DCDMagazine The Virginia Issue 47

Issue 47 • December 2022
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THE
Virginia
ISSUE
Digital Realty Quantum
PowerHouse Loophole
CorScale PW Digital Gateway
NTT GDC & Buddy Rizer
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Contents
December 2022
6 News
Meta madness, Power takes power,
and Equinix heats up
14 Data centers’ Buddy

The future of Loudoun, with Buddy
Rizer - the man behind the rise of Data
Center Alley
16 Digital Realty’s next move

Building Digital Dulles, a gigawatt
campus
22 The newcomers
PowerHouse and CorScale on
developing for hyperscalers
27 N
TT GDC’s moment
The Japanese giant is ready to take
on the US. Can it compete in the big
16
leagues?
14 31 T
he Queen of Prince William
How PW’s Digital Gateway came to
be, from the lady behind it all
36 There’s something about Maryland

Touring Quantum Loophole’s giant
data center campus with CEO Josh
Snowhorn
41
The cooling supplement
Over cooling, liquid breakdown, and
plant-based oils
57 A
ustralia’s great migration
Moving away from the East Coast, and
building data centers out west
59 T
he Awards winners
27 22 We dive into the winners of the 2022

DCD Awards, highlighting who won
the industry’s biggest competition
78 Exploring immersion cooling

What are Dug McCloud and Microsoft
up to? We take a deep dive
82 Asia explores the multi-cloud

And an intro to Hashicorp
85 5G in Africa
Why the rollout is so slow, and what
comes next
88 Op-ed: Social media drama

Meta and Twitter have ripped up their
data center plans. What does that
85
mean for the industry?
31
Issue 47 • December 2022 | 3
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>>CONTENTS
From the Editor Meet the team
5GW
Editor-in-Chief
Sebastian Moss
Virginia enters its

@SebMoss
Executive Editor
Peter Judge
@Judgecorp
next phase News Editor

Dan Swinhoe
@DanSwinhoe
W
Telecoms Editor
hat happens with The newcomers Paul Lipscombe
the world's data Next, we travel to the construction sites Reporter
center hotspot of PowerHouse and CorScale, the new Georgia Butler
runs out of power kids on the block. Partner Content Editor
and land? Backed by large funds, and with Claire Fletcher
Last month, a history in real estate, the two Head of Partner Content
armed with a recorder, camera, and companies hope to cash in on the data Graeme Burton
@graemeburton
a drone, Dan Swinhoe and I toured center goldrush by building powered
Virginia and Maryland, in search of shells for the hyperscalers. SEA Correspondent
Paul Mah
answering that simple question - The amount @PaulMah
what's next for Loudoun and Virginia? The challenger of electricity Brazil Correspondent
We then talk to NTT Global Data Buddy Rizer Tatiane Aquim
Our Buddy Centers, touring one of its many expects @DCDFocuspt
The success of Loudoun as the data Loudoun sites.
Loudoun data Designer
center capital is thanks to the work of After buying up a number of Eleni Zevgaridou
centers to
hundreds, as well as some fortunate regional contenders like RagingWire Head of Sales
and leaving them mostly independent,
consume
Erica Baeta
NTT has pieced them together as a Conference
The landscape of global giant. Director, Global
Ashburn is dotted with Now, the company is ready to spend Rebecca Davison
billions to try and become one of the Conference
cranes, construction biggest data center companies in the Director, NAM
Kisandka Moses
never stops in DC Alley world.
Its next move? Build out in Prince Channel Manager
William County. Alex Dickins
events in history. But few can claim Channel Manager
Emma Brooks
more credit in its rise than Buddy Rizer, The dealmaker
the county's economic director. Over in PWC, we talk to the lady Channel Manager
Gabriella Gillett-Perez
We caught up with Rizer to who created the PW Digital Gateway,
understand that story, and find out a massive landsale to data center Chief Marketing Officer
Dan Loosemore
how Loudoun is recovering from operators that could reshape the
Dominion's surprise power crisis. Virginia data center landscape. Head Office
Mary Ann Ghadban never wanted DatacenterDynamics
Start big to sell, and was settling into retired life 22 York Buildings,
John Adam Street,
Our journey to understand the future of - until a data center and high voltage
London, WC2N 6JU
Virginia begins with Digital Realty. power lines came along. So she took
We tour one of their massive million control, and decided to leave on her
square foot data halls and then head own terms.
to Digital Dulles, an ambitious plan © 2022 Data Centre Dynamics Limited All
to build a gigawatt campus next to an The mega campus rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, electronic,
airport. Finally, we leave Virginia for nearby mechanical, photocopying, recording
The company still has plenty of Maryland to understand Quantum Sebastian Moss or otherwise, or be stored in any
retrieval system of any nature, without
runway for growth, but warned that Loophole's plans to build a giant Editor-in-Chief prior written permission of Data Centre
Dynamics Limited. Applications for
written permission should be directed
there is no more land left in Loudoun. campus for data centers to build on. to the editorial team at editorial@
datacenterdynamics.com. Any views or
opinions expressed do not necessarily
represent the views or opinions of Data
Centre Dynamics Limited or its affiliates.
Disclaimer of liability: Whilst every effort
Dive even deeper has been made to ensure the quality and
accuracy of the information contained in
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Whitespace
>>CONTENTS
News
The biggest data center news stories of
NEWS IN BRIEF
Michigan Representatives
introduce bills to remove
data center tax exemptions
“These [bills] are corporate cronyism
the last three months at its finest,” Michigan Democratic
Representative Yousef Rabhi said of two
proposed bills.
Google starts to pay tax on

Oregon data center, after 15
years
The company has received a $5.2 million
tax bill from Wasco County for the facility
in The Dalles which it built in 2006,
which has now expired.
Datagrid files land use

application for 100+MW
data center on New
Zealand’s South Island
Datagrid bought a 43-hectare site in
January 2022. The company aims to
build up to ten 6,500 sq m (70,000 sq ft)
10MW modules totaling 65,000 sq m.
Leap second set to be killed

off before 2035
After Meta cancels Odense data Governments around the world have
center expansion, projects are being agreed to put an end to leap seconds,
which are added to coordinated
“rescoped” globally universal time (UTC) to keep it aligned

with astronomical time (UT1). 27 such
Meta is reviewing a number of under- “This is why we are focusing our efforts on leap seconds have been added since
construction data center projects around the building a new generation of data centers.” the practice began.
world as part of a drastic design change for AI When asked why the Odense site couldn’t
workloads. be retooled for the new designs, Münster said:
The Facebook-owner in December laid “We are focused on building AI capacity and as Legrand acquires UK UPS
off its primary contractor on two data center of now, this site does not fit our current needs.” firm Power Control
projects in Denmark, ending development on Those facilities will be liquid cooled, the The companies said the acquisition will
the Odense expansion. company said at the Open Compute Summit allow Power Control and Legrand to help
Now, DCD understands, it is reworking in October. customers ensure that they have the right
some of its 11 under-development projects for At the time, it appeared like the shift would UPS and other mission critical power
new designs, which themselves are still under be gradual, but the company now seems to solutions in place to meet potential
development - with the first such pause in be making a drastic switch. The Denmark supply volatility over the coming months.
Temple, Texas. decision, at least, appears to have been on “We want to develop our presence in the
This may include the cancelation of quite short notice - for example, the contractor UK,” Legrand’s CEO said.
contracts with contractors for existing designs, for the Odense data center was only brought
but our sources note that Odense is the only in this August.
one where a new development is currently not Odense will still see the completion of a AWS to keep hiring and
planned. The others are being “rescoped,” which smaller expansion that was well underway. building data centers, after
will likely impact their construction timelines, It is believed that data centers that are near wider Amazon cuts and
and require new contracts (and potentially completion on the older design will still be layoffs
approval by local authorities), but are still finished as is. Amazon Web Services (AWS) said that
expected to ultimately end in new data centers. Meta last month announced it would lay it plans to keep hiring next year, after
“Supporting AI workloads at scale requires off 11,000 employees, some 13 percent of its the broader company laid off more
a different type of data center than those built entire workforce, amid worsening economic than 10,000 people. AWS implemented
to support our regular online services,” Meta’s conditions, impacts to its business model from an executive hiring freeze earlier this
Nordics comms manager Peter Münster Apple, and an as-yet-unsuccessful pivot to the year, and laid off contractors, as well as
told DCD when the Odense expansion was metaverse. workers at Luna cloud gaming.
canceled. bit.ly/Metastasized
6 | DCD Magazine • datacenterdynamics.com

>>CONTENTS DCD Magazine #47
in cooling, and will start the process to move

gradually: “Starting immediately, Equinix
will begin to define a multi-year global
roadmap for thermal operations within its
data centers aimed at achieving significantly
more efficient cooling and decreased carbon
impacts,” says the press release.
In its announcement, Equinix points
out that increasing temperatures will allow
its customers to reduce the Scope 3 carbon
emissions associated with their data center
operations. Scope 3 emissions are those from
a company’s supply chain, and are important
- but are proving difficult to reduce.
Equinix has lined up support from
analysts and hardware vendors.
“Most data centers operate within the
Equinix will run its data centers restrictive temperature and humidity
bands, resulting in environments that are
hotter, eventually unnecessarily cooler than required,” says

a press release quote from Rob Brothers,
Equinix has promised to “adjust the the announcement will have no immediate program vice president, data center services,
thermostat,” increasing the temperature in impact on existing customers. Customers will and analyst at IDC.
its data centers to reduce energy spent in be notified when the thermostat is going up He added that Equinix wants to “change the
cooling systems. at the site where their equipment is hosted. way we think about operating temperatures
The giant colocation company has A temperature of 27°C has been within data center environments”, saying:
promised to shift temperatures closer to recommended by industry bodies for “With this initiative, Equinix will play a key role
27°C (80°F) across its global data center fleet, many years and is approved by hardware in driving change in the industry and help
which will lead to less energy wasted in manufacturers. It is also used by hyperscale shape the overall sustainability story we all
unnecessary data center cooling. This is an cloud companies that successfully run their need to participate in.”
unusual move, as colocation providers often equipment in their own facilities at even In response to a question from DCD,
operate at lower temperatures than necessary higher temperatures. However, colocation Equinix said that: “There is no immediate
to avoid upsetting the customers who own customers and enterprise data centers impact on our general client base, as we
the equipment in their facilities, and fear that have often continued to use temperatures expect this change to take place over several
overheating may damage it. that industry standards bodies regard as years. Equinix will work to ensure all clients
Equinix plans to allay these fears by unnecessarily low. receive ample notification of the planned
applying the increased temperatures change to their specific deployment site.”
Equinix explains that increased
bit.ly/HotDataCenterNews
gradually over several years, explaining that temperatures will result in less energy used
Digital Realty CEO Bill Stein leaving,

CFO Andy Power takes helm
Digital Realty CEO Bill Stein has been terminated from his role as CEO,
effective immediately.
The colo giant announced today that its board of directors has appointed
current president and chief financial officer, Andrew P. Power, as its CEO and
to the board of directors, effective immediately.
In an SEC filing on the change, Digital said the board “approved the
termination of A. William Stein as Chief Executive Officer of the company
without cause, effective immediately” on December 13. No reason for the
change was given, but it noted Stein will receive around $15 million in cash
and various other separation payments and benefits.
According to another SEC filing from August 2021, Stein’s employment
with the company was changed to “automatically be extended each year for
successive one-year periods until either the employer or Mr. Stein provides
60 days written notice of non-extension prior to the expiration of the then-
current term.”
Digital said in a statement: “Bill was explicitly terminated ‘without
cause’ pursuant to his employment contract. This is different from being
terminated for cause.”
bit.ly/PowerTakesPower

Whitespace >>CONTENTS
reason for this seems to be a change in

hard drive engineering. While hard drives
have normally been sealed to prevent the
ingress of dust, the arrival of helium-filled
hard drives means that such drives are
now hermetically sealed, making them
compatible with immersion cooling.
To carry out the test, Iceotope and Meta
added an Iceotope precision immersion
liquid cooling system, immersing the drives
in dielectric fluid and fitting a dedicated
dielectric loop and a liquid-to-liquid heat
exchanger and pump.
Facebook-owner Meta then measured
temperature variation across the hard drives
and cooling pump power in the air-cooled
Iceotope and Meta demonstrate liquid and liquid-cooled systems.
The results showed the variance in
cooling for hard drives temperature between all 72 HDDs was just
3°C, regardless of their location inside the
Immersion cooling specialist Iceotope rack, along with two single socket nodes, rack. The cooling system released its heat
and social media company Meta have two SAS expander cards, a NIC, and a power to a secondary water circuit, and the drives
demonstrated that immersion cooling can distribution board, and re-engineered it for operated reliably with rack water inlet
be safely used with hard drive storage - by single-phase immersion cooling. temperatures up to 40°C.
re-engineering an air-cooled storage system The test was important because On top of that, the system was efficient,
to be cooled by liquid. hard drives, with capacities up to 20TB, with cooling power at less than five percent
The study found the liquid-cooled currently provide 90 percent of the storage of the total power consumption. And the
version of the system had a more uniform in data centers (according to research by companies assert that liquid cooling will
temperature, and the power required to Cybersecurity Ventures). While increasing mitigate vibrations that have been known to
cool the system was reduced to less than power densities are driving data centers to cause damage or failure of hard drives.
five percent of the system’s total power consider immersion cooling, hard drives Chassis immersion might seem an
consumption. The silent operation of the have normally been excluded for fear extreme option, but Iceotope argues that
system also protected the hard drive from that they might be incompatible with the other forms of liquid cooling such as it is less
acoustic vibrations which can be an issue for technique. invasive than cold plates, tank immersion,
air-cooled hard drives. According to Iceotope, the test found or two-phase immersion, and allows user
The test took a standard commercial that hard drive systems in a rack form factor access for servicing, and the ability to hot-
air-cooled, high-density storage system “turned out to be an ideal fit for precision swap drives.
that held seventy-two hard drives in a 40U immersion cooling technology.” One bit.ly/ColdColdStorage
QTS New Jersey data center roof

catches fire
A fire broke out at a QTS data center in New Jersey in the early hours of
Wednesday, November 23.
The fire was reported at 02:45 am, and extinguished by 05:00 hours, with no
casualties. However, the local fire department reports the fire was extinguished
with heavy flows of water, and extra care had to be taken on the site due to
flammable building materials on site to build an extension to the facility.
“Early Wednesday morning, authorities responded to a fire on a concrete and
steel structure under construction adjacent to QTS’ Piscataway data center,” QTS
said. “The local fire department... fully extinguished the fire shortly after arrival.”
QTS has been building a two-story, 90,000 sq ft extension to a data center on
the site. The fire broke out in this new construction, and did not spread to the
adjacent operational data center, which was unscathed.
The spokesperson explained: “QTS determined that several pallets of roofing
material stored on the roof for future installation caught fire. The cause has
not been determined. No injuries or customer disruption was reported. The
operational data center adjacent to the construction site was not impacted.”
QTS bought the data center site from DuPont Fabros in 2016. The 38-
acre campus already holds two facilities, as well as the new building under
construction.
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Whitespace >>CONTENTS
Eco-Caverne: Underground data centers can be built

under existing buildings, claim APL and Eccus
French data center engineering Eccus says it can build underground, has already been built or in a saturated
company APL is proposing a novel using the same techniques as zone,” says APL’s announcement.
solution to data center location: lights- underground road and railway tunnels, The data center builder is making
out data centers in newly-constructed and deliver secure underground space much of the heat advantages,
underground caverns. quickly compared with building above proposing the facilities’ waste heat
Eco-Caverne, designed by Swiss- ground, and with other benefits. The can be used directly to warm buildings
based underground construction Eco-Cavernes can be built under above. APL says a 2,000 sqm (21,500
startup Eccus, is based on new existing buildings, and provide space sq ft) data center can supply 22GWh of
underground space excavated 30m where land is otherwise unavailable. heat energy per year, enough for 2,000
under existing terrain. APL says these APL is applying this idea to data homes.
underground facilities can be build up centers, which it plans to offer in The facilities can also be run without
to 20 percent cheaper than building France and Switzerland: “This new day-to-day staff, allowing the operator
above-ground, and have benefits solution makes it possible for a to reduce oxygen levels to 13 percent,
including providing waste heat to warm company to create or complete its cutting fire risks.
nearby buildings. computer hosting area on land that bit.ly/DataDownUnder
Numerous data centers have been
built in underground caverns, claiming
advantages in cooling and resilience.
Eccus intends to take these
advantages to urban areas, adding
further benefit: the Eco-Caverne will
be easy to access, and create available
space in completely built-up areas.
The Eco-Caverne is a waterproof
cylinder 30m underground, up to
150m long. The chambers will be built
in one of three standard diameters;
“Vega” approximately 10m, “Rigel”
approximately 13m, and “Hadar”
around 15m. Each chamber will be
provided with a 3m x 6.5m lift with a
capacity of 12 tonnes at one end, and
an emergency exit at the other.
The chambers will also have
ventilation, security systems, and a fire
detection and prevention system.
French startup Denv-R plans EU to study space data centers

Thales Alenia Space will lead the European Commission’s
floating data centers in cities ASCEND feasibility study for data centers in orbit.
‘Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emission
and Data sovereignty’ is part of the EU’s Horizon Europe
A French startup is proposing to float data centers on urban rivers.
research program, and aims to see if data centers in space
Denv-R plans to launch facilities cooled by river water, starting with
would lead to fewer emissions than those on Earth.
a test facility in Nantes next year. The company’s two founders, based
The data centers would rely on solar power plants
at the IMT Atlantique engineering school in Nantes, say this will reduce
generating several hundred megawatts, which would also
energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
be in space.
The company is planning to float a demonstration system on the
They would then link to the Earth via high-throughput
Loire river by the Quai Wilson island in Nantes, in June 2023.
optical communications.
There is only limited information on Denv-R’s website, but according
The first stage of the study sets out to answer a critical
to an article on 20 Minutes, the idea sounds similar to the barges
question - whether the emissions created by producing and
pioneered by the US company Nautilus, which has a floating facility in
launching the space data centers would be less than that
California, alongside one in development in Ireland, and a land-based
generated by ground based ones.
data center in Maine.
Then it will study whether it is possible to develop the
Denv-R says its system will be smaller than Nautilus,’ making it more
necessary launch solution and to ensure the deployment
suitable for deployment on urban rivers. It also circulates water passively,
and operability of these spaceborne data centers using
without the need for pumps.
robotic assistance technologies.
Based on the render provided by IMT Atlantique, the facilities appear
to follow a catamaran-like design, with two hulls next to each other. bit.ly/SpaceToExpand
bit.ly/DataDownUnder

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>>CONTENTS
Whitespace
Nvidia and Microsoft

partner to build
huge cloud-based AI
supercomputer
GPU maker Nvidia and cloud
giant Microsoft have entered
into a multi-year collaboration
to build “one of the most
powerful AI supercomputers in
the world.”
The cloud-based system
will use Nvidia GPUs and
networking gear, as well as use
Nvidia’s AI software stack.
Specifics were not disclosed, Microsoft acquires hollow core fiber firm
but Nvidia said that the deal
will add tens of thousands of
Lumenisity
Nvidia A100 and H100 GPUs, Microsoft has acquired UK-based Lumenisity Microsoft company said the acquisition will
as well as Quantum-2 400Gb/s Limited, a manufacturer of hollow core fiber (HCF) expand its ability to ‘further optimize its global
InfiniBand networking gear. solutions. cloud infrastructure’ and serve Microsoft’s Cloud
“As part of the collaboration, A type of optical fiber technology, HCF features Platform and Services customers with strict
Nvidia will utilize Azure’s scalable an air-filled center channel that is surrounded latency and security requirements. Terms of the
virtual machine instances to by a ring of glass tubes, akin to a honeycomb deal were not shared.
research and further accelerate pattern. The design allows for higher capacity with Lumenisity’s HCF solutions uses a proprietary
advances in generative AI, a minimized chromatic dispersion. design where light propagates in an air core,
rapidly emerging area of AI in Though not a new technology, interest in the which it claims has ‘significant advantages’ over
which foundational models like technology has been growing as performance traditional cable built with a solid core of glass.
Megatron Turing NLG 530B and reliability issues have improved. “Organizations within the healthcare, financial
are the basis for unsupervised, Lumenisity was formed in 2017 as a spin- services, manufacturing, retail, and government
self-learning algorithms to create off from the Optoelectronics Research Centre sectors could see significant benefit from HCF
new text, code, digital images, (ORC) at the University of Southampton to solutions as they rely on networks and data
video or audio,” Nvidia said. commercialize its HCF technologies. The centers that require high-speed transactions,
When the system comes company had raised £12.5 million; euNetworks enhanced security, increased bandwidth, and
online, customers will be able was a customer, while BT had conducted trials high-capacity communications,” Microsoft said of
to deploy thousands of GPUs with the fiber firm. It recently opened a 40,000 sq the acquisition.
in a single cluster to train large ft HCF manufacturing facility in Romsey, UK. bit.ly/AHollowVictory
language models, complex
recommender systems, run
generative AI models, and
more. A date was not disclosed
Peter’s Azure factoid
for when the supercomputer is The London Stock Exchange announced that Azure will be its
expected to launch, but it will
preferred cloud provider... after Microsoft invested in it. The company
likely be installed in phases.
bit.ly/BringBackSiliconGraphics
has won similar contracts by investing in Cruise, OpenAI, and others.
Microsoft acquires struggling DPU

company Fungible for $190 million
Microsoft is believed to have picked up DPU larger players entered the market, including
firm Fungible. Nvidia, Intel, and AMD. Lightbits, Liqid, and
Data processing units (DPUs) are a GigaIO also took market share.
relatively new class of programmable This August, the company laid off staff as
processor that manages how data moves its sales slowed and its cash piles dwindled.
through a data center, offloading networking SemiAnalysis reports that the company
tasks and helping optimize application initially tried to sell itself to Meta, but failed. It
performance. was in talks with Microsoft for a custom silicon
Fungible was founded in 2015 as the first deal, but as its options narrowed, it sold to the
company to pitch such a product to the cloud, company for a fire sale price.
and managed to raise over $370 million. Microsoft is believed to have no interest in
But the company, co-founded by the selling Fungible’s kit to external customers.
founder of Juniper Networks, struggled as bit.ly/AFungibleToken

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DCD Magazine #47 >>CONTENTS
The future of
the data center Sebastian Moss
Editor-in-Chief
heartland
Buddy Rizer on what’s next
T
he making of Loudoun County as the heart of
the data center industry wasn’t always a foregone
conclusion.
for Loudoun County It had to survive the dot-com bubble bursting,
build its credibility in a cautious industry, and find
ways to keep on growing, no matter what. Now, its position
is secure, with the Virginia county cementing its place as the
capital of a demanding industry.
But Loudoun, and Ashburn within it, face new headwinds
as power and land demands outstrip supplies, and some locals
push back against the preponderance of one industry.
To understand how Loudoun will adapt in the current
climate, and what it means for the future of data centers in
the country, we sat down with the man who made it possible
- Buddy Rizer, Loudoun’s executive director for economic
development.
“When it all started here, it came by accident,” he explained.
“The Internet exchange was in Tyson's Corner, but the federal
government realized that you could just drive a truck into that
building, and moved it out here.”
That was followed by AOL and WorldCom, and some of the
first dedicated data centers in the country.
Photography by Sebastian Moss
It was the height of the dot-com bubble, and "they were all
putting fiber in the ground. Companies like PSINet and UUNET
were just throwing money around and valuations were just
stupid."
Then came the crash. "That kind of blew up," Rizer said, with
PSINet going bankrupt in 2001, and UUNET owner WorldCom
filing for what was then the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection in history a year later due to widespread fraud.
Rizer was brought on to the economic development team in
2007 with a simple aim: Increase county revenues. "81 percent of
our tax revenue was coming from residences," he recalled. "And,
as we saw during the housing bubble a year later, that was not
good."
Looking out his window, Rizer pointed to three data centers
built during the first boom. "They sat empty for years, they never
got filled, until I was able to convince Digital Realty to move in."
“If we're at 28 million square The early companies may have left, but their infrastructure
was all there - available for a new crop of corporations to buy up
feet in Loudoun today, we could for cheap and build more sustainable businesses on top of.
definitely exceed 40 million at total "That was purposeful, that was something that we saw as
an opportunity. When I hear people say, ‘Loudoun’s success
build-out" was a lightning strike’… it was purposeful, we looked at that as

