DCD Zero Downtime: The Bi-Weekly Data Center Show

Could changing just 30 lines of code in Linux help cut data center energy use?In this episode, we speak to Professor Martin Karsten, professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, and Joe Domato, distinguished engineer at Fastly, about their work optimizing the Linux kernel, which could have big implications if applied by digital infrastructure operators

In a compute world dominated by Nvidia, hyperscalers are looking to build out their own semiconductor infrastructure capable of training and inference workloads at scale.We chat to AWS product manager Gadi Hutt about his company's approach, based on its 2016 Annapurna Labs acquisition. We talk about Trainium and Inferentia, how the company balances against its GPU fleet, and what it's cooking with Anthropic and Rainier.

In this episode, we talk to Cathy Kunkel, energy consultant at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, about a recent report she authored on the increased buildout of gas power plants and pipelines in the Southeast US, driven by the projected growth of data center load.

The start campus data center project has big dreams, aiming to build a 1.2GW data center campus in Sines, Portugal. While things have progressed on the campus, its entanglement in the corruption probe that saw the Prime Minister resign and led to the arrest of several of Start's executives including then CEO Afonso Salema caused some hiccups. With the charges now dropped (and a new CEO in place) and the first data center on the campus live, Start is back on the grind to see the project through to fruition. Omer Wilson, chief marketing officer at Start Campus, talks to DCD about the project, and addresses the issue of starting again, after such a disruption.

In this episode, we talk to Julian Hennessy, projects director at Telehouse Europe, about the company's most recent project in the London Docklands area. The Telehouse South facility was entirely retrofitted with a mission to strive for better sustainability. Julian explains the challenges and the benefits of retrofitting in the London data center landscape.

Carrie Goetz is the definition of an industry veteran. With decades of experience, she now works as a “fractional CTO” via her StrategITcom company, but over the years she has done a lot of outreach work to bring in new faces to the sector, not to mention the several books she has written. Tune in to hear about Goetz' career so far, and her perspective on how we can bring in a new generation of data center obsessives 

US scientific research institutions are under attack. DOGE-led cuts to National Science Foundation funding, caps on indirect research costs, firings at the National Institutes of Health, layoffs at the Department of Energy, and more will profoundly weaken the US' scientific standing.But what does this mean for the country, for companies, and for the data center sector? We speak to the 'father of the Internet' Vint Cerf, co-developer of the TCP/IP protocol, about why the Internet had to come out of government-backed research, what he learned from his time at the National Science Board, and how we can win back our future.

From visionary bets in Yahoo, Alibaba, and Arm, to disastrous gambles on WeWork and Vision Funds, SoftBank's Masayoshi Son has defied both logic and expectations. Self-styled as a modern Genghis Khan, the once richest man in the world has rolled the dice yet again, plowing money into OpenAI and Stargate. What can we learn from his past? We talk to Lionel Barber, author of Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan's Masayoshi Son.

This episode with Steve Roberts from Exa Infrastructure discusses the resilience, security, and redundancy of today's subsea cables, particularly in the face of adversities such as wars and natural disasters. Join us to discuss who should be investing, how the cable landscape is set to change in the coming years, and all things subsea. 

Australia is seeing its data center market grow rapidly.  In this episode, we talk to Vertiv's Ben Crowe about the trends they are seeing across the country, the impact that AI is having on the data center sector, and the role that the government can play in supporting the industry. 

Rounding out our Bali event bonus content, we chat to Damon Lim, regional director for Asia Pacific at datacenterHawk

At our Bali event, we spoke to Sumit Mukhija, at the time the CEO of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres India

At our Bali event, we spoke to Darren Webb, co-founder and CEO of SE Asian market-focused Evolution Data Centers

At our Bali 2024 event, we sit down with James Murphy, managing director, APAC, at DC Byte

At our Bali event, we chat to Paul Dwyer, Head of Data Centres at LOGOS Group

Computational Fluid Dynamics has a very important role to play in data centers, but how does it work? In this episode, we break down CFD with Subzero Engineering's Gordon Johnson - the factors that need to be considered, its role in the data center, and the science behind it.

