This is Part 2 of Azure tutorial. To understand Azure better, we need to
understand azure global infrastructure specific terms like data centers, regions, region pairs,
availability zones and geographies. In this video, we'll discuss data centers and the rest,
that is regions, region pairs, availability zones and geographies in our upcoming videos.
So, what are azure data centers? When we provision a resource from azure cloud like a virtual machine
or an azure sql database for example, these resources obviously require a physical server
space to be created. A data center is simply a building, that contains the physical server,
not just one server, many many physical servers which are connected over the network. It also has
its own power and cooling. So, in simple terms, an azure data center is a unique physical building
that contains many many physical servers with its own power, cooling and networking infrastructure.
These data centers are located all over the globe. As of this course recording, there are over 160+
azure data centers worldwide. The exact location of these data centers is not published by
microsoft for obvious security reasons. It is these data centers that are the building blocks
of global azure infrastructure. Obviously, to power and maintain all these data centers,
lot of energy is required. Microsoft has been actively researching to source clean energy.
So, as part of this initiative Microsoft has been experimenting placing data centers at the bottom
of the ocean. They called this project Natick. So, in spring 2018, Microsoft's project Natick team
deployed a shipping-container-sized data center on the sea floor in Scotland. It's stayed under
water for almost over two years, and during these two years, the underwater data center servers are
extensively tested and monitored for performance and reliability. With this experiment, the team
concluded that a sealed data center on the ocean floor could provide ways to improve the overall
reliability of data centers. On land, corrosion from oxygen and humidity, temperature fluctuations
and obviously bumps and jostles from people who replace broken components are all variables
that contribute to equipment failure. So, if you want to learn more about Microsoft underwater data
center, you have more details on their news website www.news.microsoft.com. We have some
really exciting photos here. The underwater data center is being retrieved from the seafloor after
two years. You can see lot of algae and other sea plants grown on the sealed container during the
two years while it was underwater. In this photo, you can see a close-up of the container. In this
one, you can see the Microsoft logo revealed as the container is being power washed. Inside
the sealed capsule, you can see several racks of servers. There were actually 12 racks of servers
and related cooling infrastructure. They found the servers in the underwater data center were eight
times more reliable than those in a replica data center on land. So, the bottom line is Microsoft
finds underwater data centers are reliable, practical and use energy sustainably. Hopefully,
we'll soon see underwater data centers. As of this course recording though, all azure data centers
are still on land and it is these data centers that are the building blocks of azure global
infrastructure. In simple terms, an azure data center is a unique physical building that
contains thousands of physical servers with its own power, cooling and networking infrastructure.
These data centers are located all over the globe. As of this course recording, there are over 160+
azure data centers. These data centers are organized into Azure Regions. We'll discuss Azure
Regions and their importance in our next video. That's it in this video. Thank you for listening.