>>CONTENTS Where data centers call home 
an opportunity and I had to be proactive in that unpredictability that's going to impact more of unrestricted growth in the last year,
building that," Rizer said. our budget process for the next three or four and do you know how many data centers
years is not ideal. And we were already into we've turned down? One. It's not like we've
"I was going to every show, we were
our budget planning when we found this turned off the spigot.”
trying to get deals done," he said, sitting in
out.”
front of a stuffed gorilla wearing hundreds While they haven’t turned down that
of lanyards from various events he visited. But the Dominion delays, the scale of many data centers, the dwindling number of
"With CyrusOne, wherever [then-CEO] Kevin which we are still learning, represent just a large tracts of land and skyrocketing
Timmons was speaking at a conference, I temporary blip in the story of Loudoun, Rizer land prices have driven companies to
was going to that conference and sitting in argues. neighboring counties.
the front row, just so he could see me, and
“It sucks for those companies that had “It's not like if Prince William wins or
so I could talk to him after. He always said,
already deployed investment into the county, Frederick wins a deal that we lose,” Rizer
'I think we're too late to get in,' and all these
and then now find out that they can't power said. “We have limited resources and limited
things, but then when they came in, they
the buildings that they built. But that hasn't land, and now limited power. I would rather
were incredibly successful.”
paused any of the demand for the land. it come to the region than not at all. I'm
Proudly surveying the data center People are still trying to secure long runways competitive and I don't like losing, but if
landscape from his window, he continued: so that when the power is here, they'll be able there’s a deal that they can't put here, I'd
"We worked very hard to build this. And to really move pretty quickly. Nothing has rather it go to Prince William."
it was not just us, it was landowners and slowed down the demand on our land.”
The county receives around 31 percent of
Dominion," the power utility.
As it currently stands, the data center its tax revenue from data centers but, at
But after decades of building out the industry takes up around three percent some point, data centers will max out all the
infrastructure that made the unprecedented of the land in Loudoun (with a higher space made available to them, even if the
data center expansion possible, Dominion concentration within Ashburn), and industry stays strong for the foreseeable
this summer shocked the industry with the consumes around two gigawatts of power. At future.
surprise announcement that it could no full-zoned buildout, “maybe it’s five percent
“I think that the idea that data centers are
longer guarantee new power connections of the landmass,” Rizer said, adding that
going to go away anytime soon is probably
for four years. older facilities will eventually be torn down
science fiction,” he said. “Our internal
and rebuilt taller and denser.
"To wake up one day and to find out that research tells us that the demand for data
there's now no new power till '26? I was “If we're at 28 million square feet, we centers outstrips supply through the next
flabbergasted. I really couldn't believe that could definitely exceed 40 million at total 20-30 years. And if it does start to
we ended up there,” Rizer said, admitting build-out. That gets us to five gigawatts, and deteriorate, I don’t think that it starts here.”
that despite their close ties he found out at over a billion dollars of annual revenue.”
But with a limit to growth on the horizon,
the same time as everybody else.
After years of building without limits, he hopes to use the money raised by data
The challenge was understandable, he 2022 also saw the Board of Supervisors limit centers to help promote a more diverse
said - "there's no case study to point to data center projects in some neighborhoods, economy. “Even the data center sector
given the power density we have here," he particularly along Route 7. The new rules wouldn't believe that it makes sense to have
cautioned. "There were a lot of factors, there will also require data centers to adopt all of your eggs in one basket,” he said.
was the Covid growth, and the shift in 2017, higher-quality building designs and tougher
“We're trying to build Life Science cluster,
when the hyperscalers came in, where their environmental rules depending on their
we're trying to build a cybersecurity
ramp up of power is much quicker. They proximity to housing.
industry, and take advantage of the Dulles
bring it on like that,” he said, snapping his
“There's always going to be pushback Airport, and take advantage of the fact that
fingers. “That changed everything.”
when things start to get big,” Rizer said. we now have Metro,” he said, referencing the
Dominion’s announcement was a similar “That's a natural part of the conversation. But Silver Line rail extension connecting
sudden snap. “No one's really been able to there is a difference between process and Loudoun to DC that took nearly two decades,
explain to me how we went from the idea policy - the process has been tough, I’m not but opened in the week of our conversation.
of unlimited power that we always just gonna hide from that. But when you look at
“There's really three things that have been
assumed we had, to suddenly 'we don't it from a policy standpoint, honestly, I don't
total game changers for us - one was 60
know.'" find it overly restrictive.”
years ago, when the airport came, the
Beyond just the immediate impact on the He believes the certainty of the new second was the tech infrastructure that was
data center sector, the sudden cessation of policy will be welcomed by the industry, built here pre-bubble burst, and then I think
power and buildouts meant that the county’s while design standards are only for the worst Metro is going to be the third.”
tax revenue plans were - and still are - offenders - most new builds already meet
The future of Loudoun, he hopes, will
thrown into disarray. the requirements. Rizer said that while he
involve more data centers than ever before -
welcomes more data centers, it’s important
"We had projected 20 percent year-over- but will rely on them less as new sectors
to set restrictions in some areas to build
year revenue growth because that's what sprout alongside it. “I don't feel like what
“unique communities where people want
we traditionally had," Rizer said. "Now we we've done here in Loudoun County is the
to be and also protect Western Loudoun
know that that's probably not going to be end of anything.”
County and protecting the farmland there. I
the case. So that does impact our county
don't see a scenario where we're going to go Still, he is happy to reflect on how far the
budget. When you're dealing with half a
west of Route 15. I just don't know that that's county has come from its dot-com bubble
billion dollars or more, 20 percent of that is a
what we need to do.” days. “It's so cool to be the biggest in the
big number.
world at something, to be able to have this
He added: “There are places where we
“When we're trying to plan schools, roads, industry that has built what it has. There's
don't think there should be data centers. And
community services, parks, sheriffs, fire something to be said for that.” 
I think that's okay. There's been a decade or
departments, and all of those things, having

Digital Realty's
Virginia master plan Sebastian Moss
Editor-in-Chief
Touring a million square foot data

center, and a gigawatt construction site

>>CONTENTS Digital's Reality 
A s one of the world’s largest data

center companies, Digital Realty
has an outsized presence in the
data center hotspot of Virginia.
The company has some of the earliest

buildings on data center alley, dating back
The company operates around 600MW
of IT load in Loudoun today, and is building
a new ‘Digital Dulles’ campus that is planned
to add another gigawatt on top. “What I think
is interesting is we have almost 1,000 acres
inside of the Loudoun County area, and 575
acres of that is left to develop,” Sharp said.
nearly two decades, along with some of “There's a lot of runway.”
the largest, and is building a massive new
Its involvement in the county dates back
campus right near Dulles Airport.
to Digital’s earliest days, when it acquired
We visited a million-square-foot facility three data centers starting in 2005. It also built
and toured its new construction site to its own, and gained more facilities with the
understand Digital’s future in Virginia. “It's acquisition of DuPont Fabros.
such a critical market, not only for Digital, but “Once we started development of our
for the industry overall. It is the gold standard campus, we just never stopped,” Rich Becher,
of availability zones on Earth,” company CTO design manager at Digital Realty, said. “When
Chris Sharp said. I was preparing for this interview, I learned
“The largest cloud availability zones on

Earth are in this market. And what we're
seeing now is the adjunct workload that is
going to drive more demand is AI"
that the first customer we put into that newest designs, several generations on from
campus is still with us,” he added. “That was a the older concrete Virginia sites.
happy thing to learn.”
At over one million square feet, it is a huge
The company currently has no plans data center in its own right. "When we were
to tear down its older facilities and rebuild building 'Building L,' one of the crazy things
them larger and denser. "They still serve we considered was a moving walkway,"
their needs," Becher said. "Our customers are Becher admitted. "It's so long that we went to
happy with them, and are staying in them." a manufacturer to understand how they work,
but ultimately never put it in."
He noted that the components and
features of the data centers that age faster are We had to rely on our legs to tour the site,
modular, allowing for them to be replaced which has a utility power capacity of 120MW.
more frequently than the building itself. The company's largest in the state, the first
"That modularity is what really allows customer moved into the data center in
those buildings to keep up with customers' October 2017.
evolution within them," Sharp added. "We put our last customer in that building
"It is extremely tedious for these larger in December of 2020," Becher said proudly.
deployments to ever lift and shift." "I think we sold the building faster than we
Beyond the size and the number of stories, built it."
telling apart the older facilities from the new Developing a single building of that size
ones is easy: Just look for windows. “It's was a learning moment for the company.
funny how that topic has evolved,” Becher “When it launched, we only had one freight
said. “In the beginning, we wanted to make elevator, and then we added another one
the building’s appearance comfortable for our
because it was so busy with everybody
customers - concrete so cars don't get in, and
moving in,” Becher said. “Now any building
no windows so people don't get in.
that gets close to that size will get two freight
“What we're seeing now, and not just elevators.”
in Virginia, is that [local governments] are
With Digital Dulles, its huge planned
pushing back on the appearance of the
campus adjacent to the airport, Digital Realty
buildings, they don't want these blank wall
is planning smaller individual buildings, but a
buildings. So now they have glass on the
larger overall footprint. “We have 14 buildings
outside, but you still can’t get in.”
planned on Digital Dulles,” Becher said. “The
The facility DCD toured, 'Building L' at biggest buildings are larger than half the size
Round Table Plaza, is built to the company's of Building L.”

>>CONTENTS Digital's
DigitalReality
Realty 
The company hopes that the facilities

will represent the next stage of Digital’s life
in the data center capital. It also may be the
company’s last major land deal in the vicinity.
“Believe me, these large blocks of land - there
are no more left,” Sharp said. “And, at the
size we operate, it was getting upwards of a
million to a million-and-a-half per acre inside
of this area,” he added, noting that with Digital
Dulles they were able to get the land for
“around half of that.”
That fundamental land limit will

eventually mean the end of the unperturbed
growth in Loudoun (delayed somewhat by
Dominion’s power issues, which will impact
Digital Dulles to an unknown extent). But it
doesn’t mean the end of Loudoun as a data
center hub - far from it, Sharp argued.
“The largest cloud availability zones on

Earth are in this market,” he said. “And what
we're seeing now is the adjunct workload that
is going to drive more demand over some
period of time is artificial intelligence. We see
this as being the next epicenter of artificial
intelligence, because of the fact that some of
the largest data oceans on Earth exist in this
market. And you want to do analytics against
that.”

Cloud providers don’t want to have fiber repeaters within the same
availability zone, so that means operating within 2-12km of another data
center to have a “contiguous” or parent/child setup. Sharp envisions
high-density data centers for AI workloads close to facilities working on
analytics, storage, and other tasks, all operating under a single availability
zone.
That requires a lot of interconnection. “Once you build an epicenter,

there's a lot of value both in how it's interconnected, and just the
efficiencies from the amalgamation of infrastructure and the matchup of
customers,” Sharp said.
With Digital Dulles, its meet-me-rooms are much larger than its
existing sites, on a percentage basis, “because of the amount of physical
fibers and conduits required to run it,” Sharp said, with those fibers
connecting to its data centers as well as those of its rivals.
“ServiceFabric is absolutely everything,” he said, referencing the

company’s global service orchestration platform. “Because we are open,
and so we don't care if your workloads are in another competitor's data
center or ours.”
Given the desire for every major company to have an IT presence in

Virginia, and the preponderance of potential customers, it is unlike any
other market. “There's just some uniqueness with other competitors, it’s
more like coopetition,” Sharp said. “Quite frankly, there's more demand
than we could ever meet.
“And we don't see that slowing down anytime soon.” 

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www.excool.com Issue 47 • December 2022 | 21

New kids on the

block: Virginia’s Dan Swinhoe
News Editor
newest entrants
on the hyperscale
scene
PowerHouse and CorScale
look to make a splash in
Virginia
V
irginia remains the main hub opening its account with a sizeable data year, the facility will offer 45MW across six
of data centers worldwide. But center project. The company, founded by data halls. The site, which DCD visited in
while the area looks increasingly American Real Estate Partners (AREP) and November 2022, is reportedly expandable up
full, new companies are still backed by investment firm Harrison Street, is to 80MW.
popping up looking to serve seeking to start with an 80MW facility.
Harrison Street and AREP acquired
the hyperscalers’ insatiable demand for new
“Like a lot of other companies, it was the site for $21.5 million in January 2021.
capacity.
Covid that really pushed it,” says Luke Kipfer, The land, formerly home to a retail strip
Two new debutantes, PowerHouse and vice president of data center development mall-type facility, was previously owned by
CorScale, are set to launch new hyperscale and construction at AREP/PowerHouse Data Chirisa Investments, which bought the site
facilities in Virginia in the near future. Centers. “AREPs portfolio was heavily in in 2018 and had planned to build a 280,000
class A office space, so we've been actively sq ft (26,000 sqm), 30MW data center.
Both are newly-founded by large, well-
diversifying. And our partnership with
established real estate firms. Both are backed DPR is the construction partner with
Harrison Street lets us go all in on the data
by large investment firms. And both are set PowerHouse on the facility. And despite
center model.”
to develop large amounts of new capacity being in one of the areas most affected
dedicated to serving the big cloud providers. The company is planning developments by Dominion’s surprise capacity issues in
on three sites across Northern Virginia. Ashburn, Kipfer suggests the site will have
DCD visited both companies’ maiden data
Six buildings are currently in planning or enough power for the launch of the first
center development sites – PowerHouse in
underway totaling 2.1 million sq ft (195,100 phase and Dominion should hopefully have
Loudoun County’s Ashburn and CorScale’s
sqm) and up to 338MW of critical power. the issues sorted by the time the facility is
outside Gainesville in Prince William County
reaching full capacity around 2026. An on-
– and spoke to company executives about Sat on 10 acres and currently under
site substation is being developed on part of
being the new kids on the block. construction, ABX-1 is set to be the first
the project which will serve both ABX-1 and
building completed. It will comprise one
surrounding facilities.
AREP seeks to become a power two-story 265,000 sq ft (25,000 sqm)
building. Located at 21529 Beaumeade On Sterling’s Pacific Boulevard,
player with PowerHouse Circle in Ashburn, the first 15MW will launch PowerHouse Pacific will comprise three
In the heart of Ashburn, PowerHouse is in 2023; at full build-out at the end of the three-story buildings totaling 24 data

>>CONTENTS New kids on the block 
halls across 1.1 million sq ft (102,200 sqm).

Photgraphy by Sebastian Moss
Construction is due to start in 2024 and
complete in 2024/2025; the site will offer
265MW.
The Pacific campus was previously part

of the former AOL headquarters and most
recently used by Yahoo!. New parent Oath
sold the 43.3-acre property in December for
$136 million.
And, finally, the company is developing

a 23-acre site in Arcola’s Arcola Boulevard.
PowerHouse Arcola will comprise two
two-story buildings and 12 data halls across
614,300 sq ft (57,070 sqm). The buildings will
offer 54MW and 66MW. Construction is due
to begin in April 2024 and end in 2025, with
the second building finished in 2026.
Kipfer said the sites aren’t yet pre-leased,

but there is “strong interest” from clients and
the company expects them to be leased soon.
Before joining AREP, Kipfer was regional

director at Direct Line Global and director of
construction at Markley Group in the Boston
area.
“I came out here just to be more involved

in some of these larger-scale projects,” he
says.
“In Boston, it was more Edge

deployments, smaller enterprise, higher
ed, pharmaceutical. So they had some real
requirements, but they were all a one-off
build. Even though the numbers and scale
is different, the projects here are almost less head start in their deployments.” center firm, they've got a lot of experience
complex. With a lot of hyperscale builds, it's that the team that it's great to work with,
the same widget 100 times over.” Prior to setting up PowerHouse, AREP
they know the market,” says Kipfer, who adds
acquired what is now known as Quantum
Kipfer said PowerHouse is an AREP- the company is looking to expand out of
Park in 2016 for a reported $212 million
owned entity, with the projects operated in a Northern Virginia with Harrison’s help.
alongside hedge fund Davidson Kempner
joint-venture model with Harrison Street.
Capital Management from Verizon. On whether hyperscalers will continue
While Harrison Street is well-versed in to need outside developers, he says the
The park is the former UUNet/MCI combination of having the right sites and
data center investments, AREP doesn’t have
Worldcom site that was a key connectivity development teams, alongside the need for
a long tradition of developing data centers,
hub dating to the early days of the Internet; flexible capital deployment will mean there is
and it’s flexible in what it will deliver.
Verizon had an existing data center there always a need for outside developers.
“While AREP's new to data centers, and Aligned has since developed on the site.
they've been a developer in this area for Last year, DigitalBridge-backed Landmark “There's always going to be a certain
20 years,” says Kipfer. “We've got very deep Dividend acquired a portfolio of assets in the need there. There seem to be a lot fewer
contacts with brokers, with local utilities, all Quantum Park campus. individuals in the hyperscale enterprise
the players here that you have to know to teams that are really good at site
make things happen. We're able to get a lot Harrison Street has a number of data development; a lot of them are focused
of sites before they come publicly to market, centers under its ownership. January 2021 on the nuts and bolts of a data center; the
so we're able to get good sites and identify saw the company acquire the Pittock Block UPS, network methodology, things like
power.” carrier hotel in Portland, Oregon, for $326 that,” he says.
million alongside 1547 CSR, and in November
“We're not limited to one development 2021 it acquired CIM Group’s stake in four US “Certain users have different priorities in
model. We’re open to just about everything data centers co-owned with 1547. terms of deployment of capital; some would
right now,” he adds. rather lease it out and spread it out, and
Harrison and 1547 have completed a some want to own.
“We’re developing relationships with number of data center deals together; the
hyperscalers and understanding their "And that's where we've been flexible;
two companies previously acquired the
needs; as long as it's something that has we'll do long-term leases, we'll do leases with
Wells Building carrier hotel in Milwaukee,
market viability, it's something that we're option to buy, we're able to work with a lot
Wisconsin, for $7.25 million in 2020.
interested in. These guys are just building of different users’ of needs for how they are
so quickly, we're basically giving them a “Harrison are a knowledgeable data deploying their infrastructure.”

heavily diversified in real estate utility power. A Dominion Energy on-site

assets, and data centers are one substation will deliver power.
of those real estate and asset The site was bought for $74.5 million from
classes that was interesting to Buchanan Partners in August 2020, by real
them.” estate firm Wolff Co, on behalf of Patrinely.
Like PowerHouse, CorScale “We didn't have to spend a ton of time
isn’t starting small. The and resources putting together the utility
company’s debut project is a plan for that project, it was already relatively
300MW campus in Gainesville, de-risked,” says Bustamante. “We have
Prince William County. The direct access to connectivity adjacent to the
campus, known as Gainesville site, and the power plan for that area with
Crossing, is located close Dominion is already really well vetted, so line
to Manassas Battlefield and of sight to power was really great at that site.
looks set to be joined by QTS It is closer to Loudoun and the core network
and Compass once the two market in Ashburn than something further
companies start development on south, and we thought it was kind of a no-
the PW Gateway project. brainer.”
After breaking ground in Discussions with an end-user are
ongoing to close to agreeing on
a pre-lease for the first building.
While CorScale and Bustamante
declined to name a customer,
DCD understands AWS is in talks
to be their first customer.
Bustamante said the
closing of the site acquisition
occurred around a month
before he joined the company.
He previously worked on
data centers at Apple, Google,
Microsoft, and Rackspace; and
has been joined at Patrinely by
Stuart Levinsky, formerly of Iron
Mountain Data Centers, Switch,
CyrusOne, and Cincinnati Bell.
“I got to be CorScale employee number
one, so I could handpick our team,” he says
on what attracted him to the company. “It
requires very little effort to get capital and get
committee approval to deploy that capital,
CorScale goes big in Prince
and I think that's a significant part of the
William County execution; the visibility to property on a
Like PowerHouse, CorScale is backed by a global basis, through our partner at USAA.”
large and established real estate firm, this Prior to its official launch, Corscale’s
time in the shape of Patrinely Group. And existence was revealed in a press release that
it has the financial backing of real estate said the nascent data center firm was signed
investment firm USAA Real Estate. up to use Ledger7860's carbon accounting
package. Bustamante said the focus on green
While not big names in the data center credentials is one of the ways the company
space, the two companies have the portfolio is hoping to differentiate itself from other
and capital to operate at scale, and have hyperscale-focused developers in the space
experience in the industry. Nic Bustamante, and area.
senior vice president at Corscale/Patrinely
“These guys are also very comfortable
Group, tells DCD that the two companies with and prefer Green development. So
have a history working together and they've already had a number of LEED
developing enterprise data centers – usually Platinum projects. I see a lot of hyperscale
in the 1-5MW range, but in some cases up to early 2022, the first 72MW phase is expected developers who prefer not to do that; the
20MW – as part of office developments. One to come online around Q4 2022 and will traditional hyperscale data centers don't seek
of the most recent examples is HPE’s new consist of a single two-story building with LEED Platinum, Net Zero type of approach.”
HQ in Houston, Texas. eight data halls and office space totaling Another differentiation, according to
“The company [Patrinely] had this approximately 483,000 square feet (44,900 Bustamante, is the company’s ability to
experience building these smaller data sqm). At full build-out, the 130-acre campus deliver complex projects quickly makes them
centers, and for around five years considered will comprise 2.3 million sq ft (213,700 sqm) a desirable partner.
getting into the hyperscale space. It is over five two-story buildings and 306MW of “A lot of developers will say ‘I need perfectly

>>CONTENTS New kids on the block 
“The hyperscalers
are just building
so quickly, we're
basically giving
them a head
start in their
deployments”
level, square, rectangular properties.’ Our Data centers need to be good green spaces that they put in will separate
ability to execute on complexity was already them from those things, but development
neighbors in Virginia
pretty evident with the prior relationships.” needs to be very considerate not just to the
While Loudoun is and will remain the battlefield, but to the locals who are very
As well as the Gainesville Crossing site, epicenter of the world’s data center industry, concerned about it.”
the company is planning a second Virginia things are changing. Quantum Loophole is In Loudoun and Ashburn, both
development in the Kincora area of Sterling looking to bring millions of square feet of Bustamante and Kipfer can foresee data
in Loudoun County. Sat on a 22-acre site, new data center space to Maryland, while centers getting taller, but also more aesthetic.
the company is planning a single 500,000 Prince William County is seeing huge Two and three stories are becoming more
sq ft (46,450 sqm) building, consisting of amounts of development in a short space of common, and DCD has heard rumors of
eight 9MW data halls across three stories. time. But as the geography of the industry an application for a five-story facility being
Other projects are planned in California and changes, the way facilities look and operate submitted.
outside London in the UK. will likely have to change too.
Over the summer Loudoun officials
On the potential capacity issues CorScale’s Gainesville site gaining proposed new zoning rules for data centers
Dominion has in Loudoun’s Ashburn, planning permission, combined with the that would also set out new environmental
Corscale is confident it won’t be affected roll-out of new transmission lines, were standards for building design and noise.
the driving reasons behind local landowner
thanks to its building timeline. “A typical data center that is a big grey
Mary Ann Ghadban gathering other locals
wall-to-wall box? I think that's pretty passé.
“We weren't going to start construction together to sell the initial 800 acres that
And those days are probably behind us,
until 2024 anyway, so we think that our make up part of the new PW Digital Gateway
particularly in Loudoun, and I see that
initial connection date and service date may project.
becoming table stakes in PWC and other
not end up being impacted depending on Bustamante tells DCD the fact QTS markets,” says Bustamante. “Those operators
how they perform fixing things in Loudoun,” and Compass are investing so heavily in that design data centers that have long
explains Bustamante. “You can expect us land adjacent to CorScale is ‘validation’ of mechanical gantries and generators spread
to do more in Virginia. I think we're pretty their idea of building outside of the area’s out across hundreds of acres, I think those
well positioned in that market to continue traditional data center hubs. However, he users are going to have more problems
development there.” says the sheer magnitude of those projects obtaining consent to develop, and they're
means development needs to be very also going to continue to be viewed
Going forward, CorScale aims to stay
carefully considered to ensure it meets negatively.
focused on greenfield development with
energy and sustainability requirements that
some brownfield sites that make sense. On “I think you've got to build a product
locals are happy with.
acquiring existing facilities, the company is that is Class A. People are going to be held
“I fear data center development that to a higher standard [going forward], and I
less keen.
is unchecked. Data centers need to be think that's only fair given the capital that's
“We've looked at a few acquisitions comfortable coexisting wherever they go, coming in.”
and generally said no because they look in any market. We're successful because we
more like repositions or they're relatively work hand in hand with the municipality Kipfer agrees. “Ashburn is never going to
distressed and not of the right scale,” says and user groups; and we shouldn't find go away,” he adds. “This is a desirable place
ourselves at odds with the local community. to be in terms of connectivity and power.
Bustamante. “We see a lot of capacity come
But we want to keep building here, and if
on the market that isn’t bad, but it is not at “What I see in the Gateway Project is
we don't keep a good relationship with the
the magnitude that we like. We can't take a a whole lot of people concerned about
county and the neighbors, we know it's
20MW data center and turn it into a 50MW those things and more, but just the sheer
going to get turned off.” 
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>>CONTENTS Rage for the Machine
NTT 
NTT Global Data

Centers takes the Sebastian Moss
main stage
Editor-in-Chief
Move over RagingWire,

NTT is here
T
here’s a throughline to my conversation with Don Schopp, as
we toured NTT Global Data Centers' VA3 facility in Ashburn,
We're at over a gigawatt Virginia. NTT GDC is ready to play in the big leagues
across our global Schopp joined RagingWire as a senior national account
portfolio. I don't know manager way back in 2012. “We were a family-owned
privately held company, in just one market with two buildings,” he
how many people are recalled. A year later, the Japanese telecoms giant NTT took a large stake
in the company, but remained mostly hands off.
really today running a “We were only so relevant,” Schopp said. By 2017, NTT said it would
data center business at buy the whole business, but its involvement was still limited. At the
same time, it acquired India-based NetMagic, UK-based Gyron, Europe's
that scale” e-shelter, and South Africa-based-Dimension Data, while NTT built out
its own data centers in Malaysia, Japan, and elsewhere.