While silicon is still the semiconductor king, alternative chip materials are increasingly being sought in order to find their successor and address some of the biggest challenges facing the chips of today. In today's episode of Zero Downtime, CEO and founder of Diamond Quanta, Adam Khan, discusses the benefits of diamond semiconductor technology, its applications, and the work Diamond Quanta is undertaking.

Earlier this year, Synopsys' R&D team developed a new model that allows design teams to create and test circuits at cryogenic temperatures. In this episode, Jamil Kawa and William Ruby from Synopsys talk about the cryogenic CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors) research project and how it could support the development of low-power chips to help solve the worsening AI energy crisis.

Iron Mountain was originally founded by a mushroom farmer in the 1950s. However, in the pivot of the century, the company launched a paper records storage service using the very mine that once housed mushroomsAs the world around them digitized, Iron Mountain had to adapt to change and eventually became the data center company we know today. However, they have still kept some of its underground mines. In this episode of Zero Downtime, we talk to Mark Kidd about Iron Mountain's evolution, and the lessons that can be learned by the data center industry.

India's data center industry is rapidly growing, and companies are taking notice.  Singapore-based CapitaLand Investment is currently developing major data centers throughout the country in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore. While these developments are running smoothly, building large data center campuses in any location is never simple.  We talk with managing director Surajit Chatterjee about the challenges and opportunities presented by India, its choices of location, development process, goals for sustainability and the investment company's future plans.

When Gil Santaliz first founded NJFX, he saw an opportunity to create an environment where data centers and cable landing stations could co-exist on the same campus. But even he could not predict how the emergence of AI and Edge technology has changed and developed conventional cable landing stations for the better. We talk to NJFX about the history of NJFX, the importance of colocation cable landing stations, and the future of AI and subsea infrastructure. 

Iceotope's David Craig returns to DCD Zero Downtime as he prepares to hand in his badge and gun. We talk what's next for Craig, and how he has seen the industry change and mature during his lengthy run.

We are all acutely aware that the data center industry has an aging, and thus thinning, workforce. But what can we do about it? In this episode, we talk to Nabeel Mahmood, managing director of Nomad Futurist - a non-profit dedicated to increasing awareness about the world of digital infrastructure - about how we can bring more people into the industry, especially those positioned at a disadvantage, be it because of a lack of resource, their location, or even society expectations.

Data center operators are getting serious about waste heat and, more specifically, what to do with it.While the solution for many is to pump it back into nearby district heating systems, other companies are getting more creative and using warmth from servers to heat aquafarms and greenhouses. European operator Data4 has joined a project which aims to demonstrate that waste heat from its data center can help to grow algae, which could in turn be used as biofuel. Linda Lescuyer, Data4's innovation manager, joins us to explain how the project is taking shape. 

Data center markets vary wildly by location, and in this episode we head "down under" to the wonderful land of Australia. With the AI boom in full across the globe, Australia is no different and experiencing increased demand.   We talk to David Hirst, who heads up Australia's Macquarie Data Centers, about the trends he is seeing in the country, how Macquarie is approaching AI, and the company's recent news, including its forthcoming IC3 Super West data center.

During a natural disaster, networks often go down. This can massively impact rescue missions in some cases. The importance of network operators and the role they play in responding to unpredictable moments is something that should be highlighted. We spoke to Verizon to see how it prepares its response to hurricanes and tornados, and find out the level of training required to support its efforts.

With the cloud market already over-saturated, it is hard to imagine how a new company can make its mark. NexGen Cloud is seeking to do just that, with plans to build a sustainable cloud specializing in HPC and GPU infrastructure called "super cloud." We talk about how NexGen is going to achieve this, the steps taken thus far and why the company thinks it is a solid competitor for some of the bigger players. 

Sourcing adequate amounts of power to run new facilities is a problem that keeps even the most seasoned data center operators awake at night.  Many are looking at new technologies such as battery storage to help meet their power demands, but ensuring these assets operate efficiently can be a challenge. Dublin-based GridBeyond thinks it can help by providing grid-connected battery technologies and management software to data centers and other clients across a range of industries. In this episode, Michael Phelan, founder and CEO of GridBeyond, talks about the challenges and opportunities presented by the clean energy transition, and the future of Ireland's overstretched power grid.

