Rich Miller DataCenterKnowledge reports on IDS's ocean port based data center ship.

IDS Readies Data Centers on Ships
August 9th, 2010 : Rich Miller
In early 2008, startup International Data Security revealed plans to build a fleet of data centers on cargo ships docked at ports in the San Francisco Bay. After an initial flurry of publicity, the company receded from the spotlight amid industry chatter of funding challenges.

Now IDS is back, and the company says it has lined up funding and an anchor tenant for a proof-of-concept “maritime data center” that will dock at Redwood City, Calif. The first vessel is a former training ship for the California Maritime Academy that IDS has acquired and is prepping for renovation. IDS representatives say the company has lined up $15 million for an initial deployment of 500 racks of servers.

One of the points is the concern about salt water.

Concept Brings Curiosity, Skepticism
IDS said it has experienced the same mix of curiosity and skepticism. “A lot of the conversations we’ve had with data center operators have been around questions like ‘do you want to put this kind of equipment close to salt water’ and ‘is the rolling motion of the ship a problem,’” said Prince. “The reality is that the Navy has had data centers on war-fighting ships for 20 years or more.”

I've been on the USS Abraham Lincoln air craft carrier looking at some of their IT systems.

The data center space is isolated as IDS says, but it is the cost of all the other systems supporting the space that is beyond most budgets.

I am curious how much lower IDS's costs if they were able to set up a floating data center in a fresh water port.