Growing in
Africa
One of the markets NTT GDC is
looking to expand its presence in is Africa,
first with a presence in South Africa,
before expanding north.
We caught up with Michael

Abendanon, head of NTT GDC MEA, soon
after the launch of its Johannesburg data
center.
Like Schopp, Abendanon is a transfer

from an NTT acquisition - Dimension
Data, which operates nearly a dozen data
centers on the continent.
But NTT has kept that subsidiary

somewhat separate, deciding not to
times as we walked through the facility. “We're merge the older and smaller data centers
at over a gigawatt across our global portfolio. I into the GDC brand. "Those data centers
don't know how many people are really today have been around for a long time,"
running a data center business at that scale.” Abendanon said.
There are obviously two competitors that "Things have moved on. Ultimately,
blow that number out of the water - Equinix Dimension Data won't be building any
and Digital Realty. more data centers going forward, they
will be focusing on taking up space in
"When you look at NTT globally, we're
GDC facilities," he said, with the company
getting to that level," Schopp argued. "We're
bringing over customers to the new
in 30 different countries, and we're growing... facilities.
we're looking at Nairobi, Cape Town. Warsaw,
Milan, Ho Chi Mihn, Singapore, and more." That first new data center opened
this October, with Johannesburg 1 Data
The company has its roots in Asia, where it Center providing 12MW of capacity across
has a huge presence, but "we're now entering 6,000 sqm (64,600 sq ft) once fully built
the main stage in the Americas," he said. out (it is currently half that).
"What our construction plans in the "We're looking to expand in
United States are right now over the next Johannesburg beyond that facility,"
two years will double what we currently have Abendanon said. "We are feverishly
under operations today," he said. "It took all of putting plans together as to the
that time to get to this point. And the next two expansion journey there and in Cape
years will beat that." Town."
Currently, its 'Americas' business just Beyond South Africa, the company is
means the United States, "but expect the looking to East Africa in the short term.
Americas to include Canada and South "And the natural location for East Africa
America," Schopp said. “And then there are would be Kenya," he said.
second-tier markets like Nashville, Austin,
The opportunity is vast, he argues:
Charlotte, Miami, Montreal, Toronto, Salt
"Africa typically lags first world economies
Lake, and Denver that we are looking at.”
by four to seven years, and if you have
Crucially, while its ambitions are still a look at the data center penetration in
dwarfed by the industry's two giants, Schopp Africa, comparative to the rest of the
noted that "NTT is way bigger than them, world, it's got less than one percent of the
bigger than IBM, bigger than Bank of America data center space versus the rest of the
bigger than Cisco. It's a huge company, but world.
It took until 2019 for NTT to mix the
80 percent of its business is in Japan, and “There is definitely lots of room
different companies together, under the
we're part of the global business." for growth in Africa, considering the
brand name of NTT GDC, and still a few more
Being tied to a wider business can haveits population, considering what's happening
years for the disparate businesses to work
with Internet penetration. One might say
together under one corporate culture and a positives and negatives. It could mean
‘guys are you not over-investing in
primary design template. being tied to a slower business, and lost in
Africa?’ Our view is that it is only the tip of
the shuffle of more profitable ventures, but
the iceberg in terms of demand.”
“We've arrived,” Schopp, now VP of Schopp argues that it means access to a
strategic growth & channel sales, said several global customer base and lots of money.

>>CONTENTS Rage for the Machine
NTT 
“What you'll see out

of us over the next
few years is billions
and billions poured
into the US and
globally to construct
data centers”
“What you'll see out of us over the next data centers with a standardized design, and representing 16MW of critical IT load out of
few years is billions and billions poured into how it handles its supply chain. “I would say its 224MW Ashburn data center campus. With
the US and globally to construct data centers,” that we've gotten a lot better than what we 112,000 square feet (10,400 sq m) of data floor
he said. were as RagingWire,” Schopp said. space, it is larger than its new standard design
that spans 21,000 square feet and 6MW.
That has required a maturation of its “Part of that is to admit that we had
business proposition, as it pursues larger to improve, and then the other part was Uniquely, this site also has a huge amount
customers like the hyperscalers. bringing people in to do something about it. of space given over to a large open staircase,
Brittany Miller [previously of Microsoft], leads conference-like center, and offices.
“We're building and attracting more clients
our construction and a lot of people from "We thought it would be nice to have
who want powered shell or want to take down
Facebook and Google are now part of the people in here, a conference room, a NOC,
an entire server room or an entire building,”
NTT family.” and all that," Schopp said. "That's really
he said. “We even build to suit for them, and
that’s not necessarily was what we were The other part is its vendor-managed changed in this era."
known for, but we're now competing against inventory. “On our newer sites we have a That space isn't used as much as it
the heavyweights.” standard build, and we can ship the same was pre-pandemic, but it still isn't worth
products to different data centers,” Schopp knocking it down for more data hall space,
The shift is part of the company’s
said. “Before, we were kind of a wannabe on Schopp said.
evolution, Schopp said. “We came into this
pre-builds and supply chains,” he admitted.
market as a colo company, and started With Loudoun's space at a premium and
moving upstream to bigger single tenants, “Companies like Compass were out in hard to find, NTT GDC is looking to Prince
so building design data centers that are fit for front of us, and they paved the way that we William County as its next Virginia buildout.
those clients.” follow. Now we’re doing that too, and I think
This June, the company said that it had
that's also helped us secure more of those
Currently, hyperscalers are “small purchased nearly 104 acres in the county
large-scale deals.
potatoes” as a percentage of NTT GDC’s to develop a 336MW data center campus in
customer base, but it hopes to increase their "The people on the other end of the table PWC. A month later, utility Dominion said
presence in the years to come. “But we'll would ask the same question that you were that it wouldn't be able to provide power to
never get away from our heritage, because - 'how do I know you're predictable?' Well, new builds in Loudoun.
we'll offer colocation down to the single we have the capital source, the design, and "People were like 'what did you know?'
cabinet,” Schopp said. “Not in every building we have this vendor managed just-in-time but we were just a little bit fortunate in that,"
and every market around the world, but inventory.” Schopp said. "We tried many times to get
where it makes sense.” land and were unsuccessful and then we
The facility we toured was mid-way
It’s also had to improve on how it builds through NTT GDC’s transformation, finally got land." 

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>>CONTENTS Quantum Loophole 
Out of Virginia,
into Maryland
Dan Swinhoe
News Editor
The world’s first multi-tenant

gigawatt data center campus looks
to change the local geography of the
data center world
W
Photography by Vlad-Gabriel Anghel
hile the south side of the Potomac river is home to
the world’s highest concentration of data centers,
Maryland and Frederick County to the north are
largely virgin space.
But as land becomes increasingly scarce and expensive, a new

company is looking to turn Maryland into the next great data
center market outside Washington DC with a new data center park
offering to hyperscalers and wholesalers.
“The growth areas that we're Quantum Loophole: Wholesaler to wholesalers

focused on going outside of the Led by former Terremark and CyrusOne executive Josh
Virginia area; and on Chicago, Snowhorn, Quantum Loophole has partnered with TPG Real Estate
Partners (TREP) and is developing a 2,100-acre, gigawatt-scale data
California, and potentially Dallas” center park in Maryland’s Frederick County.

power ducts, water and to Leesburg in Virginia’s Loudoun County

sewer pump stations and and back, running under the Potomac in
piping, and underground two places as well as the Monocacy river on
fiber distribution ducts, the journey. The infrastructure build out will
beginning in July 2022. include two on-site network centers.
Given its previous use,
most of the land is already There’s something about
zone for industrial uses.
Maryland
Under general
Quantum raised $13 million in seed funding
contractor STO Mission
in 2021 before TREP, the real estate equity
Critical, the site is due to
investment platform of asset firm TPG,
go live with power, fiber,
invested. The size of TREP’s investment in
and water infrastructure
Quantum hasn’t been disclosed, but it has
in late 2023 or early
around a 20 percent stake in the company.
2024. Groundworks for
the first data center have While its investment portfolio includes
already begun, so the stakes in the likes of Airbnb and Dropbox,
first facilities will likely be TPG isn’t known for its dedicated data
ready around the same center investments; its previous telco/
time. communications investments include
AllTell, later acquired by AT&T, and Astound
According to
Broadband. However, TPG previously
Quantum Loophole
invested in the department store chain
director of operations
Neiman Marcus, which was founded by
Chris Quesada, the
members of Snowhorn’s family.
company will be offering
different ownership “We had bidders hunting us down and
models depending on competing to invest in us,” says Snowhorn.
customer needs; the land “TREP are wonderful partners with a deep
will be available to buy, understanding of the data center sector.
Located some 25 miles north of Ashburn
with Quantum owning the supporting fiber,
in Adamstown, the campus is centered “They looked at the assets that were
water, and power infrastructure; or available
around the former Alcoa Eastalco Works for sale; Switch and CyrusOne and lots of
on a long-term lease on which customers
aluminum smelting plant. The land includes other folks out there, but I think that they
can build their own facility; and customers
the plot on which the now-demolished looked at it as a world that was starting to
can ask Quantum to build the facility in
metals plant stood, as well as a number of commoditize itself a little bit. But they looked
more of a powered shell-type arrangement.
surrounding greenfield plots currently used at us as a business, as a wholesaler to the
The latter is reportedly the company’s least
to grow animal feed, as well as a manor wholesalers, that is unique and less at risk of
favored option due to the upfront capital
house from the 1800s. being commoditized. We're going to be the
requirements, but one it will happily do if
single greatest return they've ever seen.”
“We provide land, energy, water, and fiber required. Quantum has previously said it
services at an unprecedented scale,” says expects to deploy individual data center When asked which came first, the site as
Quantum Loophole CEO Josh Snowhorn, modules of 30-120MW capacity in less than an opportunity or the concept of a gigawatt
who has pitched the project as “the nine months. wholesaler, QL tells DCD the company and
wholesaler to wholesalers.” concept pre-empted the interest in the
A key part of the project is the company’s
property.
Work has begun on the site; with QLoop network; a 43-mile fiber conduit
groundworks on supporting infrastructure system able to hold more than 200,000 “I always felt that there was something
such as power distribution and underground strands of fiber running from the campus missing that hadn't really pushed the limits

of scale and building an Internet city-scale

ecosystem that would support mass-
scale interconnection and commonality,
something like a master-planned
community,” says Snowhorn.
The site was acquired for around $100

million; at around $48,000 an acre, that’s across four multi-story buildings, each Snowhorn makes reference to ‘multiple
significantly less than the $3 million per acre spanning 325,000 sq ft (30,200 sqm) and hyperscalers’ and government customers.
paid in parts of Virginia for prime data center 48MW per facility. However, Aligned reached
land. While some of the ‘smaller’ plots measure
out to us to say it's planning a total of 3.3
million sq ft (306,600 sqm) and 264MW. more than 70 acres, operations director
In May 2022, Aligned Data Centers Quesada told us that most interested parties
became the first company to publicly Aligned has already begun work on the are looking at developing multi-building
announce plans to develop a data center at site. The company’s plot is located in the mini-campuses within the wider Quantum
the campus. Andrew Schaap, CEO of Aligned center of the Quantum Loophole campus, Loophole park averaging around 200 acres
Data Centers, said at the time that the with a small number of Aligned-affiliated or more.
“attractive tax exemptions, power availability, staff on-site as DCD was given the tour.
and proximity to Northern Virginia” were key “One of the hyperscalers is engaged
drivers in its decision to choose Frederick Snowhorn previously said the company with us for 300 acres and around 800MW of
has signed contracts with four different power across eight buildings; that will be two
County.
entities totaling more than 240MW for the parcels of four buildings at two stories tall
On its website, Aligned says its Maryland Frederick site, representing the first phase and 100MW each, and they'll interconnect
plot spans 75 acres. There, it says the of power available to the site. It is unclear those and use those as two distinct
company is planning a total of 1.3 million which other companies have leased space availability zones,” explains Snowhorn.
sq ft (120,800 sqm) and 192MW of capacity at the site, or the scale of each project, but “Another client is taking 50 to 65 acres and
they're going to put up anywhere from
three to four two-story buildings in a denser
environment.”
While part of the same PJM marketplace

as Virginia’s Dominion Power, First Energy
is the transmission provider to the site.
230-kilovolt transmission lines already run
through the site and a new 230-kilovolt
on-site substation is scheduled to be built by
First Energy subsidiary Potomac Edison.
“My biggest worry is that 2.4GW is not

enough power; what happens when we go to
liquid cooling, and other things that densify
that same environment? All of a sudden you
could have a four to 10× level of power load
demand requested on the campus, so it's
going to be very interesting to see how well
we can accommodate the future densities.”
The campus will also reportedly include

a “battery farm” to offer large-scale energy
storage.

“We're thinking about a 100-hour level battery farm, so very long

duration to accommodate any variability of outage,” says Snowhorn,
“but also give us the ability to potentially store energy and to play
some arbitrage in the marketplace like peak shaving.”
A little bit of history Out of Virginia, into Maryland

With land prices soaring, power capacity limited in some areas,
and growing opposition from residents, building data centers in
W
hile the bulk of the Frederick site is either former Northern Virginia isn’t as simple as it once was.
smelting plant or farmland, the land includes a little
Some developers are heading further south. Amazon is looking
piece of American history.
to expand into Culpeper and Fauquier Counties, though has faced
The site is home to Carrollton Manor (also known as pushback from residents opposed to such developments. Many
Tuscarora), previously owned by Charles Carroll, one of the are looking to Prince William County, which already has a sizeable
signatories of the US Declaration of Independence and at the market, but faces continued opposition from local groups despite
time the wealthiest man in America. government support.
The land was gifted to him by his father, Charles Carroll of Maryland, however, is largely devoid of data centers, with Frederick
Annapolis. The Carrolls were wealthy landowners, with the surprisingly lacking facilities despite its immediate proximity to
estate once measuring some 17,000 acres. Built around 1820, Loudoun. During the tour, Quesada tells us he thinks there is at most
Carroll never officially lived in the three-story 21-bedroom a handful of other small data centers in the whole county belonging
limestone house, merely visiting for various periods. It was, to local government and/or telcos serving the area. Colocation and
however, home to several of Carroll Junior’s daughters and wholesale facilities in the area seem non-existent.
granddaughters.
The company reportedly “looked hard” to find a suitable plot in
Later tenants at one point used the manor house as a Virginia but found itself competing with a lot of the companies it was
farmhouse, with turkeys raised in a bedroom, hogs in the hoping to court as customers. QL also found many of the Virginian
basement, and cured hams dripped from the attic. While counties outside of Loudoun and Prince William were either too
most of the land was sold off piece by piece, mostly to far away from the centerpoint of Ashburn, lacking the required
farmers or food canning factories, the manor house and infrastructure, or not particularly welcoming to data centers.
some 2,000 acres were bought by the Baker family in the
1920s and then the Renns in the late 1940s. Local government in Maryland is on side. After watching Virginia,
and particularly Loudoun and Fairfax Counties, prosper from
The Renns sold the site to Eastalco the following decade, increased tax earnings from data centers, the state of Maryland and
which kept the manor as a guest house and meeting center. Frederick County are looking to attract investment.
The manor house was listed on the National Register of
Historic Places in 1997. 2020 saw Maryland introduce new tax breaks that will see data
centers exempt from certain sales and property taxes if they meet the
The smelting site opened in 1970 as a plant for the French required investment and jobs thresholds.
and Japanese partnership Howmet/Pechiney. The plant was
bought by Alumax in 1983, which itself was acquired by Alcoa “When we were looking, we always discounted Maryland because
in 1998. there was no tax legislation offering tax benefits like you would see
in Virginia counties, particularly Prince William and Loudoun,” says
The smelting plant, which included its own railway line,
Snowhorn. “That all changed in the summer of 2020, legislation
took up around 340 acres of the property, with most of the
was passed that provided tax incentives in Maryland, and that was
rest leased to a local farmer. At its peak, it employed more
everything.”
than 800 people, but the smelter closed in the mid-2000s
and was finally demolished around 2017. The site was closed Frederick has also made changes in local regulations to allow for
due to the high cost of power and cheaper imports making quicker and more streamlined development processes after losing
the site unprofitable. what could have been a second major project.
“There's a lot of history around that property. We were AWS had hoped to develop a number of data centers in the
probably the 100th party to engage with Alcoa to try and county, but pulled out after local officials said it couldn’t meet the
buy it,” says Quantum’s CEO Josh Snowhorn. “They were cloud company’s aggressive timelines. This was partly due to the fact
very careful about who they wanted to sell it to because they zoning changes were required, and such amendments couldn't be
wanted people to be good stewards of the land. I think a lot made on the eve of county elections. Known as Project Holiday, local
of other folks probably had their eyeballs on this site, and we reports suggest the company was looking to develop on the west side
were just able to take a risk and execute very quickly.” of I-270 near Sugarloaf mountain.
Quantum Loophole tells DCD that as it’s listed, the In response to losing AWS, the county has since passed an
company will be keeping the manor house for historical amendment to zoning laws that lists critical data infrastructure, such
preservation. as data centers, as a permitted use under Frederick County zoning
“It'll be part of the property owners association, and they'll laws and would allow them in industrial-zoned plots.
be able to use utilize that for community meetings and “The government itself locally in Frederick County, they love it,”
events. It's quite a beautiful area, and we're able to maintain says Snowhorn. “Because of those tax benefits and low impact on the
that along with large data centers being within it. I think I'm things that they have to worry about funding. They're very excited
going to be quite proud with the end result.” to bring that in as well as the additional benefit of the massive fiber
backbone we're bringing.”

The first gigawatt campus, but

not the last
While Maryland is currently the company’s
only project, Snowhorn has previously
said that Quantum Loophole is laying the
groundwork for similar “data center cities” to
serve north, south, and western US.
Despite asking for further details, the

company isn’t ready to share any more
information about its wider ambitions.
“In some markets, we're trying to

assemble up to 10,000 acres,” Snowhorn tells
DCD.
“The growth areas that we're focused on

going outside of the Virginia area; we will
be focused on Chicago and California and
potentially Dallas markets.”
The company is reportedly in the process

of working through details such as energy
studies and fiber right of ways, legislation,
tax rules, etc.
“We're building the biggest campuses in

the world, so a lot of work has to go in place
to make that happen. But you'll see some
announcements hopefully next year.”
While we’re yet to hear of a second

gigawatt campus, in the time since Quantum
Loophole announced its plans there have
been a number of very large projects
measuring more than 400MW.
Many data center workers live in Snowhorn is confident his company will be South of Loudoun, QTS, and Compass
Maryland and commute into Virginia. the main ‘land & services’ provider in town. are both part of the PW Gateway project
Quesada noted that the project has attracted that could see more than 25 million sq ft
attention from potential employees looking “I very much doubt you'll see a dramatic
(2.3 million sq m) of data centers developed
to cut their commute times. amount going to Montgomery County. In in Prince William County; the 2,000+ acre
Frederick, whatever ecosystems develop development could reportedly support up to
Local residents can be the hardest to out will simply be a supporter with us at the 1GW of capacity. Switch Inc.’s Reno and Las
win over. We’ve seen elsewhere in Virginia heart of that.” Vegas Prime campuses each offer more than
that failure to do so can result in protracted
400MW of capacity. Digital Realty’s Digital
battles and sometimes canceled projects. It seems issues in Loudoun could help
Dulles campus in Loudoun is expected to
A recent local press report said Quantum push more operators north into Maryland.
grow to a gigawatt (see page 16).
executives answered questions from Quesada notes that the project was already
Adamstown residents for more than two attracting interest from potential customers In the UK, developer Reef is looking to
hours during a town hall meeting. with operations or interest in Virginia, but create a 175-hectare, 600MW data center
Dominion’s surprise announcement about campus in the east London borough of
“There were farmers happy to see Alcoa Havering. Campuses offering a hundred
a capacity crunch in Loudoun County has
go away,” says Snowhorn. “And we had to megawatts or more of capacity have gone
accelerated that interest. DCD’s tour of the
alleviate concerns within the community from extremely rare to not uncommon in the
site was the first of many that day from
about the scale of what we're doing. space of a couple of years.
interested parties.
“It's millions of square feet, and we had to “Anybody can put a dot on the map
make them understand the tax benefits, that “There's very much a stretching of the
and say I'm going to build a campus.
the demand on housing, schools, and other marketplace; there’s almost no land left
That's happened many, many times,” says
community infrastructures can be quite in the center of Loudoun County at all, it
Snowhorn.
nominal. looks like Silicon Valley in that respect,” says
Snowhorn. “The power crunch has certainly “What's important is that we prove that we
"While initially there'll be a lot of traffic been eye-opening for a lot of folks. The are able to put our money where our mouth
with construction, once these data centers growth out to Manassas or up to Maryland, is and go and actually accomplish what we're
are up and running, they'll hardly see a car doing in Maryland. So that's really our first
it was happening anyway; that simply
on the road. Getting them comfortable with step as a business. And that's happened now;
accelerated with that crunch happening
that was important.” the industry is incredibly confident in what
because people were forced to very rapidly
make decisions to come up to us and to go we're doing now.” 
Despite the potential to change the
geography of data centers in the area, to Manassas.”

