Los underwater data centers They are a new technology that is gaining ground, and companies like Microsoft and Subsea Cloud are already testing this type of submerged centers, since in this way, they can use the surrounding water for cooling, saving on energy costs compared to conventional systems. cooling of the terrestrial centers. But the Researchers warn they could be susceptible to a surprising threat: sound waves.
This surprising finding has been discovered in a new study by researchers from the University of Florida and the Japan Electro-Communications University reveals a possible security risk. Sound waves directed at the data center from a distance of up to 6 meters can disrupt critical operations, potentially leading to data center sabotage.
The weakness of underwater data centers is called HDD
The culprit that makes underwater data centers vulnerable? According to researchers, they are hard disk drives (HDD) that are still commonly used in these computers. The Sound waves at specific frequencies can cause vibrations within hard drives, affecting their read/write performance. This can result in slower application response times and reduced data transfer speeds.
The researchers They tested their theory by placing a server with an HDD storage system inside a metal casing in both a water tank, simulating the current submerged centers. They then emitted sound waves from an underwater speaker and the results were worrying. However, in practice, these problems could also occur due to waves produced by submarine sonar, etc.
The sound waves caused significant drops in performance of the data storage system. In some cases, researchers were even able to crash applications and significantly increase database latency (response time).
Solution to the problem
The same researchers who have detected the problem in underwater data centers also They propose a solution with a two-pronged approach. First, they suggest using machine learning to detect subtle performance drops across multiple hard drives, i.e. detecting potential attacks using sound waves.
Once detected, the data center management system could automatically use data replication techniques to move data processing tasks out of the affected area. This would help maintain the overall reliability of the system.
Fortunately, in addition to the solution proposed by the researchers, there are also the solid state storage drives (SSD)which are increasingly gaining ground in data centers due to their performance, and although they do not have capacities as large as HDDs, they are not vulnerable to sound.