attempt at controlling everyone else's citizens.
Martial Law: A country's attempt at controlling its own citizens.
But my anal retentiveness aside, if the U.S. goes under martial law, you can bet that they'll lock down the coastline, too. So whether your data is in a boat, in a moat, or on a goat, they'll get it if they want it. Whatever the benefits of this data center model are, I don't see international independence as one of them. Better to try to affec
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AIK
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I like it.
Terrorism - Irony (Score:2)
Yes, cut off GoDaddy's interference and the website would suddenly be accessible, rather than overloaded on a crammed server and unavailable!
Re:terrorism (Score:5, Funny)
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Dan East
ambiguous (Score:5, Funny)
"ok, please clarify exactly what you mean by that.."
Please, not the terrorism card again (Score:2)
9/11, and even that wasn't primarily an effort to destroy data or disrupt networks.
To sink a ship, you need a bomb. The same bomb would do quite a lot of damage to the average datacenter building.
Besides, if you need your datacenter to be really secure, there's always the 'old military bunker' option instead.
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WTF would you need that for? (Score:2, Funny)
Why would anyone ship data to a major internet market when you can just send it via an attachment? Duh...
well (Score:2)
in a busy port that gets dredged often thats a very bad idea, now we gonna hear about trawlers responsible for datacenters being cut off
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Re:well (Score:5, Funny)
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Go to your room.
D5! (Score:5, Funny)
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Dan East
Not trying to be snarly here... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh the puns! I can't resist!
Sea air and electronics are not a good mix (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Though really things like this need reliable wireless communication setup to deliver the bandwidth. That way the ship can be in international waters while hosting the Piratebay.
Ooh I wonder if sealand is going to install a couple of Docks?
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I'm not saying it's just as easy as a land based setup, this is just a particular problem that's been largely solved for quite a while.
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Their is a lot of off the shelf stuff on ships - sailors bring computers, cell phones, mp3 players to sea with them and they survive just fine; not ot mention cruise ships with TVs etc. tha are exposed 24x7 to the same environment without problems.
It's really no dif
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No hurricanes or tropical storms. They have some pretty bad storms on the lakes but these ships would be in port so I would think they are okay.
No saltwater.
Over all I just don't see the point. Yes data centers in New York City would be expensive but they don't have to be in the city.
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Very expensive (Score:3, Informative)
Biodiesel? (Score:2, Interesting)
If they really wanted to be green they'd deploy some sort of thermal gradient generator, sinking piping down below the thermocline of the ocean.
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This idea aint gonna float.
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Buzz-word 2.0 compliant (Score:4, Funny)
Checking licensing documents... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why did the USS Server go down? (Score:2)
Oh Great (Score:2)
On the other hand, it gives a whole new meaning to the term "capital flight" - if the IRS looks like it might be about to sieze your assets, you can float the whole head office to another jurisdiction - or set it up on a tropical island with a volcano.
Rationing applies (Score:3, Funny)
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Vulnerabilities and economies of scale... (Score:2)
Not only that, but how would you get true redundancy? Sure, power could be done, but when it comes to multiple paths for data connections, ports m
Re:Vulnerabilities and economies of scale... (Score:4, Insightful)
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... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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!
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...
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.
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1. It will take more than a day to get a ship to a port far enough way from a hurricane to be considered safe. Even if it could 20 knots on average that would only get your about 500 nms. A truck with a container can move at what 60 mph? so in ten hours you can be 600 miles away? Yes you would have traffic issues but those can be dealt with.
2. You would probably want to move your ship data center for even a CAT 1 or CAT 2 storm. I have been through storms up
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New meaning (Score:2)
I hear (Score:2)
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Wow. What a stupid idea. (Score:2)
1) They are going to "use heat from equipment to manage temperature on board the ships"? Huh? Unless these things are parked in the Arctic, "temperature management" in a data center always involves getting rid of the heat, not using it. The heat is a problem, not a solution.
2) It's a ship. In a storm, it moves. That's bad.
3) Ooh... ventilating a ship with air saturated with salt spray! Why didn't I think of that? Even if they mo
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Port Fees? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. This idea is completely out-of-the-box.
I have questions:
1. Why locate off-shore when there is plenty of space on land?
2. Who is going to pay the port fees? Not including the tow fees necessary to periodically reposition the vessel.
3. Why take the hit on maintenance? Periodic dry docking, corrosion management, bilge checks...
4. Why pay additional expenses for a vessel agent? (They are NOT cheap).
5. What about mooring? evacuations due to hurricanes? environmental impact (ballast water & bunkering)?
6. Why take the risk associated with being in navigable water (vessel collision, dredging)?
7. Insurance?
8. On the subject of decommissioned cargo ships -- Most cargo ships are decommissioned only after they are in such sad shape that the operators fear that metal fatigue may jeopardize the vessel, or the safety systems have deteriorated to the point that the cost of repairs (to make them pass coast guard inspection) are too high. Why not use deep sea barges like Odysea, Crowley TMT, or Land Bridge uses? Less maintenance, and you won't have to hire three tugs to reposition the damn thing.
Just asking...
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This would make a lot of sense for developing markets that don't have much infrastructure yet. For the US, it's a bit of a head scratcher for sure.
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- buying land and building a data center on it OR
- building a data center outside the city on cheap land and then having to pay for high-speed connectivity to the city
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where are you going to get the massive bandwidth required to operate an effective data center on a damn dock? And doesn't running the whole thing on diesel seem a little....stupid?
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.
Re:Port Fees? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Datatypes (Score:3, Funny)
That's nice, but is there a demand for data centers that store only one type of number? What if we need to store integers?
Dan East
Wow, what a bad idea! (Score:2)
Oh, and it doesn't address the real-estate problem very well, because protected berths with access to good fiber are
Interesting approach (Score:2)
With countries all over the world putting more and more restrictions and regulations on hosting servers, I can see the benefit of a floating datacenter: in the case of legal/authoritative problems just sail to international waters.
As other comments note there are major problems to overcome. Reliability will be a lot worse. Satellite connections are painfully slow and expensive, while UMTS/HSDPA/wimax/cables limit your range and provide points-of-failure on land.
Float your Data (Score:2)
Why would you want to do this? (Score:2)
This is a really novel concept, but I'm still left scratching my head. Why the hell would you actually want to do this?
As far as I can tell, this company is banking on the cost of maintaining a whole ship to somehow be less expensive than paying rent on office space for a conventional data center. Are real-
Already done in the 1960s (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes SF real estate is THAT expensive. (Score:2)
float, float, float your SOAP (Score:2)
Perfect use for the old Queen Mary!: The numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
What about the ship full of programmers? (Score:2)
Offshoring? (Score:5, Funny)
Warning, bad jokes. (Score:3, Funny)
New April 1st RFC - floating point transfers over sub-nets.
The network is obviously pier to pier-based, you need good piering agreements.
Connection reset by pier.
The data center is down due to wetware failure.
Special offer - free salt for all your crypto needs.
Careful with that firewall, closed ports are bad.
"Digital Pirates" just acquired a new meaning.
The Dreaded Backhoe will be replaced by people phishing on the pier and people dropping <A>s
Sneakernet replaced by flippernet.
Overclockers rejoice, think of the extreme water-cooling possibilities.
Forget the Boston Tea Party. The Boston LAN Party will be way cooler.
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It creates a target the size of the ocean in effect, and that is very very difficult to destroy.
So long as it doesn't physically enter a jurisdiction, then it cannot be searched forensically, so deleted files stay deleted.
AIK
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