The woman
who won the battle Dan Swinhoe
News Editor
of Pageland Lane
How one woman led the charge
to change the data center
geography of Northern Virginia
S
ince the 1990s, Northern Virginia in early 2021 after a group of landowners
has been the center of the data unveiled plans for a mammoth 800-acre data
center world, with Loudoun center development.
County as the capital.
At the time, the proposal aimed to string
But that geography could be together 30 parcels of agricultural land
changing. 2022 has seen officials owned by 15 property owners along the
in neighboring Prince William County – county’s “rural crescent” to be developed by a
already a sizeable data center market in itself single unnamed data center developer, later
– vote to replan 2,133 acres of the county's revealed to be QTS. The company hopes to
"rural crescent" for data centers, paving the develop 7.9 million sq ft (734,00 sqm) of data
way for up to 27.6 million square feet (2.56 centers on 812 acres.
million sqm) of data centers.
The project is being led by local
If fully built out, the PW Digital Gateway landowner and landbroker & commercial real
could more than double the county's estate consultant, Mary Ann Ghadban. Aged
existing data center footprint and see it 68, she has lived on a plot in the center of the
overtake neighboring Loudoun County. Gateway land for around 40 years with her
family and horses.
Some 18.5 million sq ft (1.71 million sqm)
is set to be developed by just two companies “I didn't know anything about data
– QTS and Compass Datacenters – over the centers until 2019,” she tells DCD. “I didn't
next decade or so, potentially turning two know that our area was even in the running
already large players into the biggest data for data centers. Then I found out all the
center operators in the state. revenue that Loudoun County gets and all
the world-class schools they have because of
But the site, located along Pageland
Lane between Manassas and Gainesville, is all the revenue.
adjacent to Manassas National Battlefield “It was a lot of work. We had been working
in a historically rural area. Opposition to the seven days a week, most days for the last two
project has been fierce, and is expected to years. A lot of people kind of laughed at me
continue. and thought we were crazy.”
Ghadban said there was a combination of

A fight too far
factors that led her down the road to create
Reports of a PW Digital Gateway surfaced the Gateway proposal.

>>CONTENTS The PW Digital
Mary-AnnGateway
PWC 
During the 1950s, Snyder’s mother Annie

fought against the widening of local roads
and a motocross speedway racetrack. The
Snyders had previously fought against an
amusement park, a large retail mall, and
the proposed Disney theme park. Ghadban,
however, was in favor of Disney.
Like Gadban, Snyder has featured heavily

in the press in over the Gateway project.
“We’ve spent our entire lives fighting one
thing after another, it’s just gotten worse
and worse,” Snyder, 71, told the Wall Street
Journal. “Basically, we’ve just thrown in the
towel.”
While the initial 800 acres was already a

“We had to take matters into our own massive land offering in a constrained area,
hands. When can you find 194 neighbors Ghadban claims that once the county saw
agreeing on anything?“It just so happened, the proposal, it sought to expand it further.
instead of just saying let's build houses, we
said let's build data centers.” Another 1,300 acres of land were added
to the proposal by more than 160 other local
Ghadban claims the site makes more landowners looking to sell up – Ghadban
sense as a large ‘data center corridor’ than said she wasn’t involved in discussions for
the county’s current Data Center Overlay those tracts – with around 800 acres set to
District – an area where data centers are be bought and developed by Compass. The
permitted and require less zoning and company wants to build 10.52 million sq ft
planning permission applications – given (977,350 sqm) of data centers by 2030.
its self-contained nature and proximity to
existing infrastructure. The original Gateway landowners claim
to have spoken to around 11 interested
“This is how you should have planned parties for the original 800 acres, before
data centers to begin with. You've got the settling on QTS. Ghadban says she was firm
The first were the Dominion power lines here, you have the fiber, why that the land should be sold to an operator,
transmission lines that run through her land wouldn't you put data centers where the not merely a developer.
along the battlefield north to Loudoun that power lines already exist?,” she says.
were installed around 2008. The second “Because of my experience, I know what
was a quarry expansion nearby to the north “We'd been listening to what's going on happens if you sell to a developer; they
in the last few years. And the third was a over in Loudoun, and the attitude changed; start squeezing the landowner and/or the
data center; CorScale’s Gainesville Crossing data centers don't want 20 acres anymore.
county,” she said. “This is a very sensitive
project currently in development on the They want 100 acres, because they want
area, and we knew we had to go above and
southern end of PageLand lane. a runway. Plus we were not selling at the
beyond on everything to get this off the
prices of Loudoun County; more like a third
ground.
The recently-launched data center of the price of Loudoun. We wanted to
platform of real estate firm Patrinely entice those data centers to come here, get a “We turned down two major developers,
Group and USAA Real Estate, CorScale is footprint in where they can be for years.” who were very mad at us. I was looking for
developing a 300MW campus featuring five a data center user that could go through the
two-story buildings. The site was bought school of hard knocks with us and take the
Just the 800 acres then, is it?
from Buchanan Partners for $74.5 million in heat, and do what we need. And QTS met all
August 2020; CorScale broke ground on the While Ghadban has been the driving force the criteria.”
first building in February 2022 and the site is of pushing the Gateway project through,
due to go live early next year (see page 22). she and other landowners in the project The QTS and Compass projects
had for years been staunch defenders of the combined cover around 1,630 acres and
“I've been here forty years. And it's just 18.42 million square feet of data centers. A
area.
been my dream home, we thought we'd stay letter from NOVEC in a previous county staff
here forever. But when Gainesville Crossing “There's never been peace on Pageland, report suggests the project could total more
got approved in 2019, that's when we said, never,” she tells DCD. “But the writing's on than 1,000MW.
‘we're stuck between a quarry and a massive the wall, and we can't be here anymore. It
data center,’” says Ghadban. “That was the doesn't matter how much you love it.” Aside from what is described as a ‘small
final nail in the coffin. parcel,’ the rest – around 500 acres of space
Ghadban and another local landowner, and potentially 9 million sq ft (836,100 sqm)
“We've become an industrial quarter. Page Snyder, were key players in a years- of data centers – is set to be public parks,
There’s nothing rural about this area long battle against a planned ‘Bi-County trails, and remain undeveloped.
anymore. And when you put these Parkway’ which would have taken acres of
transmission lines through here, it's been the Battlefield and connect I-66 in Prince The number of buildings the companies
proven to destroy your property values and William to the Dulles International Airport each plan to develop is unclear. Documents
the ruralness,” she says as we stand under in Loudoun. One profile piece from that seen by DCD suggest that, between
the towering lines, which are noticeably time dubbed them ‘the Ladies of Pageland them, the two companies have around 10
buzzing in the light rain. Lane.’ sizeable plots of which to develop, each

large enough to hold multiple multi-story benefits – estimated by the county to for data centers on the land in question.
buildings. eventually reach $400.5 million in local tax Normally a formality, the meeting itself filled
revenue annually under current tax rates with acrimony. Officials voted 5-2 in favor
DCD understands QTS is likely to start
– as a way to improve local schools and with no abstentions (although one reclusion)
developments on the south end of Pageland
services. in a marathon 23-hour meeting.
closest to existing infrastructure and work
its way north with future developments. Opponents of the projects argue against The meeting began at 7.30pm local
The first buildings aren’t expected to begin developments in the rural area, worried time, and continued until after 9am the
development until 2024. about the potential impact the rezoning next day. Local news reported more than
could have on the nearby Manassas National 250 registered to speak during the meeting.
Despite repeated attempts, neither QTS Some 40 people spoke remotely via Internet
Battlefield and other local historical sites,
nor Compass were willing to be interviewed calls, which the meeting didn’t get to until
as well as noise pollution and impact to the
by DCD for this or previous articles on the around 5am and didn't finish until 8am local
local water table and rural nature of the area.
Gateway project. time. The board had to take short recess
The Prince William County Historical a little after 1am because the audience
The battle that split the Commission, Manassas Battlefield National repeatedly ignored Chair Anne Wheeler’s
Park, and American Battlefield Trust are all
community warnings to follow rules of decorum.
opposed to the development.
Opposition to data centers, especially in rural The result, while disappointing to some,
areas not used to such developments, is not Environmental officials at Prince William wasn’t a surprise. The Planning Commission
uncommon. But the scale of the Gateway County asked the board of supervisors to had previously voted 4-3-1 to recommend
project has unsurprisingly seen opposition reject the proposal while Fairfax County approval of the application, and most
on a scale rarely seen for such buildings. officials submitted a letter to PWC officials councilors had already stated their position
requesting they rethink the proposals due on the matter in the weeks and months
to the potential impact to the Occoquan
Watershed and drinking water in the area.
US Rep. Jennifer Wexton, a Democrat

representing Virginia's 10th Congressional
District, said the project could have a
"significant negative impact" on the
surrounding environment and community.
Even documentary filmmaker Ken Burns

has spoken out against the plans, saying the
proposals could have a “devastating impact”
on the Manassas National Battlefield. The
scale of opposition saw the proposals make
it into mainstream news including WSJ and
Reuters, a rare feat for data centers.
In February 2022, around 50 people

from the Coalition to Protect PWC gathered
outside QTS’ facilities in Manassas, with
chants and signs saying “stay out of the rural
crescent” and “save our sacred battlefield.”
QTS officials did not acknowledge the rally,
on the day or subsequently.
Like many others selling up, Ghadban

aims to remain in the county. She says
The selling landowners and prospective she is largely nonplussed about the idea of
before the vote.
buyers claim the view-shed from both the leaving the home she built, or any potential
battlefield and the neighboring Heritage bad feeling from what she says is a small However, councilors bickered repeatedly
Hunt community will be protected, as will minority of local people (though she admits during the actual vote over process and lack
the watershed. The group promises to make some opponents have been “rude” to her). of collaboration on the proposals, with Chair
some 400 of the 2,100 acres public parkland. Wheeler threatening another recess if things
She does, however, direct her ire towards
The groups also promise a 0.30 floor area didn’t calm down.
local supervisor Jeanine Lawson, who has
ratio (FAR) that is less than that permitted in historically been very pro data center with Supervisor Victor Angry’s decision to try
the Data Center Overlay District and so will the exception of the Gateway project. and put forward the motion to approve the
result in more green space between facilities.
GPA as soon as the board had heard from
“Supervisor Lawson created this
“There's all kinds of new parks and open the public without further discussion proved
nightmare. She agreed to 3 million square
space being created, says Ghadban. “Without particularly irksome to other supervisors.
feet of data center to come right next to the
these 2100 acres, that would never happen At one point Supervisor Lawson said the
battlefield [with the CorScale project]. Stop
because people would just subdivide their board's Democrat majority had treated the
making us out to be the bad guys.”
lots and it would still be private property with Republican minority like a "battered wife."
no open space.” County officials voted in favor of
changing the area's comprehensive plan in Chair Wheeler and Supervisors Angry,
Ghadban also points to the financial November 2022, providing by-right zoning Bailey, Boddye, and Frankline voted in favor,

>>CONTENTS PW Digital Gateway 
with Supervisors Lawson and Vega voting and help Prince William County continue to the landowners part of the proposal. This
against. The supervisors could be heard over flourish.” conflict of interest saw him recuse himself
the microphones continuing to bicker after Opposition groups are likely to fight from the matter, which was controversial
the results of the vote were announced. each application as they come through, given the project was literally in his backyard
and upcoming elections could change the in an area he was meant to represent. Local
“This is a bold plan and it will change
political landscape. residents had started a recall petition to
the landscape of Prince William County,”
remove Candland and force a new election
Wheeler said before voting in favor. “I think once you're an obstructionist,
prior to the GPA decision, alleging ‘neglect
you're always an obstructionist,” says
of duty and misuse of office.’ He was also
The next battles for Pageland Ghadban.
facing a federal lawsuit over censoring anti-
Speaking previously to DCD, Elena Gateway views posted to his social media
While the comprehensive plan amendment
Schlossberg, executive director of the accounts.
set the wheels in motion, there are
Coalition to Protect Prince William County,
potentially still many battles to be fought. “Candland’s resignation isn’t unexpected,
made it clear the group plans to keep
it’s more than a year overdue,” the PWC
Both QTS and Compass have filed fighting.
Coalition’s Schlossberg said. “His financial
separate rezoning applications, and will
“I don't think QTS understands conflicts of interest in the approval of the
require planning permission to actually
the passion of this community,” says Digital Gateway have not only deprived his
develop the facilities. DCD understands
Schlossberg. “And I don't think that this district’s residents of effective representation
landsales are conditional on QTS and
new board does either. We believe you don't – they have tainted the entire county review
Compass getting zoning approval for their
have to sacrifice your natural resources, and approval process, including the 2040
projects, meaning landowners will remain in
your environment, your hallowed ground, Comprehensive Plan.
their homes for months, if not years.
your clean drinking water, for economic
“But there is no fond farewell for farcical
development.”
DCD reached out to Schlossberg for

further comment after the GPA vote, who
told us: “We are not done fighting.”
There have been ongoing marketing

campaigns from both sides, with
each accusing the other of lies and
disinformation. The side of the road along
Pageland was littered with flyers both for
and against development when DCD visited
the area in November in the wake of the
decision. We continue to receive regular
updates and newsletters from both pro-PW
Gateway and opposition groups, and further
legal challenges and protests against the
project are already underway.
At time of writing, two lawsuits have been

filed against the county in the wake of the
GPA authorization.
Lawsuits from the Oak Valley

Homeowners Association, Inc. and
Gainesville Citizens for Smart Growth have
both filed lawsuits against Prince William
County’s supervisors, are both seeking to
“Compass Datacenters is committed to representation - and no pausing in a legal
have the decision reversed and prevent
being a good neighbor and working through and political battle that is far from over.”
similar changes being passed in future.
the County’s zoning process to solicit input
and feedback from stakeholders on our Supervisor Lawson told local press she Whether the prospective replacement
construction and operating plans,” Chris has vowed to continue the fight against the supervisor is for or against the Gateway
Curtis, SVP of Development and Acquisitions project, and encouraged residents to contact project is likely to be a key issue in upcoming
for Compass Datacenters told DCD after the their respective supervisors to oppose the elections to replace Candland.
GPA vote. development.
Chair of the board Ann Wheeler is also
QTS provided a similar statement: December 2022 saw Supervisor Pete the target of a recall effort over conflicts
“QTS is pleased that the Prince William Candland resign over the matter, saying his of interest due to her investments in data
County Board of Supervisors recognizes ability to serve “has been greatly diminished” center companies, including between
the compelling economic and community over the project and the fact the county’s $100,000-$500,000 in Amazon and QTS-
benefits of the Digital Gateway project and attorney had advised he no longer votes on owner Blackstone.
has approved the proposal to move forward. data center projects until the rezoning of his
The wider national press will likely move
land was complete.
"We are eager to continue working on from the latest battle for Pageland Lane,
with stakeholders and members of the Candland was initially against the but the war is set to continue until the last
community to make this project a reality Gateway project, but later became one of data center is built. 

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>>CONTENTS Cooling 
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Contents
44. The end of over-cooling
Data centers are switching off chillers and Keeping a cool head
letting temperatures go up. But is that
C
really the best idea?
ooling has been Goodbye to over-cooling?
50. An introduction to liquid cooling at the center of The biggest effort in the green data
There are many kinds of liquid thinking about green center movement has been around
cooling. Find out which one is right data centers since reducing the energy wasted in
for you the very dawn of the cooling data centers.
discipline, more than The old consensus was that data
53. Plant based cooling 15 years ago. centers should be kept at a chilly
If liquid cooling is environmentally You might think it's all been temperature below 20°C, to be
friendly, why does it use fossil fuel- sorted out by now - but if you absolutely sure that the electronics
based immersion fluids? thought that, you'd be wrong. were not stressed.
The last ten years have seen Hardware vendors disagreed,
a sustained effort to reduce the and industry bodies assured data
energy used in data center cooling center operators that warmer
systems, traditionally provided by temperatures were safe.
air-conditioning technologies, Now the conservative
shifting energy to the racks. colocation sector is acting on those
At the same time, there's been a recommendations.
growing movement that says liquid But wait. Research engineers are
cooling is going to be more efficient, sounding a cautious note. It turns
and better for the environment. out that the electronics use more
This supplement questions both power when the temperature goes
those assumptions - and provides up, to perform the same work.
a primer on liquid cooling, because Some are suggesting that the
we believe that, whatever the details, move to raise temperatures is a big
liquid cooling is the future. mistake, based on over-reliance on
simplistic efficiency measures like
A fluid choice PUE (power usage effectiveness).
Liquid cooling is not a new Could it be that we need a bigger
technology, and it's not a single dataset and more research to sort
technique. It's been around for 60 this out?
years, and is available in around
half-a-dozen forms. Plant-based immersion baths
Our primer takes you through Finally, immersion cooling
44
the history of the liquid cooling has earned its reputation for
movement, which has been environmental friendliness.
widespread in computers from It uses less energy, it's
mainframes to humble desktop quieter, and it removes heat in a
computers. concentrated form which makes
We also walk you through the heat reuse practical.
various options, from simple circuits But there's a small snag. All too
of water, kept from the electronics often, the immersion fluids used by
by coldplates, through immersion the tank makers are fossil fuel-based
tanks, up to two-phase systems hydrocarbons.
where sophisticated fluids bubble We spoke to a food giant that
and recondense. wants to fill your immersion tanks
As liquid cooling emerges from with a plant-based alternative.
50 53 its niche, you will need to learn a lot

of new tools.
And apparently it's fully
recyclable, too.
Cooling Supplement | 43
 Cooling Supplement >>CONTENTS
Over-cooling is
past its sell-by date Peter Judge
Executive Editor
Fourteen years after

definitive proof that
warmer is better colocation
companies are still
struggling to turn their
cooling systems down
44 DCD Supplement • datacenterdynamics.com

>>CONTENTS The end of over-cooling 
I
n definitive guidance that it is This was not an idle whim. run in a traditional air-conditioned
perfectly safe to run data centers ASHRAE engineers said that higher environment. The 450 hot servers had
at temperatures up to 27°C (80°F). temperatures would have little effect saved some 67 percent of the power
But large parts of the industry on the lifetime of components, but budget.
persist in over-cooling their
would offer significant energy savings.
servers, wasting vast amounts In this higher-temperature test, Intel
of energy and causing unnecessary Figures from the US General actually found a measurable increase
emissions. Services Administration suggested in failure. Amongst the hot servers, two
that data centers could save four percent more failed. But that failure
There are signs that this may
percent of their total energy, for every rate may have had nothing to do with
be changing, but progress has
been incredibly slow - and future degree they allowed the temperature the temperature - the 450 servers
developments don’t look like speeding to climb. under test also had no air filtration or
things up very much. humidity control, so the small increase
Hyperscale companies are often
in failure rate may have been due to
best placed to pick up advanced
Don’t be so cool dust and condensation.
technology ideas. They own the
When data centers first emerged, building, the cooling systems, and the
IT. So if they allow temperatures to
Some like it hot
operators kept them cool to avoid any
chance of overheating. Temperatures climb, then it’s their own equipment Academics backed up the idea, with
were pegged at 22°C (71.6°F), which that feels the heat. support coming from a 2012 paper
meant that chillers were working from the University of Toronto titled
So it’s no surprise that cloud giants
overtime to maintain an unnecessarily Temperature Management in Data
were the first to get on board with
cool atmosphere in the server rooms. Centers: Why Some (Might) Like It Hot.
raising data center temperatures.
In the early 2000s, more energy was Facebook quickly found it could go “Our results indicate that, all things
spent in the cooling systems than in beyond the ASHRAE guidelines. At its considered, the effect of temperature
the IT rack itself, a trend which seemed Prineville and Forest City data centers, on hardware reliability is weaker than
obviously wrong. The industry began they raised the server temperatures to commonly thought,” the Canadian
29.4°C, and found no ill effects. academics conclude. “Increasing
an effort to reduce that imbalance, and
created a metric, PUE (Power Usage data center temperatures creates the
“This will further reduce our
Effectiveness) to measure progress. potential for large energy savings and
environmental impact and allow us
reductions in carbon emissions.”
to have 45 percent less air-handling
PUE is the total power used in the
hardware than we have in Prineville,” At the same time, server makers
data center, divided by the power
Yael Maguire, then Facebook’s director responded to ASHRAE’s guidelines,
used in the racks - so an “ideal” PUE
of engineering, said. and confirmed that these new higher
of 1.0 would mean all power is going
temperatures were acceptable without
to the racks. Findings ways to switch Google went up to 26.6°C, and
breaking equipment warranties.
off the air conditioning, and letting Joe Kava, then vice president of data
temperatures rise, was a major strategy centers, said the move was working: Given that weight of support, you
in approaching this goal. “Google runs data centers warmer than might have expected data center
most because it helps efficiency.” temperatures to rise dramatically
In 2004, ASHRAE (the American
across the industry - and you can still
Society of Heating, Refrigerating Intel went furthest. For ten months
find commentary from 2011, which
and Air-Conditioning Engineers) in 2008, the chip giant took 900
predicts a rapid increase in cold aisle
recommended an operating servers, and ran half of them in a
temperatures.
temperature range from 20°C to 25°C. traditionally cooled data center, while
In 2008, the society went further, the other 450 were given no external However, look around for
suggesting that temperatures could be cooling. The server temperatures went recommended data center
raised to 27°C. up to 33.3°C (92°F) at times. temperatures today, and figures of
22°C and 25°C are still widely quoted.
Following that, the society issued At the end of the ten months, the
Revision A1, which raised the limit to chip giant compared those servers This reluctance to change is widely
32°C (89.6°F) depending on conditions. with another 450 which had been put down to the industry’s reputation
Cooling
Cooling Supplement 45
Supplement || 45
for conservatism, although there are Equinix pushes the idea of increased
some influential voices raised against temperatures as a way for its customers
the consensus that higher temperatures to meet the goal of reducing Scope 3
are automatically better (see Box). emissions, the CO2 equivalent emitted
from activity in their supply chain.
For colocation customers, the

Equinix makes a cautious move energy used in their colo provider’s
facility is part of their Scope 3
All of which makes a recent
emissions, and there are moves to
announcement from Equinix very
encourage all companies to cut their
interesting. On some measures,
Scope 3 emissions to reach net-zero
Equinix is the world’s largest colocation
goals.
player, housing a huge chunk of the
servers which are not either in on- Revealingly, Equinix does not
premises data centers on in the cloud. provide any supporting quotes at all
from customers eager to have their
In December, Equinix announced servers hosted at a higher temperature.
that it would “adjust the thermostat of
its colocation data centers, letting them For Equinix, the emissions for
run warmer, to reduce the amount electricity used in its cooling systems
of energy spent cooling them down are part of its Scope 2 emissions, which
unnecessarily.” it has promised to reduce. Increasing
the temperature will be a major step
“With this new initiative, we can towards achieving that goal.
intelligently adjust the thermostat in
our data centers in the same way that "Our cooling systems account
consumers do in their homes,” said for approximately 25 percent of our
Raouf Abdel, EVP of global operations total energy usage globally," said
in any Equinix data centers. Instead, Abdel. "Once rolled out across our
for Equinix.
customers will be notified at some current global data center footprint,
Equinix’s announcement features unspecified time in the future, when we anticipate energy efficiency
congratulatory quotes from analysts Equinix is planning to adjust the improvements of as much as 10 percent
and vendors. thermostat at the site where their in various locations."
equipment is hosted.
Rob Brothers, program vice Equinix is in a difficult position. It
president, data center services, at "Starting immediately, Equinix will can’t increase the temperature without
analyst firm IDC explains that “most begin to define a multi-year global risking the displeasure of its customers,
data centers … are unnecessarily cooler roadmap for thermal operations within who might refuse to allow the increase,
than required," its data centers aimed at achieving or go elsewhere.
significantly more efficient cooling and
Brothers goes on to say that the It’s a move that needs to be made,
decreased carbon impacts," says the
announcement will see Equinix “play and Equinix deserves support for
press release.
a key role in driving change in the setting the goal. But the cautious
industry and help shape the overall And in response to a question from nature of the announcement makes it
sustainability story we all need to DCD, Equinix supplied the following clear that this could be an uphill battle.
participate in." statement: "There is no immediate
However, Equinix clearly believes
impact on our general client base, as
The announcement will "change that future net-zero regulations will
we expect this change to take place
the way we think about operating push customers in the direction it
over several years. Equinix will work
temperatures within data center wants to be allowed to go.
to ensure all clients receive ample
environments,” he says.
notification of the planned change to "Equinix is committed to
Which really does oversell the their specific deployment site." understanding how these changes will
announcement somewhat. All Equinix affect our customers and we will work
has promised to do is to make an Customers like it cool together to find a mutually beneficial
attempt to push temperatures up path toward a more sustainable future,”
Reading between the lines, it is obvious
towards 27°C - the target which says the statement from the company.
that Equinix is facing pushback from
ASHRAE set 14 years ago, and which it
its customers, who are ignoring the “As global sustainability
already recommends can be exceeded.
vast weight of evidence that higher requirements for data center operations
No Equinix data centers will get temperatures are safe, and are become more stringent, our customers
warmer straight away, either. The unwilling to budge from the traditional and partners will depend on Equinix to
announcement will have no immediate 22°C temperature which has been the continue leading efforts that help them
impact on any existing customers norm. achieve their sustainability goals." 