With AI dramatically driving up density, data center cooling is getting much more interesting.  Iceotope is one of the companies exploring the most efficient and sustainable way to cool down data centers - and their solution is precision cooling. On the face of it, precision cooling resembles immersion cooling - viscous liquid? Check. Bathtub-like container? Check. But as CEO David Craig explains, it is actually a far more efficient solution. Beyond the world of liquid cooling, we talk about political optimism and how the next generation will hopefully help us all towards a greener world. 

Mushrooms can be used to build more than just toad-stools. In this episode, Joanne Rodriguez, CEO at Mycocycle, talks about using mycelium to break down data center construction waste and make new construction materials. Listen in to this fung-guide to the future of waste management.

Nuclear power may have its detractors, but amid a growing capacity crunch data center operators are becoming increasingly interested in whether atoms can provide the electrons needed to power tomorrow's high-density facilities. In this episode, Chris Lohse of the Idaho National Laboratory, talks about the recent innovations around nuclear power, the highs and lows of recent years, and what the future might hold for nuclear-powered data centers.

Sustainability needs to be applied at all levels of the data center industry, and we are not doing enough, says John Booth of Carbon3IT.  In this episode of Zero Downtime, we sit down with sustainability consultant John Booth to talk about how he got where he is in his career, and the fundamental sustainability issues that he is seeing in the data center industry.  We also talk about a past trip to Belarus that proved more exciting than expected. Tune in now for the latest episode.

Bringing the L to FLAP-D, the UK has a prominent data center market. But like all other tier-one markets, London is struggling with space and power capacity. Because of this, the UK's data center industry will have to diversify, all while meeting increasingly regimented regulations. In this episode, we talk to trade association TechUK's Luisa Cardani about what the UK's data center industry is currently experiencing, from upcoming rules and regulations to emerging new markets, to the association's role in influencing policy. 

Oxide Computer has been rebuilding the rack. In this podcast, CTO Bryan Cantrill tells us why.  The data center industry has been building its own infrastructure for years, with the wrong components. Servers weren't designed to be operated in data centers, and the 1U rack unit is the wrong size, because of simple science. Part of the success of the cloud is that it takes that integration away, and gives users an easily consumed set of virtual servers and elastic infrastructure. But it costs, and it has pushed users to renting something they would be better off owning. That's why we heard of the "cloud diaspora" - organizations people bringing their IT back from the cloud. But what people need, Cantrill says, is an elastic infrastructure for the on-premise facility. In this podcast, you can hear him explaining why his team found they had to rebuild almost everything to deliver it.

Think hard drives have hit their storage limits, and should be replaced by solid-state units? You could be wrong.  Hard drives have been holding our data for nearly 70 years since IBM created the 350, which stored something like 4 Mbyte on dozens of spinning disks in a unit the size of a washing machine. Today's devices are orders of magnitude better on every axis including price, capacity, size, and performance. But solid-state providers say it's time they moved over to make way for modern storage. Hard drives have been in a slump, but a new technique promises to double their capacity.  Seagate is the first to bring heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) to the market, so we invited chief commercial officer B S Teh to tell us why it is such a big deal, why it's taken so long - and how it could change what you do in your data center. 

In this episode of Zero Downtime, we break down the fundamentals of quantum computing - the different approaches out there, the challenges to bringing it into a widespread commercial reality, and the potential use cases that quantum may help with. To help divulge this, we speak to QuEra's Yuval Boger who shares a little about the company's experience with the technology, including how we can go about deploying quantum computers inside data centers.

25 years ago, the first content delivery networks (CDNs) emerged, to solve a specific problem - how to make web pages load faster. More than two decades later, 72 percent of Internet content is delivered through CDNs. But the companies involved are still almost invisible - until something goes wrong. In 2021, in a series of outages, large numbers of unrelated websites all went out of action at the same time. It turned out that these sites had all come to rely on the same CDNs, effectively installing a single point of failure for large sections of the Internet.  Since then, large service providers have worked out how to avoid this problem - and one CDN provider told us in a podcast what to do when it does happen.  Major CDN players have extended into a distributed cloud role, running applications at the edge, and Cloudflare, for one, believes CDNs have a huge opportunity in "inference" - when AI pre-trained systems are deployed for actual applications. 2021 also saw the formation of the CDN Alliance, an industry body that aims to be a voice and forum for CDN players, along with the ecosystem that has grown up around them.  Mark de Jong, founder and chair of the CDN Alliance, tells us why CDNs need a voice, and what they need to be saying. 

