Kind of a fun ancedote: In "the old days" when you'd run a server room in your office we had a very large HPC cluster + a significant amount of storage and other one off servers on the top floor of a mid rise office building. I eventually moved it all to a former nuclear fallout facility where our systems were three floors down and under a gigantic pool of water. Error rates and random crashes fell off IMMEDIATELY.
I believe Microsoft reported similar findings with their submerged data center.
Most offices/businesses have nothing to do with software development. Most IT shop are in basements, or at least on lower levels near the core servers and other infrastructure they manage. "The IT Crowd" was a stereotype but was still based on the reality of most businesses. I have never seen or even heard of an IT shop with a skylight. Even windows are rare.
Yea, when looking into these myself I did float in conversation that we'd need build a giant pool over our data centers. It was more of a joke though and never went anywhere.
Although our error rate was more like 1-2 per week on the equipment I was looking at.
Water is one of the most effective radiation shields we have for cosmic rays. NASA has contemplated using a water shield for Mars astronauts. There is a reason most fallout shelters are built under a pool when possible.
Nasa has also contemplated using human feces as shielding. The mixed use, dual purpose systems for spaceflight are a special case. What really matters is mass. Sand is cheaper than pool water.
Doing some quick searching, looks like there has been some research into what materials are better than others for shielding for cosmic rays. The couple minute look to me suggests there is more complexity than just mass, different materials have different properties, including at different energy levels for the cosmic rays. Although I suppose material cost and construction cost would also be a factor, where alot of sand might be easier to build a facility than the equivalent shielding in water. Although we're probably at the point where it's better to use something like a mine that is no longer used.