>>CONTENTS The end of over-cooling 
IS OVER-COOLING
REALLY SO BAD?
S urprisingly, after the industry seems to have reached a

consensus that data centers should be run as warmly as
possible, there are dissenting voices - some of them very
This effect varies between different processors, says
Summers, with Xeon E5-2769-v3 CPUs running at 50
percent workload drawing 8W more when the temperature
authoritative. was increased from 40°C to 75°C in a wind tunnel, with the
There are two main objections to running data server fans set to target a fixed CPU temperature.
centers warmer. One is that data center staff working in a Essentially, when the air inlet temperature goes up, the
contained hot aisle will be subjected to a harsher working cooling work shifts from the air conditioning systems to
environment. The other is that the chips in the servers will the fans in the servers, which have to work harder. This
also be subjected to more extreme conditions. automatically reduces the PUE, because the fans are in the
John Haile, a retired 24-year veteran of Telehouse, racks, and PUE is designed to maximize the energy used
commented on a LinkedIn discussion about Equinix’s within the racks, compared to energy used in the external
announcement: “The people that work in the data center cooling systems.
generally have to work in the hot aisle once the row goes
Running at hotter temperatures can create completely
live. The temperatures in there are well over 40°C - it drys
illusory benefits, says Summers: “With increased supply
your eyes out.”
temperatures we do see an increased overall energy
While many professionals are prepared to work at higher consumption even though the PUE drops.”
temperatures, and some even relish the opportunity to
work in shorts, others question whether the effort is even In immersion tanks, where systems have no server fans,
beneficial in the first place. Summers ran 108 of the same CPUs in an immersion tank.
In this situation, his team found there was a six percent
Running with hotter air temperatures may create a
drop in power requirements at the same 50 percent
completely spurious benefit, based on over-reliance on one
workload when the tank coolant was dropped from 50°C to
efficiency metric, argues Professor Jon Summers, research
30°C.
lead in data centers at Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE),
“Other than less energy consumed by the DC cooling
Data centers measure efficiency by aiming for a low PUE equipment resulting in a lower ISO PUE, what are the
(power usage effectiveness) which is created by shifting reasons for pushing up air-supply temperatures?” Summers
power consumption from the building’s air conditioning to asks.
the racks. This makes sense if the energy in the racks is all
Summers’ colleague Tor Björn Minde, head of RISE’s ICE
used for computation, but some are used for cooling fans,
data center agrees: “Why in the world would you like to do
points out Professor Summers.
this?”
“Increasing temperatures will improve the ISO PUE of a Allowing warmer temperatures might make sense if the
DC, which a vast majority appear to cite as a measure of outside air temperature is above +30°C, says Minde, but
efficiency,” says Summers. His research that a reduction otherwise “you should run it as cold as possible. The power
in energy used by the air conditioning will be offset by the draw of the IT is less at low temperatures. If you have free-
increased energy used in servers. cooling, run it cold. You will have less fan speed overall
“At RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, in the ICE data both in the facility and on the servers.
center we have researched the effect of supply temperature Minde thinks the industry should aim for constant CPU
on DC IT equipment using wind tunnels, full air-cooled data temperatures, and use the air conditioning compressor only
centers, direct-to-chip, and immersion systems connected when the CPU temperature is getting too high.
to well-controlled liquid cooling testbeds,” says Summers.
“The upshot is that irrespective of the cooling method, the Further work will be done on this – and Interact, a
microprocessors draw more power when operated hotter division of TechBuyer, has also been researching the issue,
for the same digital workload due to current leakages.” and will be publishing a paper with the IEEE in 2023. 
Cooling
Supplement | 47
 Advertorial >>CONTENTS
How Data Center

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of racks at the beginning of the row. Bottom
images show how chilled water units for non-
raised floor applications help lower airflow
velocities to balance pressure across the row.
S
lab, or non-raised floor, data centers have helped cloud and
colocation providers meet growing capacity demand by
accelerating speed-to-market and reducing capital costs. Those
benefits have, however, come with new data center cooling
challenges. Cooling solutions not tailored to the needs of slab
floor facilities can jeopardize equipment reliability and reduce
cooling system efficiency. But with new challenges come new opportunities,
and recent developments in control strategies and cooling technologies are
enabling high performing cooling in non-raised floor environments.
Data Center Cooling Challenges in Slab Floor Facilities

When slab floor data centers were first gaining traction, the airflow control
strategy that had proven effective in raised floor environments was applied to

>>CONTENTS VERTIV | Advertorial 
that requires velocities so high they create (PUE) values through the use of intelligent
negative pressures in front of racks at the control systems. To learn more, read the
beginning of the row. This increases the Vertiv white paper, How Chilled Water
potential for temperature-related failures in Systems Meet Data Center Availability and
these racks. Sustainability Goals.
As a result, operators of slab data centers To address the challenge of airflow
have had to compromise both cooling distribution discussed previously, new
system efficiency and equipment reliability. chilled water cooling units have been
But that is no longer necessary, as new engineered to meet the airflow requirements
strategies and technologies designed of slab floor data centers, including
specifically for slab floor data centers are now perimeter and thermal wall cooling units.
available.
Perimeter units, for example, have
been redesigned to relocate the fan at the
A More Effective Control Strategy top of the unit and create a larger surface
for Slab Floor Data Center Cooling area for air distribution. This allows these
units to distribute more air at lower speeds,
With control based on Delta P proving
improving the ability to move air down the
inefficient in slab floor data centers, Vertiv
length of the row and reducing the risk of
developed a control strategy based on the
negative pressure at the beginning of the
temperature differential (Delta T) between
row.
the supply air leaving the cooling units and
the return air to the cooling units. New thermal wall units adapt the air
handling unit (AHU) concept to the needs of
Temperature is much easier to measure
slab floor data centers. Installed in the service
than pressure, and by setting a temperature
corridor, they blow air horizontally to the
control point for return air above the supply
server room, providing high volumes of air
air temperature, operators can ensure
that move at low speeds. These systems are
enough airflow is reaching each rack.
particularly well suited when high-density
This strategy takes into consideration cooling units are required.
numerous failure conditions, such as Both products can be integrated to
blocked cold aisles, and provides monitoring the chilled water system manager, which
to ensure air temperatures at the rack are optimizes the entire system by coordinating
precisely controlled and consistently meet operation of external and internal units.
temperature service level agreements
(SLAs) — something that isn’t possible with
these non-raised floor data centers. But this Optimizing Cooling in Slab Floor
a Delta P control strategy. The need to run
strategy — which manages airflow and fan Data Centers
fans at higher-than-necessary speeds
speed based on pressure differential, or Delta
to compensate for pressure variations Developers and operators of slab floor
P — hasn’t been as effective in slab floor data across the row is eliminated, and return air
centers as it is in raised floor environments. data centers no longer have to accept
temperatures are maintained at the setpoint compromises in cooling system
Without the duct provided by the space to optimize cooling unit efficiency. For performance to realize the cost and speed
beneath the floor, pressure is more difficult more on this control strategy, see the Vertiv benefits enabled by eliminating the raised
to measure and manage in slab floor white paper, Overcoming the Challenges in floor. By using control strategies and cooling
data centers. Data center designers also Cooling Non-Raised Floor Data Centers. technologies engineered specifically for
lose the ability to control airflow to racks slab floor data centers, they can leverage
using properly sized and positioned floor More Effective and Efficient the environmental and operating benefits
tiles. Instead of cold air being distributed Products for Slab Floor Data Center of chilled water cooling while effectively
directly to the front of racks through the managing airflow and temperature across
Cooling
tiles, air must travel the length of the row. the facility. For more information on
To compensate, many operators drive fan Chilled water cooling systems offer a selecting the right cooling system for your
speeds too high, wasting fan energy and number of benefits to cloud and colocation data center see the white paper, Chilled
resulting in lower return air temperatures provides developing or operating slab floor Water Data Center Cooling for Non-Raised
that prevent cooling units from operating at data centers. One of the most significant Floor Applications. 
their design efficiency. is the ability of chilled water systems to
reduce direct and indirect greenhouse
The need for air to travel down the row gas emissions compared to other cooling
also creates airflow patterns that can limit technologies. Reductions in direct
the ability to cool racks closest to the cooling emissions are enabled by a chiller’s ability
units when standard data center cooling to use low global warming potential (GWP)
units are used. The velocity of the air at hydrofluoroolefin (HFO) refrigerants. Indirect
the beginning of the row has to be high emissions are reduced through the overall
enough to ensure adequate airflow at the efficiency of these systems, which can
end of the row. With standard cooling units, achieve very low power usage effectiveness
An introduction to
liquid cooling in the Vlad-Gabriel Anghel
Head of Product at
DCD>Academy
data center
W
An overview of ith data center workloads ever increasing due to
advanced analytics, AI, and the digitization of every
direct-to-chip and process, the average rack power draw has shot up
considerably. And, as we know, with more power
immersion cooling draw comes more waste heat that needs to be removed from the
rack and eventually the white space.
In the recent past, when racks consumed up to 20kW, air-based
cooling methodologies could be relied on to keep the IT hardware
operating safely and efficiently. But as some racks start to exceed 30kW
or more, new cooling approaches need to be used.
This is in part due to the densification of IT hardware in general with
each new CPU generation packing more processing capacity in smaller
and smaller die sizes. Workloads such as artificial intelligence (AI) and
machine learning (ML) require floating point operations which are usually
delivered via a graphical processing unit. These GPUs are designed to
have a normal operating temperature above 80°C (176°F) when fully
utilized for a particular workload.

>>CONTENTS Liquid Cooling 
Although air-based cooling options solutions? We’ll look at these next in the
exist for racks drawing more than 20kW, context of the data center.
they are often cumbersome to install and
maintain effectively, essentially passing
the point of diminishing returns in terms Enterprise-Grade Liquid
of cooling capacity. As such, owners
and operators of data centers are now
Cooling Solutions
cautiously looking towards liquid cooling
for their new facility projects.
A short history of liquid cooling Interboard water-based heat exchangers
Liquid cooling of IT equipment seems Source: Exploring Innovative Cooling

like a new technology, but that cannot be Solutions for IBM’s SuperComputing
further from the truth. Systems: A Collaborative Trail Blazing
Experience
Liquids in general can be a great heat Liquid Cooling Technologies
transfer medium and with a little chemical Dr. Richard C. Chu, IBM Fellow,
engineering, boiling and condensation Academician, Academia Sinica,
points can be tailored precisely, improving ROC Member, National Academy of
the heat transfer using dielectric fluids. When analyzing liquid cooling options
Engineering, USA for enterprise-grade IT hardware there are
Various forms of liquid cooling have essentially two main categories of liquid
been around since the late 1800s when Today, liquid cooling is present in
pretty much every desktop PC – and the cooling – Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling
they were used to insulate and cool extra
concept has essentially remained the (sometimes called conductive or cold
high voltage transformers. The automotive
same. The cooling process is made up of plate liquid cooling) and immersive liquid
industry is another ecosystem that relied,
three distinct parts: - the heat plate, the cooling.
and still relies on, liquid cooling - the
water in a typical auto radiator. supply and return pipes, and the radiators When considering the phases (what state
and fans. the fluid is in – either liquid or gas) that the
Liquid cooling entered the computer
coolant goes through we have five distinct
sector early in its history, when IBM
types of liquid cooling as seen in figure
released a series of enterprise-grade
above.
computers called System/360, in the early
1960s.
The System/360 has been one of the Direct-to-Chip Single Phase
most enduring lines of commercially
This method of cooling requires delivering
available computers. While the original
the liquid coolant directly to the hotter
hardware is now retired, S/360 code
components of a server - CPU or GPU -
written in the early 1960s are still found in
with a cold plate placed directly on the
new mainframes today. It was also the first
chip. The electric components are never in
computer to have a unified instruction
direct contact with the coolant.
set, making upgrades or changes to the
mainframe easier than ever. With this method, fans are still required
The System/360 was also cooled with to provide airflow through the server
The heat plate is essentially a metal to remove the residual heat. While the
a hybrid approach using both air and
liquid cooling. This was quite big and plate that covers the whole CPU die with air-cooling infrastructure is greatly
cumbersome to install, but IBM developed a small reservoir on top. The plate is reduced, one is still required for the correct
the hybrid model to accommodate engineered to be as conductive as possible operation of this liquid cooling method.
increased heat loads. With these systems, in terms of heat. Any heat generated by
the chip will be transferred to the reservoir Coolants can be either water or
as much as 50 percent of the heat
on top. dielectric fluids, but water will infer a
dissipated was removed from the cooling
downtime risk of leakage, however, Leak
air via water-cooled heat exchangers. The liquid in this closed loop will travel Prevention Systems (LPS) are available.
via the supply and return pipes to the Single phase refers to the fact that the
radiators where heat will be pushed out of coolant does not change states - i.e from a
the PC enclosure through the radiator fins liquid to a gas.
– these fins being actively cooled by fans.
This is also the same method used in
Consumer-grade liquid cooling options the previous desktop PC example.
have originally only dealt with CPU heat,
but now almost every component of a
modern-day PC can be liquid-cooled. Direct-to-Chip – Two-Phase
That is the consumer-grade option of The two-phase direct-to-chip liquid
Layout of hybrid air/liquid approach in liquid cooling – but what about larger- cooling method works like the previous
System/360 scale deployments and enterprise-grade single-phase method, the only difference
being that the liquid coolant changes What are dielectric fluids?
states - from a gas to a liquid and vice-
versa as it completes the cooling loop. Dielectric liquids are used as electrical
These systems will always use engineered insulators in high voltage applications,
e.g. transformers, capacitors, high-voltage
dielectric fluid.
cables, and switchgear (namely high
In terms of heat-rejection, two-phase voltage switchgear).
systems are better than single-phase
Their functions are to provide electrical
systems and have a lower risk of leakage
insulation, suppress corona and arcing,
due to the coolant's state-changing nature.
and serve as a coolant. Generally, they are
They do however require additional
split into two categories, fluorochemical,
controls which will increase maintenance and hydrocarbons.
costs over the lifetime of the system.
Fluorochemical fluids, generally with
Immersion Cooling - Open-Tub:
a lower boiling point, are predominantly
Single Phase
used for two-phase immersion cooling.
Immersive Liquid Cooling – IT- Essentially, it is a rack turned on its Hydrocarbons typically are not used for
Chassis Single-Phase back, filled with dielectric fluid - instead Two-Phase immersion cooling systems, as
of mounting servers horizontally, they are most hydrocarbons are combustible and/
This cooling approach uses a single-phase now mounted vertically.
dielectric fluid and is in direct contact or flammable. Therefore, hydrocarbons
with IT components. Servers are fully or These systems are usually fitted with are typically only used in Single-Phase
centralized power supplies and the natural applications.
partially immersed in this non-conductive
liquid within the chassis effectively dielectric fluid is cooled off through a heat Both fluorochemicals (or fluorocarbons)
removing all sources of heat. exchanger using a pump which can be and hydrocarbons (e.g., mineral oils,
installed either inside or outside the tub, or synthetic oils, natural oils) can be used for
by convection. Single-Phase immersion cooling. Fluids
with a higher boiling point (above the
maximum temperature of the system) are
Immersion Cooling – Open Tub necessary to ensure the fluid remains in
the liquid phase.
– Two-Phase
Considerations when deciding among
As with Single-Phase, in this method the various fluorochemicals and hydrocarbons
IT equipment is completely submerged include heat transfer performance
in fluid vertically within a tank. But, (stability and reliability over time, etc.),
importantly with this approach, the ease of IT hardware maintenance,
dielectric fluid must be capable of fluid hygiene, and replacement needs,
IT Chassis Single Phase
changing states from liquid to gas as it material compatibility, electrical
heats up. properties, flammability or combustibility,
The cooling can happen either In such a system, submerged and environmental impact, safety-related
passively via conduction or actively exposed parts will create heat, turning the issues, and total fluid cost over the lifetime
pumped. Both heat exchangers and liquid into a gas, which rises to the surface of the tank or data centers.
pumps can be found inside the chassis or and condenses on a coil, falling naturally
in a side arrangement where the heat is back down once it cools off enough by
transferred from the liquid to a water loop. turning back into a liquid state.
Current Adoption
This approach also involves no fans,
so its operation is nearly silent (0 dB). In While far from mainstream, liquid cooling
contrast, some air-cooled facilities can is positioning itself as the cooling solution
reach upwards of 80 dB in the data hall for high-performance computing. Its
with workers requiring hearing protection mainstream adoption will however
depend on advances in technology and
for longer exposures.
chip designs.
Retrofitting already existing data
centers is costly for some forms of liquid
Immersion Cooling – Open Tub cooling, while the weight of immersion
– Single-Phase tanks makes it impractical for many
current raised floor facilities. 
Sometimes referred to as an "open
bath,” this immersive liquid cooling
method involves the IT equipment being immersion Cooling - Open-Tub:
Two Phase
completely submerged in fluid.

>>CONTENTS Plant-based cooling 
Plant-based
immersion cooling Peter Judge
Executive Editor
Dealing with the

hidden problems of dielectrics
I
mmersion-based cooling is currently
perceived as one of the greenest technologies
in data centers, as it reduces the energy
needed to cool a facility, while extracting heat
in a quiet and efficient manner.
But there could be a problem. Data center
cooling systems from the likes of Asperitas or
Submer consist of large tanks of fluid in which
electronics are submerged. Generally, that fluid is
a synthetic oil composed of various hydrocarbons,
ultimately derived from petroleum.
That might not be a big issue, because

immersion cooling systems don’t burn their cooling
fluid, it circulates within the tanks until it needs
replacement.
But the hydrocarbon-based fluid will eventually

need to be disposed of, and will reach the
environment.
Could there be an alternative?
In the general
data center sector,
immersion cooling
Cool vegetable oil is still a small niche, fluid, sources suggest. Individual tanks
hold from 250 to 500 gallons and, while
US food giant Cargill thinks there is. The as most operators are the fluid lasts a long time, it will have to be
company is one of the largest in the US,
starting 150 years ago as a salt distributor,
dealing with a huge replaced at some point.
and is now best-known for egg-based installed base of air- There are anecdotal stories of data
centers placing orders for 25,000 gallons
products. But it also works with grain
and vegetable oil, and a few years back, cooled systems of coolant at one time, which amounts to
it quietly branched out. Into data center around 60 totes.
cooling. What appears to be happening is
“We saw an opportunity for the operators are choosing to replace their
renewables aspect, and the environmental immersion cooling after perhaps five or
aspect,” explains Kristin Anderson, Cargill’s six years.
business development manager for When this happens, if customers
cooling solutions. “We're really excited dispose of the fluid it will still have
about this product and the environmental effectively zero carbon emissions, since
opportunities.” it will be releasing captured carbon.
The product, NatureCool, is at least 90 However, there is a possibility that
percent based on soy oil, and designed customers might still manage to reuse
to replace petroleum-based immersion that fluid, if it can be processed to make it
coolants in data centers and cryptomining suitable for bio-diesel use.
facilities. Because it comes from plants Given that NatureCool is 90 percent
that have naturally trapped carbon, it can soy oil, the other 10 percent might need to
be said to be CO2 neutral - although uses be removed, in some sort of processing,
land that would otherwise be used for tanks, Cargill says it can biodegrade leaving an oil which can be safely burnt in
food. quickly and easily, within ten days - even diesel generators.
though it is stable and long-lasting inside
Environmentally friendly products can the system. The reuse doesn’t end there, as the totes
involve a trade-off on performance, but themselves are a potential source of waste.
Cargill believes that doesn’t apply here. It Recycling the product Industry practice is generally to discard
claims the fluid has a 10 percent higher them, but Cargill recycles totes.
heat capacity than leading synthetic Cargill has considered the lifecycle of the
immersion cooling fluids. product and made it recyclable - not only Cargill’s cooling customers all get virgin
the fluid but the packaging as well. totes rather than second-use containers,
It also passes safety standards, with a but customers are encouraged to send
high flash point of 325°C (617°F). Unlike The company can supply fluids in them back so they can be cleaned and
some other immersion fluids, it can't self- tanker trucks, holding 5,800 gallons, but reused or sold on the secondary market.
ignite, because its flames will go out after that doesn’t work for data centers, as the
the heat source is removed. trucks can’t be driven into the facility and
up to the tanks.
And there are other benefits in its Market potential
practical use, Cargill claims. The company Instead, most customers use what is
says that synthetic spills require expensive known as “totes,” 330-gallon containers All too often, the recycled option is an
remediation, using solvents which then made of heavy plastic with a metal cage expensive niche product, but Cargill
reinforcement, that can be transported appears to want to take a substantial share
need to be cleaned up, using techniques
by forklift truck. Totes are about four-by- of the market.
which are highly regulated.
four-by-four (feet), and add to the price of
The product was initially conceived
By contrast, Cargill says NatureCool the fluid.
around 2017, and started out in tests
spills just need soap and water.
Large facilities, with up to 500 tanks, with small partners. It has been available
In fact, when the fluid is outside the can get through a surprising amount of commercially for four and a half years,

>>CONTENTS Plant-based cooling 
finding a market amongst early adopters business, immersion cooling is obviously environmental credentials, possibly linked
of immersion cooling. a good opportunity, because it provides a to pending regulations on greenhouse
higher-margin outlet for vegetable oil. gases and other chemicals with a global
This year, in 2022, the company has warming potential.
built up enough momentum to hire a team However, there are already a variety of
to market the product and make a formal synthetic oils in competition, so there will Cargill hopes that potential immersion
launch. be pressure on Cargill to keep the fluid cooling customers will demand a plant-
cheap. Certainly, operating in the price- based zero-emissions product in tanks,
With its massive food volumes, Cargill and ask vendors to endorse and supply it.
sensitive crypto sector will require that.
can produce large volumes of NatureCool
to meet potential demand, however, One might wonder if immersion DCD has approached leading
forecasting could be an issue, as the cooling in data centers could expand immersion cooling providers to ask if they
company’s initial market is mostly in the so quickly that the facilities start to take are aware of NatureCool or have certified
unpredictable cryptomining sector. raw materials away from the food sector, it, and the initial response seems to be
perhaps pushing up prices, but there’s no favorable.
In the general data center sector,
current danger of that. While some vendors are staying quiet
immersion cooling is still a small niche,
as most operators are dealing with a The fluid is available internationally, for now, Asperitas says it is “excited” by the
huge installed base of air-cooled systems. shipped in ISO-standard shipping development.
It is difficult to get those data centers container tanks. Cargill is a large Asperitas says there don’t seem to be
to consider converting to immersion enough organization to have an entire any issues with compatibility, but will
cooling: it would involve junking their air transportation team that will handle this need to confirm this with OEMs. “We look
conditioning systems, and investing in task, and also cover the minutiae of the forward to working with Cargill through
different sorts of support infrastructure international shipping process, including a special OCP immersion cooling fluids
and staff. customs and VAT. group to assess performance using the
newly published Figures Of Merit (FOMs),”
High-performance computing (HPC)
said a statement.
has moved further towards immersion
cooling, but it’s clear that cryptomining is Partners and channels Cargill has joined the Open Compute
the current opportunity. Crypto operators Project (OCP), an industry group aiming to
Users buying immersion cooling systems reduce the environmental footprint of data
are not tied to existing installed hardware,
do not want to have to buy the coolant center hardware, and hopes to raise the
and they simply want to run equipment as
separately. In the event of any failure or profile of immersion coolants.
fast and cheaply as possible.
incompatibility, this would mean finger-
They routinely overclock equipment pointing and potentially a failure of the “Immersion cooling is the new frontier
to get maximum performance, creating tank’s warranty. of technologies that allows for more
higher demands for heat removal, which efficient, higher performing systems
For this reason, Cargill aims to sell that also help make the IT industry
immersion cooling can deliver.
its product directly through the tank more sustainable,” said Kurtis Miller,
vendors, and it will be getting it certified as the managing director of Cargill’s bio-
compatible with those tank products. industrial business, and a contributor to
What about food? the OCP's Requirements document for
We can also expect marketing
Taken in context with the rest of Cargill’s campaigns which are based around its immersion cooling. 
There are anecdotal stories of data centers

placing orders for 25,000 gallons of coolant at
one time, which amounts to around 60 totes
A New Wave
Of Cooling Solutions.
Cool the data center with non-raised floor solutions.
High-performing cooling in non-raised floor environments
is here and ready to meet growing capacity demand and
reduce operating costs. Ensure equipment reliability and
improve cooling system efficiency in the existing footprint.
Visit Vertiv.com to learn more.

