Microsoft is hiring a human to lead the robot revolution (in data center automation).
As reported by the Register, Microsoft posted a job listing in the second week of October for a team manager for hardware robotics in its automation department. Qualifications for the position include standard program management experience in engineering or product, as well as “3+ years professional hands-on experience working on automation and robotics for hardware equipment.”
Microsoft’s senior director of data center research, Sean James, posted on LinkedIn that he was “creating a team dedicated to the automation of data center operations,” adding, “we want our data centers to be safe and efficient!”
Vlad Galabov, Omdia’s director of Cloud and Data Center Research , told the Register he had seen “a proof-of-concept of robots for data hall inspection at a Telehouse data center in London years ago,” adding that Microsoft is likely looking into similar technology. He also noted that data center operators’ interest in robotics may be related to the ongoing shortage of qualified staff, which can drive up costs.
Robots can perform multiple duties in a data center—the Register recently separately reported that Jtec Industries demoed an “ORV2/ORV3-Compatible Server Rack Cart” at the 2023 Open Compute Summit in San Jose, California. The cart is designed to move entire loaded server racks for hyperscalers, and can be controlled by either members of the data center team or an autonomous guided vehicle.
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Other possible roles for robots include patrolling labyrinthine data centers to log “round-the-clock data” and monitor for anomalies in variables like environmental conditions. NTT, Japan’s national telecommunications provider, has released videos of experimental robots capable of performing functions like hot swapping, which requires visual recognition of hardware components and the ability to remove and replace them precisely. Finally, robots might enable more operators to work remotely.
As the Register noted, staffing shortages can contribute to pricey outages. Microsoft has acknowledged that an August 2023 outage in its Australia East cloud region was prolonged in part because limited personnel were present to restart chillers following a power outage.
“Due to the size of the data center campus, the staffing of the team at night was insufficient to restart the chillers in a timely manner,” Microsoft wrote in a post-incident report.
Microsoft didn’t reply to a request for comment from IT Brew asking about the listing or what types of robots it hopes to roll out.