Europe has an Energy Efficiency Directive, Germany has an Energy Efficiency Act, and operators there can be fined for inefficiency. Meanwhile, Amsterdam has declared war on sleeping servers, and set limits on where facilities can be built. Across Europe, in response to congested electric grids and shortages of land, local governments are stepping in to regulate data centers. Sometimes they want them to be greener, sometimes they want them to be quieter, and sometimes they just want them somewhere else. But any data center operator now has to be prepared to meet new reporting requirements and talk to the local authorities about their business.  This is not a bad thing, says Venessa Moffat, head of channel partner manager EMEA Europe for EkkoSense. It's about time those discussions happened. People who run cities need to understand the businesses that are located there - and from those discussions, new partnerships can emerge. 

At the start of 2023, Yuval Bachar told us about his latest project - to build off-grid, hydrogen-powered data centers. As 2023 came to an end, he was back to tell us he'd done it. He's got 1MW of capacity fed by hydrogen in Mountain View California, and he's telling potential customers he can build the same thing anywhere you can get hydrogen shipped by pipe or tanker.  He's keen on the benefits. No long waits for power distribution, no struggles getting permits for diesel. And the building is quick and cheap too. He can make them with a 3D concrete printer - which incidentally is environmentally better than tilt-up building, he says.  He picked up the Environmental Impact prize at this year's DCD Awards, and joined the podcast to give us some more details on what he has done.... and what's coming next 

Ever wonder what it would be like to be a CEO at a telecom company in a country that is at war?That's been the reality on a couple of occasions for Ineke Botter, who has headed telecom companies in Kosovo and Lebanon. Her career has taken across Europe and beyond, spanning more than 30 years. She's even worked in the data center industry too. Listen to find out more about Ineke's incredible journey into telecoms.

The European data center market has a forecasted take-up of 440MW for 2023. But within the context of erratic power availability, moratoriums, and the need to move to renewable energy, the FLAP-D markets are facing several challenges. In this episode we talk to Neal Kalita about the obstacles facing those looking to build in Europe, and what the future holds for the region. Tune in for the conversation where we find the solution to keeping up with the pace of demand while prioritizing sustainability.

Data centers need to be more sustainable, but finding consistent and powerful energy resources can be a challenge. Increasingly, we are seeing nuclear entering the conversation, in the form of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). But these aren't without their own controversies. In this episode, we talk with Compass Datacenters' Tony Grayson to discuss the future of SMRs, the challenges and opportunities, and the role we can expect them to play in the world of data centers.

Artificial intelligence could grow from almost nothing to using half a percent of the world's electrical power within five years, according to Alex de Vries of Digiconomist. That's a crazy rate of growth, but it's not unprecedented. Bitcoin followed almost exactly the same trajectory, expanding from nothing to a sector whose energy use is comparable with that of regular data centers. But the similarities end there, says de Vries, who provided the reliable tracking data for the growth of Bitcoin, and is ready to do the same for AI. A year ago, he talked us through his methodology for analyzing Bitcoin energy usage. Now he's back, explaining how we can estimate the consumption of AI systems, This time round, it's all about tracking how many GPUs Nvidia can make, and seeing where they are likely to end up.  The actual figure depends on a lot of things, and could be higher if more GPUs emerge, or if they are deployed differently. There are questions around the depreciation of the hardware, and how and where AI inference is delivered. Listen in to find out how AI's thirst for power is going to affect the world.

We talk to Bill Kleyman, now at machine learning company Neu.ro, about his lengthy data center career. How did he get into the sector, what did he learn at Switch, and how does he balance life and travel? Tune in to find out.

Data centers have outgrown their anonymity. They are large enough consumers of energy and space, that they have to enter the political landscape and justify their existence. But how do we know if a data really brings benefits to its location? In some places (like London), it appears that they soak up grid connection capacity and block housing projects. In others (like Denmark and Ireland) they use renewable energy and jeopardize local decarbonization targets.  It's not easy to know the net benefits brought by a data center, because much of what it does is in the virtual world, and is delivered to people far away.  Max Schulze has some thoughts on how to start working out the real benefits of a data center - and we hope for more input from DCD readers and listeners.  