>>CONTENTS Moving out west 
The Great Aussie

Migration Georgia Butler
Reporter
Colo and cloud providers

S
ometimes, it feels like everyone is moving to the
cloud.
move beyond the east coast

While that isn’t exactly true, with the cloud
loudly proffering to offer more sustainable,
cheaper, easier, quicker - better - IT services,
it is unsurprising that so many are heading to the
hyperscalers.
It’s no different ‘down under’. In 2013, the Australian
government set out guidelines for its government
agencies to take a ‘cloud-first strategy.’ Spending on
cloud computing has since risen from ~AU$4.7 million
(US$3.18m) between 2010 and 2014, and is predicted to
reach AU$20.8bn (US$14.1bn) in 2025.
In other words, the Great Aussie Migration to the
Cloud is looking good. Money is being thrown at the
problem, and we are regularly seeing new agencies
joining the list of those on the cloud.
But it has not all been smooth sailing. In the
Australian Government’s Digital Transformation
Agency’s ‘Secure Cloud Strategy,’ several obstacles and
hesitancies were identified, including a lack of ‘common
understanding of the cloud’ and ‘no confidence in how
to meet compliance obligations.’

Concerns around data security when one located on the eastern seaboard in of a massive storm.
it comes to cloud computing are nothing number and capacity, but the Australian Data centers themselves are built
new, and that this is a felt experience population is six to one. The purpose with these incidents in consideration.
for the Australian government was only of our business is to bring the cloud According to Burley, DCI facilities
emphasized by the Global Switch Exodus. to the Edge, and by that, we mean to are all constructed with a ‘TVRA’ in
In August 2019, China’s Shagang bring it away from the eastern seaboard mind: a Technology Vulnerability Risk
bought the final quarter of Global Switch, concentration and more to the west of the Assessment.
making the cloud operator entirely under country, and that explains why we started
“We make sure we build in above the
Chinese ownership. With many nations in Adelaide.”
one in 100-year, or one in a 200-year
boycotting Chinese-owned technology Adelaide, located in South Australia, flood zone. Particularly in Darwin, there
and data services, this had a negative places it almost directly in the middle are storm surges, so we're building above
impact on the Australian Government’s (width-ways) of the center of the country. the 120-year flood zone. We always have
trust in remaining with the provider. While by no means ‘west,’ it is west of the regard to bushfire risk, and so you tend to
In 2017, the Aussie Department of cloud hotspots in New South Wales and find a lot of exclusion zones and barriers
Defense exited the Global Switch facility Queensland. to building in bushland.”
(and went on to sign an AU$109.4 million DCI already offers a colocation data But while the data centers themselves
(US$76.8m) contract with Data#3 for center in Adelaide, ADL01, but what they are strategically located, the grid is liable
Microsoft Azure Cloud services in August are currently working on are two cloud to outages, and this is a huge obstacle to
of this year), and in July of this year, facilities: ADL02 and ADL03. DCI.
the Department of Home Affairs, the “We have an existing facility, ADL01. “For us, the greater issue is the
Australian Securities and Investments Next door is the ADL02, which will in fact variability of the grid. In Australia, there's
Commission, and the Australian be a twin to ADL03 in Mawson lakes.” a good bit of instability occurring. And so,
Communications Media Authority
This decision is strategic. With the in Adelaide, we maintain the 72 hours of
officially broke their relationships with
South Australian government already backup generation on-site fuel.”
Global Switch off. The end of an era.
hosting some IT equipment in ADL01, This has been particularly necessary
Richard Burley, CCO of DCI Data having a cloud provider just next door is in the last month. South Australia has
Centers, an Australian Government- ideal, as well as having another facility to been experiencing the ‘worst statewide
Certified Service Provider, admitted that back it up, just 14 miles away in Mawson blackout since 2016.’ According to ABC,
the Global Switch departures were not Lakes. gusty winds, heavy rain, and 423,000
bad for other cloud providers, including
“It [ADL02] is a 4MW box with two lightning strikes caused widespread
DCI.
halls, and 2,350 square meters of floor damage to power lines across the state,
“We're part of the Commonwealth space. The PUE is 1.2, and that's even at leaving more than 34,000 people without
hosting certification framework and very low loads. We have 800 racks, and it's electricity. Fortunately for DCI, their
we're listed as certified strategic,” Burley designed to comply with cabinet security Adelaide facilities have not yet been
explained. “Therefore, one must be a low- accreditations.” affected.
risk entity. Because our end/beneficial
It is not only DCI that is expanding The resulting floods are still having a
investors are predominantly Australian,
its footprint in Adelaide. Companies like significant impact on the grid, and as the
British, and North American, we tick that
NextDC and CDC are also setting up sites state enters its sunny season and the risk
box.
in the city. of bushfires again goes up, this instability
“Then we agree to operate our facilities is unlikely to be resolved just yet.
A dramatic expansion of any kind has
within the stewardship guidelines of the
sustainability concerns. In Australia, this Despite this, the data center industry in
commonwealth, in return for which our
is somewhat mitigated by a grid highly Australia remains set to expand over the
facilities are permitted to be used by the
subsidized by green energy (in Adelaide, coming years, particularly for the cloud.
public and private cloud service providers
it is primarily wind power), but that grid is Government agencies cannot
for all classifications of government use.”
also highly compromised. consistently and successfully implement
However, is not only data sovereignty
Climate change has exacerbated a cloud-first strategy until the cloud
and compliance that offer an obstacle to
the already tempestuous weather in infrastructure exists at the regional Edge
the widespread adoption of the cloud.
Australia, and the country is plagued by of the major cities in Australia. Until the
In fact, according to Burley, it is extreme weather incidents like storms over-concentration problem is overcome,
geographical. and wildfires. For example, on December we can expect to see continuing massive
“If you look at cloud-ready certified 12, 2022, more than 2,500 customers growth, regardless of how well the grid
data centers in Australia, they are 40 to reported a blackout in Sydney as a result can support it. 
58 | DCD Magazine • datacenterdynamics.com Issue 47 • December 2022 | 58

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>>CONTENTS Awards Winners 
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Contents
62. Delivering Edge infrastructure to the UK
through the cloud
Understanding the Edge Data Center Project of the
Worthy of note
I
Year
n an industry undergoing while machine learning
63. Bringing data center infrastructure massive change, some technologies are already beginning
management to Brazil projects and people have to reduce server waste.
The evolution of DCIM for banks stood out as the leaders of
the pack. We can do better
64. Millimeter-level accuracy
Now in its 16th year, Data centers have always been a
Why a high-tech hardhat won DCD’s mission-
the DCD Awards show has always sector of enormous wealth, made
Critical Tech Innovation Award
sought to uncover and highlight possible by a huge appetite for
65. Do you know how much energy your the individuals, teams, and projects power, water, and other resources.
servers are using? that represent the best of what the It's possible to be mindful of
Why TechBuyer’s Interact won the Energy Impact industry has to offer. that, and work to improve our
Award at the DCD Awards 2022 show 59 judges from across the relationship with the wider world.
industry voted across 15 categories That could be through circular
66. K
eeping hardware out of the trash in the sector's largest and longest centers aimed at recycling servers,
Why Microsoft’s Circular Centers deserve the DCD running awards series. After or it could be through phasing out
Environmental Impact Award hundreds of submissions, months water use. It could also be shown in
67. Digital literacy for all of discussions, and a careful other ways, like working with local
Why Equinix won the Social Impact Award for its tallying up of the vote, we present communities to improve digital
work in India here the winners of the data literacy - connecting those around
center's original and unbiased you, and not just those that can pay.
68. Building a modular hyperscale data center awards show.
in Malaysia This supplement looks at those Old and young
Why it won the Data Center Design Innovation winners, delving into each project It is no secret that data center
award and profiling the people behind audiences tend to be on the older
them. and maler side than most.
69. Building a sustainable hyperscale facility in In our award highlighting the
South Africa A global industry upcoming talent of the sector,
Understanding Vantage’s advantage While the show itself was held it was good to see a diversity of
in London, UK, the finalists faces competing for the award -
70. Bringing the Edge to Mexico represented every corner of the providing new perspectives for an
MTP leads the pack in our LATAM awards
world. industry that doesn't want to be
The winners were equally stuck in the past.
71. Building NTT's PH1 data center
Why they won the Data Center Construction Team diverse, highlighting that the sector But that doesn't mean those
of the Year Award cannot just look to the US and that have worked in the industry
Europe for inspiration and ideas. should feel they are being put out
72 A futuristic campus on a high water table Winners came from Mexico, to pasture. We also highlight the
Why NTT Global Data Centers won DCD’s Malaysia, India, South Africa, and lifetime achievement of someone
Emerging Asia Pacific Data Center Development more. who helped lift the sector, as well as
Award the lives of veterans.
Seeing the future
73. Decommissioning legacy facilities while Predictions of the future are always The show must go on
saving lives flawed, but perhaps we can get As we celebrate those that won in
Kaiser Permanente on closing down data centers a glimpse at what is to come in 2022, it's worth remembering that
some of the award winners we the process will soon kick off for the
75. A rising talent
saw this year. Augmented reality next one.
Finally, some fresh blood for an industry in need of
new voices (AR) headsets and digital twin As the industry grows, its efforts
technology look poised to overhaul to improve should grow with it. Will
76. We Salute an operation that gives a role to how we approach construction, you help make 2023 better?
veterans
Why Lee Kirby won DCD’s Outstanding
Contribution to the Data Center Industry Award
Awards Supplement | 61
>>CONTENTS
EDGE PROJECT OF THE YEAR
Delivering Edge
infrastructure to the UK Paul Lipscombe
through the cloud

Telco Editor
Understanding the Edge Data

Center Project of the Year
T
he UK is a thriving market regional enterprises and service providers
for data centers, with cloud unmatched scale and reach.
providers leading in recent
“The launch of Pulsant Cloud is
years. Now, as the Edge
another significant milestone in the
begins to pick up its pace,
development of our Edge infrastructure
companies are trying to work
platform. We have invested in the
out how it fits into the nation’s digital
network, our data centers, and now
landscape.
the hybrid cloud to give enterprises
One UK digital Edge infrastructure orchestration all the way to the Edge,”
provider, Pulsant, recently launched its said the company in a statement.
own next-generation Edge platform called
According to the firm, Pulsant Cloud
Pulsant Cloud to try to bridge the gap.
is able to “resolve the most significant
The company has been recognized control and optimization challenges
with this platform, after scooping the facing organizations with hybrid
award for Edge Data Center Project of environments.”
the Year, which was sponsored by Moy
It’s been designed with delivering
Materials.
cost-control and workload flexibility A partnership with Megaport, a
This award recognizes projects needed for Edge. network-as-a-service provider has
demonstrating a unique and strategic given Pulsant the opportunity to
Pulsant Cloud has been developed for
approach to how a successful Edge connect to more than 360 cloud service
the whole of the UK to access, through
deployment is designed, set up, and providers, including some of the biggest
its Edge infrastructure platform. In
operated. hyperscalers around including Alibaba,
simple terms, clients are able to develop
According to the firm, this platform Edge applications within a hybrid cloud AWS, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Microsoft
has been designed to extend the environment via Pulsant’s 100Gbps fiber Azure, Nutanix, Oracle Cloud, Salesforce,
power of the Edge into complex hybrid network. and SAP.
environments. “We're delighted to announce we won
The service keeps regional mid-market
organizations connected, enabling them the "Edge Data Center Project of the Year"
It’s clear that the company is serious
to build and deploy applications. award at last night's DCD Awards 2022,”
about this too, following over £100 million
Pulsant said.
worth of investments into building its
And the company is quite keen to
Edge digital infrastructure platform in “The award truly recognizes our
point out that its coverage is nationwide,
the past year. Pulsant acquired two data work delivering a next-generation Edge
with its connected data center network
centers during this period, in Manchester infrastructure platform to UK regional
stretching from London to Scotland,
and Reading. It now counts 12 data enterprises and service providers, offering
filling the infrastructure gap between
centers across the country. low latency access and hybrid cloud
regional businesses and innovative
software providers. Bridging the digital through our 12 UK-wide data centers. This
Pulsant wants to enable 95 percent of
divide across the UK is a key target of is a huge testament to our dedicated team
UK businesses to benefit from the major
Pulsant’s. and everyone involved in the project.” 
advances of Edge computing and give

>>CONTENTS
ENTERPRISE EVOLUTION
Bringing data center

infrastructure Paul Lipscombe
management to Brazil
Telco Editor
The evolution of DCIM for banks
O
nline banking is a These spaces together generate a
necessity for nearly huge amount of assets that should be
everyone these days and monitored and managed on a digital
is an absolute must for platform: the DCIM system. DCIM has
speedy transactions. around 1,500 facility assets with more
than 120,000 automation monitoring
This method of
points, 5,000 IT assets installed, and
transferring money has replaced cash,
integrations with at least eight external
and stopped people from having to travel
systems.
to banks. But all these transactions - and
there’s a hell of a lot of them - must be
going somewhere. And of course, the
But what is the DCIM platform?
answer is data centers.
This platform, allows for the full
One such financial services company integration between data center
is Brazilian-based Itaú Unibanco. The infrastructure areas, simplifying and
firm has two data centers, both of which automating infrastructure delivery
are located in Mogi Mirim, roughly 150km through integration with ITSM, Asset
southwest of São Paulo. Management, and CMMS platforms.
The company’s work has been According to Itau, its facilities

recognized after it claimed the Enterprise infrastructure provisioning becomes fully
Data Center Evolution award, sponsored automated due to the platform's advisory Another important focus for Itaú
by Datalec Precision Installations. functionalities based on the capacity Unibanco has been its new colocation
that indicates the best position for new initiatives, and its DCIM platform has
This award recognizes the process equipment, aiming to maximize the been able to support such initiatives.
of data center evolution that enables energy and occupancy efficiency of IT
the enterprise to meet all the required With the goal of providing its clients
environments.
objectives of its IT strategy. a centralized management of their
Because of this DCIM platform, the infrastructure, Itaú’s DCIM is able to
Itaú Unibanco has an initiative to data centers now have a digital twin centralize the management of colocation
improve processes, restructure teams, tool, that allows for the automation of spaces on a unified platform, giving the
and automate manual processes. Itaú infrastructure delivery routines for lead customers a complete view of space
Unibanco - Centro Tecnológico Mogi time reduction, quality improvement, and occupation, power consumption
Mirim comprises two data centers with predictability of reactions and possible and demand, plus actual, and historical
more than 10,000 sqm of IT space and impacts of infrastructure changes, online thermal conditions of IT space, and a
30,000 sqm divided between facility and monitoring of electrical loads, generation detailed database of all IT assets installed
support. of instant CFD models, and others. in their environment. 
>>CONTENTS
CRITICAL TECH INNOVATION
Millimeter-level
accuracy makes AR Peter Judge
headset a winner
Executive Editor
Why a high-tech hardhat won DCD’s

mission-Critical Tech Innovation Award
T
he biggest problem in data “The value proposition is, build it right The system was fully deployed on-site
center construction is errors the first time,” XYZ Reality CEO David and in 2022 PM Group made an important
where the building doesn’t Mitchell said in an interview with DCD. decision to integrate its Autodesk BIM
quite match the plans. “The industry is plagued by rework.” 360 project management system with the
Misplaced concrete pads or Atom’s cloud platform, streamlining the
mistakes in the fiber pop- Atom is a safety-certified hardhat with process and enabling more inspections
a built in head-up display and 16GB RAM and swifter resolutions.
ups can put a data center build behind
and 1TB of storage. It connects to the
schedule or decrease the performance of
HoloSite augmented reality platform and Now rework has been reduced to less
the eventual building.
shows building plans as a 3D hologram. than one percent of the project. 
Around 30 percent of any construction
It provides engineering-grade AR,
project is “rework” - putting right such
with millimeter-level accuracy, able to
mistakes when they have been identified.
align building information model (BIM)
The Atom headset from XYZ Reality files with the built reality, showing
can wipe out rework, by validating the placing of electrics, pipework, and
the building in real-time as it is being the eventual physical structure, and
constructed, using a 3D augmented reality validating the build in real-time.
view of the building designs overlaid That’s a benefit which stood out
on the construction site, before the for judges of the Mission Critical Tech
engineers’ very eyes. Innovation award, sponsored by Jones
Engineering Group.
The accuracy is crucial, as data centers

are built with tolerances as small as
5mm. By eliminating the traditional six-
to eight-week scanning and checking
rework process, XYZ Reality says an
Atom can pay for itself in six months by
eliminating costly rework.
This also delivers a reduction in the

wastage of energy and materials during
the build.
PM Group deployed Atom in a

beta test in November 2020, and field
engineers quickly identified significant
discrepancies between the design and
the construction.

>>CONTENTS
ENERGY IMPACT
Do you know how

much energy your Peter Judge
servers are using?

Executive Editor
Why TechBuyer’s Interact won the

Energy Impact Award at the DCD
Awards 2022 show
D
ata centers are keen to aiming to promote a circular economy
minimize the energy they and reduce wasted materials and energy in
use - but large parts of that the data center sector. But customers are
energy are almost invisible. In reluctant to take the opportunity because
particular, the energy used by of a myth, widely believed in the industry -
servers can be hard to access. that new servers are so much more energy
server estate. This work won the Energy
efficient that it is never worth repurposing
Most data centers assess their energy Impact Award at the DCD Awards 20222,
second-user systems.
efficiency using power usage effectiveness sponsored by Node Pole.
(PUE), a metric designed to show “This myth is contributing to huge
“Looking at the research, we saw the
inefficiencies in the power and cooling amounts of unnecessary waste (energy and
opportunity to apply the results beyond
infrastructure, but giving no insight into what material) and emissions,” says TechBuyer’s
academia via a brand-new commercial
happens within the racks. Rich Kenny - so the company led a research
tool,” says Kenny, who is now director of
project to compare the footprint of new and
Most servers are run very inefficiently, at TechBuyer’s new Interact division, set up to
refurbished servers.
low utilization, so the PUE scores can mask a offer the Interact tool to users.
lot of waste. TechBuyer knew that, since 2014, the
Interact launched in 2020, served its first
price-performance of servers has not
When operators refresh their servers, they customer in 2021 and now works with cloud
been increasing as rapidly as Moore’s Law
hope to reduce their energy costs and their providers, and global leaders in financial
originally predicted, and refurbished servers
carbon footprint but, without actual figures, services.
are now as reliable and efficient as new ones.
they rely on guesswork and industry myths
Interact is the only tool to go beyond PUE
about the environmental impact of their An Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer
and calculate the energy savings from server
hardware. Project (KTP) with the University of East
configurations, and offer clear and usable
London ran from 2019 to 2020, producing
This means they may inadvertently guidance that can reduce the impact of an
robust primary research, measuring the
increase their carbon footprint, when all organization’s IT.
energy use and performance of new and
factors are taken into account.
refurbished servers. Its guidance is tailored according to the
Interact, from TechBuyer, aims to change carbon mix of the electricity available in a
As well as comparing the energy given geography, and the type of data center
that. It’s a non-intrusive, machine learning,
costs, the KTP looked at reliability. Since under consideration - for instance enterprise,
SaaS tool that provides tailored server
any broken parts are replaced during or colocation.
upgrade recommendations that will reduce
refurbishment, correctly configured second-
the cost, energy consumption and carbon
user servers are as performant and more According to an analysis of more than
footprint of an organization’s server estate.
efficient than new ones, the report found. 150 data centers, the tool’s recommendations
The tool provides easy-to-use reports, could save the average data center 8.3MWh
The KTP’s results were published in an energy, 2.8 tonnes CO2e emissions and £1
and comparisons between multiple options,
academic journal - the IEEE’s Transactions million costs per year.
so users can find opportunities to improve
on Sustainable Computing. But TechBuyer
efficiency, while saving money, energy, Put another way, customers can unlock
realized that the methods used in the project
space, and CO2 emissions. 300 percent more compute power for just
could be offered to organizations wanting
TechBuyer provides refurbished servers, to understand the cost and footprint of their seven percent more energy. 
Automation
DCD Awards 2022 || 65
Supplement 65
>>CONTENTS
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
Keeping hardware
out of the trash Peter Judge
Executive Editor
Why Microsoft’s Circular Centers

deserve the DCD Environmental Impact
Award
F
or too long, data centers have The Center uses routing software and
treated servers and other IT Microsoft’s own Dynamics 365 ERP/CRM
hardware as a consumable that application.
can be trashed when its lifetime At the start of 2022, Circular Centers were
is over. opened in Boydton, Virginia, and Dublin,
The world is learning that Ireland, with Singapore following in the
natural resources are finite. Right now, footsteps of June 2022, and most recently
electronic waste (e-waste) is the fastest- Chicago, Illinois. Microsoft plans to extend
growing stream of such material. More than the model to most of its cloud assets.
11 billion tons of it are produced each year As well as addressing Microsoft’s own
and, despite directives and urging from waste stream, the Circular Center is offered
national and regional governments, only 20 as a model for others. The business process
percent of it is recycled has been shared transparently, for others to
Microsoft’s cloud is expanding rapidly, adopt or adapt for their own situation.
Across the whole system, security
with millions of servers deployed in more than “We are transparently sharing our of customer data, which may be held in
140 countries. This represents a considerable approach, impact, and lessons learned to discarded storage systems, is built in.
throughput of hardware, and Microsoft has help other organizations reimagine business
created Circular Centers at major data center Much of the repurposed equipment is
models towards a more sustainable and
campuses, to pioneer the use of regenerative provided for schools and specialized skills
circular economy,” the company said in a
and restorative cycles for e-waste. training programs, and the Circular Centers
statement.
are also creating new jobs with transferable
Circular Centers process decommissioned In particular, Microsoft learned that a skills, seeding a whole new generation of
cloud servers, sorting components and Circular Center must have involvement circular economy experts.
equipment to optimize material that can be from multiple stakeholders and teams, from
reused or repurposed - an activity which “The core of our Circular Center strategy
Finance to Construction to Planning to
earned them the DCD Environmental is to empower customers and the world
Engineering to Operations. Getting all these
Impact Award for 2022, sponsored by H&MV to decouple growth from the use of virgin
players on board is a crucial first step.
Engineering resources,” says Microsoft. “But the impact
The company also learned that the goes beyond sustainability. Our Circular
Microsoft’s plan is for the whole company circular economy is not limited to any Centers increase value, ensure compliance,
to achieve zero-waste by 2030, and the one company. Its Circular Centers make and increase resiliency. Circular Centers
company is on track to reuse or recycle 90 partnerships with suppliers, third-party demonstrate the business opportunity
percent of its cloud computing hardware IT Asset Disposition partners, and the available to any company if they place
assets by 2025. community. circularity and sustainability at the center of
In 2021, the company ran a pilot Circular The Circular Center approach feeds back their operations.”
Center in its Amsterdam campus, a major site into sustainable design and responsible Microsoft's corporate vice president
which was able to gather seven percent of the sourcing of the original assets. As Microsoft Noelle Walsh also won the Sustainability
servers discarded by Microsoft’s global cloud designs much of its hardware portfolio, it Pioneer Award, sponsored by Eaton. "I
operations. has been able to build sustainability into the very much consider it an organization-
This facility now processes systems that it commissions. wide recognition," she said. "My team is
decommissioned cloud hardware so that, The company now runs an Intelligent incredibly dedicated to making our ambitious
82 percent of all decommissioned assets are Disposition and Routing System (IDARS) that sustainability goals a reality, and this award
reused and recycled, The Centre is on track to will deliver the zero waste plan, picking the is for them. Thank you, DCD, for this
reach 90 percent by 2025. best disposition path for every component. recognition." 

>>CONTENTS
SOCIAL IMPACT
Digital literacy
for all Sebastian Moss
Editor-in-Chief
Why Equinix won the

Social Impact Award for
its work in India
T
he global buildout of data The company
centers around the world has estimates that its
improved digital services for hardware donations
many, ushering in a new world will help around
of connectivity. 6,000 students,
while its virtual
But such a future has
sessions have
not been evenly shared, with billions left
reached around
poorly connected or entirely unconnected.
2,500 students.
This means they are unable to partake in
the global economy, don't have access to Equinix said
education resources, and can't learn about that it also initiated
healthcare. and sponsored
Menstrual Hygiene
With the pandemic, this digital divide
and Awareness
became even more apparent. As many simply
drives, along with an NGO and medical
shifted to remote work, the disconnected
organizations, to teach menstrual health to
were forced to risk their health every day.
adolescent girls in nine schools as well as
With the data center sector having women in the neighboring communities
benefitted more than most from the digital around its data centers.
age, it is only fitting that it gives back.
The company currently operates two data
That's why the DCD Global Awards 2022 centers in Mumbai, which it acquired in 2021
winner of the Social Impact Award was from GPX Global Systems for $161 million.
Equinix for its work in India, with the award
Incinerators were also provided to help
sponsored by Huawei.
dispose of menstrual pads. The company
The company worked with the Magic Bus claims more than 1,500 girls have benefitted
Foundation to donate laptops, smart TVs, and from the effort.
a projector to 23 schools across and around
With the work being done in tandem with
Mumbai.
Magic Bus, other companies and individuals
Volunteers at Equinix India then held are welcome to donate time or money to
virtual sessions with students with career help improve digital literacy in India.
advice, as well as with teachers on digital
Around 60 percent of India's rural
training. “[I] finally got a clear path towards
population does not use the Internet, Nielsen
my career,” one student said. “My heart is
reports, partially due to a lack of access, and
filled with gratitude for all volunteers who
partially due to a lack of digital literacy. 
gave me this mind-blowing window of
opportunity.”
Automation Supplement || 67
Awards Supplement 67
>>CONTENTS
DATA CENTER DESIGN INNOVATION
Building a modular
hyperscale data center Dan Swinhoe
in Malaysia
News Editor
Why it won the Data Center Design

Innovation award
T
hough Singapore’s data The first phase of MY06 was delivered,
center moratorium is slowly from site due diligence, land acquisition,
ending, demand is still design, procurement, prefabrication,
outstripping supply in the shipment, to site construction, testing,
city-state. commissioning, and data hall handover,
in just 12 months. The first 20MW phase
As a result, Johor, just
of the site went live in October 2021, with
across the border in southern Malaysia,
TikTok-owner ByteDance as the anchor
is fast becoming the home of a number
tenant of the site.
of new data center developments. Bridge
recently launched the first phase of its “Using such technics enables
MY06 data center, for which it won DCD’s the project to be delivered ahead of
Data Center Design Innovation Award. time, being cost-effective and lowers
environmental impact, while mitigating indirect liquid cooling technology) and
This project was the first cooperative
the labor shortage in the labor crunched direct evaporative cooling technology
construction outside China between
eco-system. It also promotes safety, (indirect evaporative cooling technology).
Chindata Group, and its wholly-owned
whilst producing high quality-controlled MY06 phase 1 was designed using cool
subsidiary, Bridge Data Centers.
data centers by reducing errors and plate cooling design, while MY06 phase 2
Located on a 40-acre site in the improved efficiencies,” the company said. will be using immersion cooling system;
Sedenak business park outside of Johor, “Led by experienced and highly positive MY06’s cooling system is designed to
the new campus will span three buildings Singapore, Malaysia ground team and achieve up to an annualized PUE of <1.2.
and have a combined capacity of 110MW China’s remote team, they made sure the
“We are deeply honored to receive
at full build out. structural design as well as each process
the Data Center Design Innovation
and fitting up was timely for this fast-
The site, first announced in November award at the DCD Global Awards 2022,”
paced project implementation.”
2021, uses a containerized modular the company said after winning the
building method, using modules that are However, construction was not award, sponsored by Schneider Electric.
made in a fabrication facility in China and without its challenges. Due to the “It is a great inspiration to motivate us
assembled quickly on site in Johor. Covid-related delays, some equipment continuously design and operate our data
did not arrive on site in time, and so centers in not only Malaysia markets but
Bridge said the team had to manage the construction team had to adjust also in Thailand, India, and emerging
close to 400 containerized building and the equipment installation process and markets.”
facility modules, complete assembly procedures to fit in the equipment’s
on site in less than 30 days using the “With the development of MY06,
delivery disruption from time to time.
company’s Prefabricated, Prefinished comes the creation of an international
The China team also played an active role
Volumetric Construction (PPVC) modular and local supply chain, career
in adjusting the container schedule for
building method construction technique. advancement, and upskilling for the local
leaving the Chinese factory.
PPVC uses free-standing containerized workforce in the high-tech industry and
modules that are completed with internal The project utilizes immersion cooling imparting knowledge to the data center
in combination with plate liquid cooling industry, benefiting the entire ecosystem
finishes, fixtures, fittings, white spaces,
technology (warm water-cooled plate and community.” 
and IT-fit-out.

>>CONTENTS
ENTERPRISE EVOLUTION
Building a sustainable
hyperscale facility in Dan Swinhoe
South Africa
News Editor
Understanding Vantage’s
advantage
W
hile not traditionally over 1.5 million working hours.
a data center hub,
One challenge was the short delivery
digital infrastructure
timescale required by the customer for
projects are blooming
the initial facility, exacerbated by the
across Africa.
imminent rainy season (December to power and ease of planning – greatly
The deployment February). assisted by the partnership forged with
of new subsea cables, roll-out of 5G, and Attacq, a leading Real Estate Investment
Once fully developed the campus
a global trend towards the cloud means Trust (REIT) in the region, and the good
will consist of three facilities across 30
the continent is seeing huge amounts relationship maintained with Eskom,” the
acres with 650,000 square feet (60,000
of new data centers. And South Africa – company said.
square meters) of data center space and
always the biggest hub on the continent
80MW of capacity. Vantage has said it “We are thrilled to announce that
– continues to see a number of new
was investing more than $1 billion into we've won the DCD Middle East &
projects being developed.
the site. Africa Data Center Development Award
One of those projects was from in recognition of our Johannesburg
Powered by Eskom, the campus campus,” Vantage said after winning
DigitalBridge’s Vantage Data Centers,
features a dedicated on-site, high-voltage the award, sponsored by Meesons. “This
which launched a new facility in
substation. The buildings use a closed- award recognizes the hard work and
Johannesburg, South Africa, this year.
loop chilled water system generated the expertise of our teams who worked
The company won DCD’s Middle East &
through air-cooled chillers alongside diligently to complete our first African
Africa Data Center Development Award
an integrated economizer which allows data center (JNB11).”
for its efforts.
reduced compressor energy based on
In March 2021, Vantage was contacted outside ambient temperature. The facility At the event, Abed Jishi, VP of design
by one of its strategic customers who has an annual PUE of 1.25. engineering EMEA, told DCD: “It’s
“urgently needed significant IT capacity awesome [to win] after all the hard work
To mitigate power rationing or load that we’ve done for the past couple of
in South Africa.” A few months later in
shedding – common to the region – a years to develop that campus.”
October, after a site was located and
260,000-liter back-up fuel system was
secured alongside planning permission “It’s one of the most resilient data
installed in the first phase, equal to 48
and power, Vantage commenced the build centers in the region. One of the biggest
hours of fuel at full load to serve JNB11.
of a data center campus in Johannesburg, achievements for Vantage is to make sure
This will be expanded to 1.6 million liters
the company’s first in Africa. that, building such a big campus in such
once the campus is fully built-out.
Located in Waterfall City in the a developed country, we’re still tapping
Vantage has also signed a 20-year onto renewable energy sources.”
Midrand area of Johannesburg, the first
87MWp power purchase agreement (PPA)
data center (JNB11) was completed in “One of the big hurdles was the
with SolarAfrica to power the facility
July 2022; a two-story, 35,000 square expertise, trying to find the right expertise
with renewable energy from a solar farm.
feet, 16MW building. Delivery took for the different engineering discipline we
Vantage has pledged to reach net zero by
place ahead of schedule in just 10 go through. I can’t say it was an easy task,
2030.
months using prefabricated electrical but South Africa being so connected to
containers and equipment designed and “The project was a smooth process the world, it gave us the leverage to bring
pre-manufactured by the company’s having thoroughly researched the right expertise to the country in conjunction
suppliers, with zero lost-time incidents location to ascertain available land, with local expertise.” 
>>CONTENTS
LATAM DATA CENTER DEVELOPMENT
Bringing the Edge to

Mexico Sebastian Moss
Editor-in-Chief
MTP leads the pack in our

LATAM awards
H
ow the Edge will be Those sites, in León and Tijuana, are
deployed across the world based on its new generation of design,
is one of the fundamental which has achieved an Uptime Tier
questions faced by the data III design certification. The first was
center sector over the next deployed in November 2021, with the
decade. second site coming a month later.
Much of the industry's focus, including MTP developed a proprietary

our own, has been on what's happening design for its containers, which it says
in the US and Europe. But perhaps we allows it to have more control over
should have been looking to Mexico. changing the system based on feedback
and experience. It has a LEGO-type
Mexico Telecom Partners (MTP), which architecture, to allow for adding and
is owned by Digital Bridge and Macquarie replacing components.
Mexican Infrastructure Fund, operates
The deployments are unmanned, use
thousands of towers across the country.
free-cooling, aisle containment, and load
Now, it hopes to get into the Edge. distribution. They rely on temperatures
Under the project name of 'The Data above the average of the ASHRAE
Center in Your City,' MTP has begun to quadrant, and have a centralized BMS to
spot issues.
deploy small Edge containers in cities
across the country. The company claims a PUE of 1.5, and
says each site has 2N in power.
The company now has some 59 Edge
sites (deployed on behalf of a mobile MTP's Sales SVP Javier Wiechers Veloz
customer), with 11MW of total power told DCD that "it has been a lot of effort
capacity, but it won the Latin America for myself and my team, as well as our
Data Center Development Award at the investors and our leaders, thank you for
DCD Awards show for its work on the two this award.” 
most recent facilities.

>>CONTENTS
DATA CENTER CONSTRUCTION TEAM OF THE YEAR
Building NTT's PH1

data center Sebastian Moss
Editor-in-Chief
Why they won the Data Center

Construction Team of the Year
Award
W
hile not traditionally NTT GDC says minimizes water usage - a
a data center hub, key feature in the resource-constrained
digital infrastructure Arizona landscape.
projects are blooming
across Africa. The architecture and engineering
team began work in late 2020, while
Given the supply construction began in early 2021, with an
and labor shortages that have constrained aim of opening the first two-story 36MW team was clutch in building and
the market in recent years, any data building in February 2022. maintaining a trusting relationship and
center construction that manages to sense of shared success for all involved."
remain somewhat on track is worth Staffing proved an immediate
challenge, as NTT GDC looked to expand With the project just the first phase of
celebrating.
rapidly beyond its RagingWire roots in a larger campus, the team put in miles
But NTT Global Data Centers' Phoenix the US and become a major player. It took of underground fiber and electrical duct
PH1 facility had to overcome another until late summer 2021 for the final team banks for later phases.
challenge - the team was still being to be established, with key hires made
As for the concrete and steel needed
formed. midway through the project.
for the building, NTT GDC used its in-
At the same time, it also had to The company said that it held off-site house Vendor Managed Inventory to
compete for talent and resources in a team-building events with new hires, order equipment earlier than usual in
region with larger, more established general- and sub- contractors, and the hopes of getting ahead of supply chain
projects. original team to ensure that everyone challenges – but the challenges remained.
knew each other well. “Having strong partnerships with
NTT GDC has moved to a standardized
global design that it hopes will speed up NTT GDC said that it held structured our suppliers and vendors coupled
future builds, but this project was its first - pull plan sessions that focused on the with a hybrid modular approach in our
adding yet more complexity. details of the schedule where everyone equipment yards allowed the project team
could give input on and commit to the to pivot rapidly and keep the project on
Dealing with these issues and still schedule," the company said.
schedule.
building a LEED-certified facility on
schedule are among the reasons why the While it was the first of its new
During the commissioning phase, all
standardized builds, NTT GDC said that
company won the DCD Awards 2022 Data responsible parties reviewed and agreed
the approach has already begun to pay
Center Construction Team of the Year to the commissioning plan and scripts.
dividends.
award, sponsored by ZincFive. The company also held daily and weekly
meetings to ensure teams were aware of "We had to have a clear scope so the
The company is building a 102-acre
upcoming activities. contractors could buyout the project
data center campus along the Elliot Road
in a timely manner and not worry
Technology Corridor in Mesa, Arizona. At "One of our biggest successes was
about an evolving design or ongoing
full build-out, the campus will consist of keeping morale high through challenging
changes that can cripple large projects,"
seven buildings offering a total of 240MW moments by going above and beyond to
the company said. "This allowed us to
of critical IT load, along with an on-site celebrate wins," NTT said in its awards
lock in production slots early for labor,
substation with 480MVA. submission. materials and equipment. Our approach
The data center relies on closed-loop "Having an owner’s team that to solidify the scope early and not
chilled water system with air-cooled worked closely with and identified as change it paid off." 
chillers and integral free cooling that an extension of the general contractor’s
>>CONTENTS
EMERGING ASIA PACIFIC DATA CENTER DEVELOPMENT
A futuristic campus on
a high water table Peter Judge
Executive Editor
Why NTT Global Data Centers won

DCD’s Emerging Asia Pacific Data bore-wells. So construction wasn’t delayed,
the team operated submersible de-watering
Center Development Award motors operating 24 hours a day.

Water figured again in a significant
redesign. Mumbai has suffered serious
floods as recently as July 2005, and water
NTT
levels worldwide are rising. The plans were
built its NAV1A plus, it represented a challenge: NTT had
adjusted, to raise the entire building 1.5m
Mahape Project to connect the mega campus to an onsite
from the current road level.
in Maharashtra, gas insulated substation (GIS) with power
NaviMumbai, distribution at 220kV. The facility was originally planned for
India, on an wholesale use by hyperscale tenants, but a
That was the first time NTT India had
industrial site, but it created a setting with a new client requirement emerged during the
dealt with this power configuration, so the
futuristic design - and built it in 20 months, build. One floor had to be redesigned and
build was carried out in phases, from an
despite multiple unusual challenges. implemented within the timeframe.
initial 22kV line, to an eventual 220kV line
“The futuristic and sustainable data after commissioning. Operating at this speed needed a large
center design has helped our customers to labor force assembled from across India,
During the build, engineers had to deal
meet their business goals and reduce TCO,” which could have presented a safety
with water. The site has a high water table,
says the NTT project entry. “This is a 90MW challenge. NTT adopted safety programs
10ft below ground level, and is surrounded
including strict adherence to safety rules
facility spread 4.3 acres of land which by a natural drain line.
and regulations.
help our customers to scale up as per their This caused significant extra
business requirement.” The safety procedures were made more
engineering work in basement area, which
complex by the arrival of the global Covid
The campus has high levels of power is used for parking and mechanical and
pandemic. During the imposed lockdown,
redundancy, and impressive environmental electrical services. The construction had to
the team extended its existing first aid
credentials, while providing employment quickly produce more than four industrial
resources, deploying doctors and nurses to
for 500 staff.
take care of the entire
The building process involved dealing construction crew
with the challenges of a high water table and provide regular
and potential flooding - features which health check-ups.
stood out for judges of the Asia Pacific Data Amid the
Center Development Award, sponsored by lockdown, the team
the DCD>Academy. stayed safely within
In the past, the NAV1A plot held the construction
industrial plants, which had one immediate campus, with all
bonus: the availability of power which necessary facilities
enabled a good level of power redundancy provided for
for the new facility. The site also has global laborers, engineers,
connectivity with high-speed Internet to and consultants
NTT’s Data Center Interconnect-network creating a “family
backbone. environment.”
The facility is aimed particularly at The project began

banking, financial services and insurance in late 2020, with
(BFSI) clients customers, so resilience a target schedule
and reliability were particularly strong of 20 months,
requirements. including the process
of finalizing the
Although the availability of power is a location, a process

>>CONTENTS
DATA CENTER OPERATIONS TEAM OF THE YEAR
Decommissioning
legacy facilities
while saving lives
which has a massive impact on aspects
like the facility’s access to renewable
energy or ability to do free cooling.
The design has sustainability built
Kaiser Permanente on
in down to its smaller subsections. It
uses modern diesel generators which closing down data centers Dan Swinhoe
News Editor
minimizes fuel consumption, and power
transformers with natural mineral oil
C
coolant, which is environmentally
friendly and biodegradable. alifornia-based healthcare unused, under-utilized, abandoned, or
NTT also chose efficient and quiet company Kaiser partially decommissioned IT equipment
chiller units, alongside the use of liquid Permanente is one of that was consuming data center
immersion cooling and direct contact the largest nonprofit resources and decommission it. The
cooling, aimed at reducing the PUE and healthcare plans in the company’s main goal was to close down
increasing efficiency. This is the first United States, with over 12 the Irvine facility without any impact to
time a service provider has deployed million members. The company operates Kaiser Permanente members or those
these technologies in India. 39 hospitals and more than 700 medical who perform patient care.
offices, with over 300,000 personnel,
The whole building is sealed to The project encompassed migrating
including more than 87,000 physicians
reduce energy loss, and rainwater is all compute environments to Kaiser
and nurses.
harvested with “zero discharge” methods. Permanente-owned facilities and cloud
The building can store 100,000 liters of Like many companies, in recent providers, and/or decommissioning
rainwater, all of which can be utilized years it has been looking to reduce its them. At the time the project started,
throughout the campus. Recycled water infrastructure footprint. As part of a the company’s footprint at the facility
is used in gardening and toilet flushing program to reduce IT waste, the company totaled 274 racks hosting just under
Another detail was the use of local was looking to exit a leased data center 1,900 servers; the equipment covered
suppliers to minimize the energy use and migrate any non-decommissioned 11,000 sq ft and required 1.4MW to
and delay involved in transporting systems to the cloud or a Kaiser-owned power.
materials. Over 95 percent of all facility.
“Given the complexity of shutting
construction material was purchased
But when dealing with healthcare down an entire data center, there were
from within 800km of the eventual
systems, access to data and applications many roadblocks along the way. The risk
building, to minimize the carbon
can literally mean life or death in some of impact to the customers was extremely
footprint.
cases. So ensuring that the company high,” according to Kaiser Permanente.
One-third of the open terrace is was able to exit the leased site without “Every server connection had to be
given over to solar panels which provide downtime was a key imperative for the evaluated, every application studied, and
renewable energy to the facility. company. For its efforts, the company every migration carefully planned.”
E-waste is managed, and organic won the DCD Data Center Operations
Before the team decommissioned
waste is separated with dry waste turned Team of the Year award.
the first equipment, there were several
into compost for in-house gardening
Kaiser Permanente first entered the brain-storming sessions held with the
purposes.
Irvine, California, colocation facility core team members including compute,
One feature is that NTT did not in 2008 due to limited floor space storage, network, application, design
take this approach in isolation, simply and power capacity in its owned data engineering, as well as non-technical
creating benefits for itself. NTT’s centers. Eventually, the company members such as customer advocates,
investment in stable power to the site decided to terminate its lease at the communications, and healthcare
during construction, actually helped facility as part of its DCO Urban Renewal professionals.
other companies to open their plants in (UR) Program.
the same location during this period.  The program sponsor was Elizabeth
The UR Program was developed to find Burneko, executive director of data center
Automation
>>CONTENTS
DATA CENTER OPERATIONS TEAM OF THE YEAR
operations at Kaiser, while Darren O'Toole, One of the key challenges identified
In the beginning
senior director of data solutions at the during the project was that end users were
company, was the technical lead. The using their personal and shared drives
company also worked with IBM spin-off to store information which could impact
Kyndryl for the project. patient care if downtime was experienced
during the migration. As a result, the
During weekly planning sessions,
company’s original plan to lift/shift some
the team developed multiple migration
servers from Irvine to a Kaiser Permanente
options for each application environment
owned were changed on the fly to a
and jointly made the recommendations on
network migration so no downtime would
which approach was best.
be experienced.
The teams then worked together
This took a tremendous amount
to develop the step-by-step detailed
of coordination and teamwork across
migration plans; as each application was
multiple Kaiser Permanente organizations
unique, the company wasn’t able to utilize
as well as our vendor partners,” the
a cookie-cutter implementation plan.
company said, but this network data
Each core team member had the migration approach has been utilized for
right to object to anything in the other company efforts involving migrating
implementation plan and voice their large amounts of data across the network.
concerns openly.
Kaiser said the project took “many
It took the team to decom equipment “You can’t have a great plan without long nights, weekends, and holidays to
and get ready for removal some healthy debates!,” the company said. complete.” Just over 1,000 servers were
decommissioned, resulting in more than
Given the healthcare-critical $1 million through saved license and
nature of the company, downtime support costs, plus reduced need to build
was unacceptable, even during a new data center space. The company
decommissioning project. saved more than $4 million through the
“Since we provide urgent medical care termination of the Irvine lease.
to millions of members, there was no As of August 2022, the Irvine data
option to just shut a system down without center was officially shut down with
studying every possible impact,” the all compute and business operating
company said. equipment fully removed from the data
In one scenario, after months of center. And, crucially, the data center
planning, the team determined that was shut down with zero impact to Kaiser
there was just too much risk involved Permanente members and employees.
in physically moving a storage system On winning the award, sponsored
associated with approximately 80,000 by Excool, Kaiser’s Burneko said: “On
users. Although much planning had gone behalf of the entire Kaiser Permanente
into a “lift and shift” physical move over organization we are very excited to be
a weekend, it would have required an selected as the winner. It certainly did take
outage for all users. a village across many arms of the Kaiser
Instead, after much consultation, the organization to accomplish the goal of
team determined that a no-impact, across closing down one of our colo facilities in
the wire migration would be much easier Irvine, California. We are very honored to
for our user community, and were able to be selected by peers in our industry for
get all data migrated with no user impact. this very prestigious award.”
Equipment had to be shipped “custom

critical” to a Kaiser Permanente owned data
center
August 2022: The Irvine data center was officially shut down