Ever wondered about the practical challenges of connecting our continents? In this podcast episode, we talk with Exa Infrastructure's Elena Badiola about the process of getting subsea cables underwater: from environmental surveys to climate change, to funding challenges. Elena also shares her experience of living on a cable ship for five weeks after an earthquake caused an outage - and how a military coup almost stopped her from getting back home.

In 2022, Mark Monroe's podcast about hydrogen was one of our most popular podcasts ever. At Microsoft, Mark had just made a prototype hydrogen fuel cell UPS system that could potentially replace diesel generators to provide low-carbon backup power at data centers. One year on, he's back for some more detail. A hydrogen economy will need a distribution system - but will that look like a power network, a gas grid, or a system of trucks?  Data centers won't be the first big users of hydrogen: Mark tells us where it will take off.  This year, we've heard stories of natural hydrogen mined from underground. Mark assesses that prospect, along with the other sources of hydrogen, and suggests that the new energy source could rewrite the world's map of energy providers. Listen to our talk with Mark to find out where and when you will start using hydrogen. 

If you want to make infrastructure sustainable, you need to be very careful what words you use. That's what Hunter Vaughan and Nicole Starosielski found, through their involvement in a project to make subsea cables sustainable. Words like "sustainability" and "climate neutral" can mean different things, depending on who is talking. And if what you say is vague, then your efforts to be sustainable can get misdirected, or diverted into greenwash, or simply end up (like the words) meaningless.  Hunter Vaughan of the University of Cambridge and Nicole Starosielski of the University of California, Berkeley are part of the Sustainable Subsea Network. They are also co-authors of a paper called ICT Environmentalism and the Sustainability Game, which looks at how players like Greenpeace used language to build pressure for green infrastructure. They spoke to DCD about both: how we communicate about sustainability, and how sustainable our communications systems are.

If you think transitioning the tech sector to net zero is all about renewable energy and heat reuse, think again. Small changes in software could make entire data centers redundant - for a much bigger saving for the planet.  Green Software is not just about more efficient code, says Anne Currie. Rewriting everything in C might cut energy use - but it would destroy your company.   As a leader in the Green Software Foundation, and a seasoned green developer and entrepreneur, Anne has much better ideas. She is working with Sarah Hsu and Sara Bergman, on Building Green Software, an O'Reilly book about what green software really means, and how we can achieve it.  Find out more in this podcast.

How does the Internet keep running? A close-knit community of engineers has been developing and supporting the protocols that support it for more than forty years. During that time, new Internet services have emerged and scaled beyond recognition, and new features have been added, all without breaking the whole system.  Mirjam Kuhne has been closely involved with this for 20 years, and in 2020 became chair of the European forum for Internet development -  RIPE (Réseaux IP Européens, French for "European IP Networks").  Since then, Internet services have become crucial to the continued operation of society during the pandemic, and European Internet services have faced unprecedented technical and political challenges during the war in Ukraine.  Mirjam says the protocols take care of themselves. What you need is a community of motivated engineers to maintain them. RIPE is open to new members, and when you hear how it all works, why wouldn't you get involved?

The global interests of the mobile industry are represented by the GSM Association (GSMA).  This governing body was established in 1995 to support mobile operators using the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard for cellular networks.  It has become synonymous with the mobile industry and has driven it forward through industry programs, working groups, and initiatives.  The GSMA's legacy has even inspired something similar but for broadband instead, with Martin Creaner, director general of the Worldwide Broadband Association (WBBA) seeking to use this model.  Can the GSMA's model be replicated for broadband as well? Creaner explains why the need for a governing body representing broadband interests is important.  “It's all about creating a member-led organization that creates a platform to drive broadband cooperation and partnership across the whole industry to accelerate broadband adoption everywhere in the world,” said Creaner. If you liked this discussion or any of our other episodes, please give it a like or subscribe on your platform of choice. If we are not available on your favorite podcast player, get in touch.