>>CONTENTS
YOUNG MISSION CRITICAL ENGINEER OF THE YEAR
A rising talent
Sebastian Moss
Editor-in-Chief
Finally, some fresh blood for

an industry in need of
new voices
T
he data center skills gap from Imperial College of London,
is a well known issue, but Papanikolaou worked at ENGIE as an
solving it has proved a slow Energy Analyst for Energy Centres,
and difficult challenge. before becoming an Energy Performance
Engineer at SSE.
That's why the strength of
the applicants for this year's Then she moved into the data center
Young Mission Critical Engineer of the sector. "I decided to go into the industry
Year at the DCD Awards 2022 was a cause because the impact you can have with
for hope. energy efficiency in this sector is
massive, I can't even put it into words,"
Michael Murray, associate director at she told DCD. "It's nice doing something
award sponsor Kirby Group Engineering, that you see in the end as an actual result."
said: "We've supported this category
proudly each year for very good At Northshore, Papanikolaou became
reason. We're nothing without the next the leader of data center energy modeling
projects in three months, developing
generation of talent. Past winners have
models that consider technical
gone on to progress and advance their
variables such as CRAC/CRAH and UPS
careers in many ways."
performance.
The winner this year was Niovi
"The impact that you can have on
Papanikolaou, a consultant at Northshore
energy efficiency is why I think other
IO Limited. "I'm thrilled. It's great to be young people should join this amazing
recognized," she said. sector."
During the submission process, Looking to the future, she said that
colleagues raved about her enthusiasm, in five to ten years, she hopes that she
ability to ask the right questions, and "will still be in the sector and making
rapid growth at the company. a difference from an environmental
perspective, which is my true passion,
After gaining an MEng degree
and I know that this can be achieved in
in Mechanical Engineering and an
data centers." 
MSc degree in Sustainable Energy
>>CONTENTS
OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION
We Salute an operation
that gives a role to
veterans
Peter Judge
Executive Editor
Why Lee Kirby won DCD’s

Outstanding Contribution to the
Data Center Industry Award
D
CD’s Outstanding “There were a lot of unemployed
Contribution Award goes to veterans and the rate was too high to be
an individual who has made acceptable. And our industry is short of
their own distinct mark on talent. So we brought those two problems
the industry, achieving a together.”
goal that is different to what When Salute started, the problems
anyone else might offer. were extreme. “When we first started, the
Lee Kirby is this year’s winner of the unemployment rate in the States was over
award, which is sponsored by Mercury 25 percent for first-time soldiers who had
Engineering - and he can certainly claim deployed, come back, and gotten out of
a unique data center career. the military,” Kirby remembers. “Twelve
percent of the people we were hiring
In his 40 years in the data center
were homeless at the time.”
industry, he has assumed roles including
the president of the Uptime Institute, the Today the problem is not Military veterans have a special
industry’s authority on reliability. He has unemployment, but under-employment: mindset, he says: “The one thing I really
led startups and turnarounds, and built “Veterans will be hired into positions like is that mission failures are not an
global operations. that just aren't challenging - and I think option. They will make it happen.”
our industry has a great opportunity to They also draw out a special place
But alongside that, Kirby has had
challenge them and let them continue to from the public: “The great thing about
an equally stellar military career. In 36
grow and contribute.” veterans is people always have a heartfelt
years he has combined active service
Every soldier has had 1,000s of dollars response to them”
and reservist roles, with tours in multiple
and 1,000s of hours of training invested However, all the staff in Salute
countries including Iraq (2009-2010)
in creating skills and responsibilities that earn their way: “No one ever makes a
where he helped rebuild civilian
would not be available in the civilian decision to hire veterans unless there's
infrastructure.
sector: “They've got leadership skills, a a commercial reason, because that's our
He retired with the rank of Colonel work ethic, complex problem solving, and capitalist society. We've shown there's a
and serves as an advisor to many veteran they can work under pressure.” return on investment, that hiring veterans
support organizations.
is good for business. It's the smart
But the work which earned him this decision.
Award combines his two passions. In “I think it's a good decision morally,
2013, he founded Salute Mission Critical, but I think it's a smart commercial
to help data centers operate more reliably, decision and more people should get the
by providing trained military veterans - at training programs in place to do just what
the same time as ensuring those veterans we've done.”
have valuable work which recognizes
Despite his role as the founder and
their unique abilities and expertise.
leader of the effort, Kirby says, “I don't
“We started Salute Mission Critical in feel deserving. This is the work of a lot
2013 to build a bridge from the military to of people with Salute Mission Critical.
the data center industry,” he explained to I feel humbled and honored to be even
DCD at our Awards event. recognized for this.” 

EFFICIENCY
SECURITY
AND UPTIME
The key to improving energy consumption within data center
operations for a more sustainable future
LEARN MORE
HWLL.CO/DATACENTERS
Automation Supplement | 77
Exploring current
immersion cooling
deployments
Looking at the cutting-edge of Vlad-Gabriel Anghel
Head of Product at
DCD>Academy
cooling solutions with Microsoft
A
s rack densities rise and chips
and DUG McCloud get hotter, some are turning to
immersion-based, open-tub liquid
cooling to beat the heat.
In an open-tub scenario, there are two
distinct types of coolant - single phase and
“We could go as high and as low two-phase - the phase meaning the state the
coolant is in at any given moment during the
with densities as we want to, we'd cooling loop.
be able to support hundreds of Single-phase coolants will remain in a

liquid state while two-phase coolants will
kilowatts in single tank" change from a liquid state to a gaseous one
as the heat transfer occurs. We will explore
both examples through two real-world
deployments.

>>CONTENTS New Immerse
kids on the
Yourself
block 
Single-Phase - DUG McCloud specifically selected to operate at raised complexity. Mark Lommers, chief
temperature conditions. Slotted vertically engineer at DUG and the designer of this
Data Center - Houston TX
in an open-tub – essentially a rack on its solution, told DCD that “for every 1MW
Oil and gas computing specialist back, the heatsinks are removed and the of real-time compute you want to use,
DownUnder GeoSolutions (DUG) opened chips are in direct contact with the fluid. you end up using 1.55MW of power or
its 15MW 'Bubba' supercomputer in a thereabout” for traditional chilled water-
22,000 square foot (2,044 sq m) data The fluid is non-toxic, non-flammable,
cooling systems.
hall built in partnership with Skybox biodegradable, non-polar, has low viscosity
Data Centers in Houston, Texas. It was and, crucially, will not conduct electricity. In an immersion cooling system, lots
deployed in 2019. of power-hungry equipment is removed.
The heat exchangers are submerged in
A prime example of this is the server fans.
At 250 petaflops (single precision) the tank with the computer equipment,
Lommers added that “there are no chilled
once fully deployed, DUG's 15MW high- meaning that no dielectric fluid ever
water pumps and there are no chillers
performance computing requires unique leaves the tank, and it has a centralized
that get involved because there's no
power and heat rejection systems to power supply.
below room temperature water involved,”
operate.
The deployment comes with a swathe concluding that “the actual total power
Designed in-house, the DUG HPC’s of benefits, from considerably reducing that we get from that is only 1.014MW,
compute elements are entirely cooled by total power consumption of the facility, to which is a big change over the 1.55MW
complete immersion in a dielectric fluid, massively reducing the cooling system’s that we had before.”

The cooling loop is massively makes the fluid boil. As vapors rise, they as we want to, we'd be able to support
simplified and thus more reliable. Even meet a condenser coil found in the lid of hundreds of kilowatts in single tank as we
more so because it must deal with fewer the tank. Vapors hit the coil and condense, densify hardware.”
changes in temperature, the overall turning back into a liquid state and falling
system is more robust as fewer controllers back into the tub, effectively creating a Microsoft has shared the designs and
need to work in tandem for an efficient closed-loop cooling system. the learning behind this project with
operation. the wider industry through the Open
As with the previous example, the Compute Project as its looking to grow
As the components sit below the fluid cooling infrastructure is greatly reduced the ecosystem of this technology.
level, the company claims that there is as no air handlers or chillers are needed
no is component oxidation and fouling. - a dry cooler (basically a large radiator) But there’s a reason why Microsoft
“We see a very, very high benefit in circulates warm coolant into an open- hasn’t deployed this system in all of its
reduced maintenance costs and reduced bath immersion tank, and provides data centers - the ecosystem is not quite
equipment failure rate as well,” Lommers waterless cooling, no need to lose or there yet, staff aren’t trained for the new
said. evaporate water to cool. approaches, and critical questions around
Special server board designs are used cooling solution supplies, security, and
that are smaller in size and blind-mate safety have yet to be answered.
Two-Phase Immersion Cooling to their power connectors in the bottom More crucially, it is not yet clear how
of the tank, as in the other example
– Microsoft Public Cloud large the market for the ultra-dense
effectively being slotted in and stacked systems will be, with many racks still
In 2021 Microsoft deployed a two-phase horizontally.
happy humming away at below 10kW.
immersion cooling solution for their
Another less known aspect of
public cloud workloads, developed Should that density rise, operators
this cooling approach is its ability
in partnership with Taiwanese server currently have a number of different
to concentrate heat due to its use of
manufacturer Wiwynn. approaches to choose from, and within
radiators, this in turn enables real heat
reuse scenarios like district heating where that a variety of form factors and
At the time, the company said that
“emails and other communications sent often air-cooled latent heat is too low pathways they could take. There are
between Microsoft employees are literally grade to be of any real use. no agreed standards, and no settled
making liquid boil inside a steel holding consensus, as the technology and its
Furthermore, Microsoft is also implementation remain in the early
tank packed with computer servers at this
recognizing the overclocking opportunity stages.
data center on the eastern bank of the
such a solution brings. Husam Alissa,
Columbia River.”
director of advanced cooling & It will take projects like these, and
Inside Microsoft’s steel holding tank performance, at Microsoft explained: “We their long term success, for others to feel
the heat generated by the bare chips could go as high and as low with densities comfortable to take the plunge. 

At Kirby,
we deliver
value and
build trust.
A Values Driven Business
People . Safety . Quality . Delivery . Value www.kirbygroup.com

Why Asia is moving

to multi-cloud Paul Mah
APAC Reporter
And how infrastructure as

code offers them an easy
path forward
W
hile it was not
the earliest to
hop on the cloud
computing
bandwagon, Asia
is arguably one of the strongest
adopters of the cloud today.
Indeed, data center growth is
expected to accelerate in the Asia
Pacific (APAC), driven by a new
wave of hyperscale data centers
designed to power the facilities
of cloud giants and meet fast-
growing demand in the region.

>>CONTENTS Hashing things out 
A multi-cloud future it appeared to have found success as one managed offering which runs in its cloud,
of the most popular open-source tools for Orchard noted that it allows businesses to
Within the cloud, businesses are
infrastructure automation. audit configuration changes with ease.
increasingly eyeing hybrid, multi-cloud
deployments. The appeal of this approach Crucially, its plugin architecture has “[Another benefit] is providing audit
lies in how it gives organizations the attracted a massive network of third-party controls through policy-as-code in
ability to shift workloads across cloud providers that actively build compatible Terraform Cloud. Requests that fall
platforms for heightened resilience, while products to significantly broaden its outside of compliance, and any decision
ensuring that they are not held beholden appeal. And, as with other firms that offer to override them are all captured and
to any one cloud platform. open-source products, HashiCorp makes logged. This makes the controls easier to
money by charging for the additional implement, and the auditing process itself
Multi-cloud deployments aren’t
operational and collaboration features less arduous and expensive,” he explained.
just something for nimble startups or
that enterprises need.
technology-savvy enterprises either,
but also for the public sector. For But how does HashiCorp ensure Quickening cloud adoption in
instance, the Singaporean government continual support for the top public Asia
agency GovTech years ago shared how clouds, considering that they are
Multi-cloud deployments are increasing
it is developing a hybrid, multi-cloud constantly evolving and updating
in APAC. According to HashiCorp’s recent
architecture. their features? Grant Orchard, the APJ
State of Cloud Strategy Survey 2022, over
Field CTO at HashiCorp attributed this
Businesses in the region are spoilt for eight in 10 APAC respondents choose
compatibility to a joint engineering effort
choice in terms of rolling out multi-cloud multi-cloud, with 46 percent already
with the cloud providers to minimize any
deployments on the public cloud. In using multi-cloud infrastructures and
gaps between feature delivery and their
Southeast Asia in particular, one can now an additional 38 percent saying they will
availability within Terraform.
find multiple cloud regions from the top be within the next 12 months. Financial
cloud players such as Microsoft Azure, And though the various cloud services as the early adopters in this
Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google providers have their own infrastructure space, says Orchard, though uptake has
Cloud, as well as those from Chinese as code offerings, Orchard says the also been strong across retail, resource,
cloud firms such as Alibaba Cloud, advantage of going with HashiCorp is that telecommunications, and the public
Huawei Cloud, and Tencent Cloud. it works across clouds, giving enterprises sector.
a single, scalable solution.
But for all the enthusiasm for multi- One of the organizations that took
cloud deployments, what is often to the cloud to complement its IT
glossed over is the inherent complexity The power of infrastructure infrastructure in Manila would be the
of a multi-cloud deployment. Fully as code Asia Development Bank (ADB). With the
understanding and leveraging the pressing need to establish a new disaster
So, what is it that attracts Asia Pacific
capabilities of one cloud platform is a recovery location in APAC, the team
(APAC) customers to his company’s suite
demanding enough undertaking all by turned to Terraform to quickly build up its
of products? Orchard highlighted two
itself, and is even more challenging when disaster recovery site on the Azure cloud
reasons that he consistently hears from
additional cloud platforms are thrown in the Singapore region.
APAC firms that adopt his organization’s
into the mix. products: a broad ecosystem, and the According to team lead Krista Lozada,
And building cloud-native ability to bridge the cloud skills gap. HCL was easy to pick up and served
applications or repurposing existing as a unifying language between the
“With the breadth of technologies
services to function flawlessly on top of network and server teams. And defining
in use by our customers across both
disparate clouds calls not just for cloud everything as code meant that the latest
traditional data center vendors, public
know-how but also requires a thorough configuration is always captured, while
clouds, and SaaS providers, they need a
understanding of their many quirks and changes can be quickly made and pushed
vendor whose focus is on the ecosystem.
differing architectures. out within minutes, instead of days or
And with over 2,600 providers for
weeks.
Terraform, we fit that bill better than any
A ‘kingmaker’ of clouds other vendor in the industry,” he told For now, Orchard says organizations
This is where HashiCorp comes into DCD. that are early adopters of the cloud are less
the picture. The San Francisco-based prone to viewing multi-cloud challenges
In addition, Orchard says
software company offers a suite of open- as a top problem. However, industries
standardization through the HashiCorp
source tools designed to support the new to the space and not traditionally
Configuration Language (HCL) language
development and deployment of large- tech-savvy, such as the public sector, are
used to configure its solutions using
scale cloud computing infrastructure. experiencing this skills gap much more
code can help address the ongoing skills
One of its linchpin products is Terraform, acutely.
shortage in cloud professionals. Indeed,
a well-established solution that lets HCL as used by Terraform was lauded Regardless, hybrid, multi-cloud
businesses build and modify both cloud in GitHub’s latest State of the Octoverse deployments are the way forward – with
and on-premises resources using code. report as the fastest-growing language on infrastructure as code easing the journey.
This ability to manage and GitHub. “If you were hesitating three to five years
provision infrastructure with code ago, I could argue that was prudence.
Though the focus of infrastructure-
instead of manual processes is known Today I couldn’t make the same
as-code is on provisioning infrastructure,
as infrastructure as code. Though argument,” summed up Orchard. 
there are secondary benefits to
HashiCorp is hardly the first on the scene, organizations. Referring to HashiCorp’s

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998_20645938
>>CONTENTS 5G for all 
Africa’s 5G
challenge Paul Lipscombe
Telco Editor
A handful of African
T
he world’s first commercial 5G services launched in
2019 in South Korea, with the US, UK, Germany, and
China quickly following.
countries have switched In most of the world, 5G is now blossoming. The
US now reports 5,000 cities covered, and China says it
to 5G services, but has over 250 million 5G subscriptions, served by two million 5G
base stations. Network provider Ericsson says there will be one
how successful are the billion connections worldwide by the end of this year, beating
4G’s rollout by two years.
rollouts? With Ericsson predicting five billion 5G subscribers by 2028,

the equivalent of 60 percent of the world’s population, you might
think that the whole world is adopting 5G - but you’d be wrong.
One entire continent is falling behind in 5G. In Africa,
around a dozen nations have launched services (Botswana,
Kenya, Mauritius, Madagascar, Nigeria, Seychelles, South Africa,
Tanzania, Togo, Zimbabwe, and Zambia).
But Africa is a patchwork of 54 countries. And penetration is
predicted to be slow.
By 2027, Ericsson predicts that 80 percent of phone users in
Europe will have 5G service. At the same time, 5G subscriptions
in Africa, home to 1.4 billion people, will hit just 10 percent.
Why will so few people in Africa get access to 5G services?
5G
Does Africa need 5G? across Africa and the Middle East, Meanwhile, Namibia is still looking
Karakula said, with the Ivory Coast and to expand its 4G network and eyeing
A big part of the answer is cost, and
Senegal likely high on the list. investment from the private sector to
a lack of demand in the largely rural
Vodafone subsidiary Vodacom was support this. There will be a 5G launch
populations of Africa, says Mark Walker
the first to launch 5G in its home market, there next year, but the priority seems to
IDC Associate vice president for South,
South Africa as far back as May 2020. be around 4G at the moment.
East, and West Africa at IDC Middle East,
Africa & Turkey Vodacom’s 5G is now available in all nine
“Concept-wise, 5G is a great technology
provinces in the country. Investment questions
- there’s no disputing that. From a Vodacom also operates in several With investment money tight, one
physical science point of view, there are other African countries including the organization seeking to benefit is Chinese
constraints, notably in terms of range,” Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, vendor Huawei, which recently helped
says Walker, who is based in South Africa. Mozambique, and Tanzania, while its South African operator Telkom launch its
subsidiary Safaricom operates in Kenya, 5G network.
“The deployment model is for high-
and Ethiopia. The vendor has faced setbacks in the
density environments such as factories,
so it’s not good for long-range comms. Like Orange, Vodacom is US, UK, Australia, and Canada, because of
In Africa, a lot of things are long range launching where the demand is, said a its links to the Chinese government, but
and the other issues are availability and spokesperson: “Our 5G coverage rollout perhaps hopes its investments will afford
cost. You have to get those things right in will continue to be driven by relevant use it more of a welcome in Africa.
Africa.” cases, as well as consumer and corporate In early November, during Huawei’s
demands. We are currently deploying ‘5G Lighting Up Digital’ event, Benjamin
Walker says operators will pick only
5G at our existing infrastructure (where Hou, president of Huawei Northern Africa
certain opportunities.
2G/3G/4G sites are deployed already). Carrier Business said that the company
“The cherry-picking is done based Advanced 5G use cases will need MEC
on usage patterns and industry uptake, “will further increase its investment in
(multi-access Edge computing) to support Africa to support the steady development
so where it will have the biggest impact. the technology implementation, which
This will tend to be in financial districts of 5G to facilitate digital transformation in
most African countries still need to the region.”
or where the government is, plus deploy.”
manufacturing environments.” Karakula wouldn’t say which network
This might change, he says, if AI and partner Orange is using in its 5G network,
4G has legs but suggested the operator has more
IoT get traction in Africa, but that is “a bit
of a chicken and egg situation.” Despite the interest in 5G, the demand freedom there, but would not put all its
for 4G and its services won’t go away eggs into the same basket.
There’s another issue. A lot of use overnight, and if anything will flourish
cases for 5G are around automation, “We have no limitation in working with
further as operators across the world partners compared to Europe, where it has
and these can be a lot less compelling in begin to switch off 2G and 3G services, to
Africa, where labor is relatively cheap: “It been more the focus of the conversation,”
re-purpose this spectrum into 4G and 5G he said. “We are very attentive to the fact
makes sense to deploy labor (because it’s networks.
cheap) to do things instead of deploying that we do not want to get too dependent
technology to do certain things that rely With South Africa outlining plans to on any supplier, be it Chinese, European,
on 5G communications.” switch off these legacy systems within the or American and so on. It's very important
next three years, operators will be able to for us to have balance.
Orange is certainly choosing its repurpose the spectrum into 4G and 5G.
opportunities cautiously. The operator Returning to Ericsson’s predictions,
has 120 million customers in ten African “4G will continue to play an essential even by 2028, 5G subscriptions will only
countries, which gives it access to nearly role in our network coverage plans,” account for 14 percent of Africa’s overall
10 percent of the population, and it Vodacom told DCD, stressing this is connections, while 55 percent will remain
invests €1 billion ($1.1bn) every year in the best way to cover rural areas: “We on 4G.
Africa and the Middle East. continue to introduce new network sites Strikingly, 2G, which is being
in rural communities across South Africa, phased out of networks in many
Despite this, Orange has only just with 95.8 percent of the rural population
deployed its first 5G network in Arica, in countries worldwide, will still have more
now covered by our 4G network.” connections than 5G in 2028, in Africa.
Botswana,
Orange’s Karakula agrees: “When Karakula flatly denies that this is an
“When it comes to launching 5G we’re thinking about accelerating the rollout of
aiming to do this country by country,” issue: “With 2G, 3G, and 4G it’s come late
5G services, it’s important that we look to to Africa generally speaking compared to
Jocelyn Karakula, CTIO, Orange MEA, modernize our 4G networks first.”
said in an interview with DCD. other markets such as Europe,” he said.
4G addresses where the people of Despite Ericsson’s gloomy forecast,
“The access to the technology is Africa are at the moment, it seems: “4G is
directly dependent on spectrum or he asserts that “Africa has bridged the
really the accelerator for mobile data and gap,” and is getting 5G “at the same time
location, plus the price of it, which varies the services that users are consuming,”
from one country to another.” compared to other continents.”
said Karakula.
Botswana came first because the Whether that is true or not, it looks as
You can see this in Guinea where, if Africa should consider pushing its 5G
spectrum was affordable, Karakula told us. far from launching 5G, MTN is only just potential by first fully making the most of
Next year, Orange plans to launch 5G launching the pilot stage of its 4G network its 4G networks. 
services in three to six more countries in the country.

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 Don't ban me from Twitter
Social media drama

comes for the data center
I
n a year where the global economy stagnated With Meta, you’d be forgiven for thinking that
and investors turned against tech darlings, the same CEO being in charge for 18 years would
the tale of two companies stands out - Twitter mean a little more stability. But Mark Zuckerberg
and Meta. is panicking. Young people are turned off of his
Both have seen their valuations crater, and their platform, Apple’s privacy changes have threatened
data center plans thrown into disarray, due to the its core business model, and regulators are blocking
hubris of their billionaire owners. his acquisitions.
In the case of Twitter, Elon Musk’s chaotic His response has to pin everything on a pivot
acquisition has been well-documented - first, he to the metaverse, a move that has so far resulted in
tried to get out of the deal, then he burdened the mockery, poor reviews of its latest VR headset on
company with debt, and now he’s panicking as Tesla virtual worlds, and thousands of layoffs.
shares crater. At the same time, his leadership has Investors have abandoned the company, and
been wanting, as far-right tweets cause advertisers public perception has soured. But perhaps he has
to flee, and attempts to charge users have stuttered. a grand vision, and this is just the painful - but
But such trials and tribulations are not the planned - transformation effort? Maybe, but its
purview of DCD, there are enough publications recent data center move suggests that things are not
covering that insanity. More interesting to us is calm and collected behind the scenes.
what’s going on with their data centers. Musk The cancelation of its Odense data center and
is looking to cover the added $1bn in interest ‘rescoping’ of others for ‘AI data centers’ came just
repayments he brought with him by gutting the months after it signed a deal with its contractors,
company’s IT infrastructure. one which it is now reneging on. It was not carefully
Servers used for handling demand spikes are planned out. Worse, DCD understands that Meta still
out, cloud contracts are being trimmed, and the hasn’t actually worked out what it wants from the
company’s Sacramento data center may be killed off new data centers. It’s scrapping its plans, without
entirely. Already a server room at its headquarters knowing what to do next.
overheated as no one was left to maintain it, locking For those fortunate enough to not be beholden
staff out of their offices. to such whims, these two companies prove to
Every day, Twitter users note more errors and be a cautionary tale of what happens when you
glitches, but the service has not crashed just yet - don’t plan carefully. As we head into 2023, and
held up by the work of those fired, and those left face a difficult economy, a failing planet, and
on work visas. On LinkedIn, a number of Twitter technological transformation, it’s important to
data center employees have gone. How long can it remember the value of acting with care. 
continue? - Sebastian Moss, Editor-in-Chief

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Issue 45 • August 2022 | 89

COMPREHENSIVE ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE
www.anordmardix.com

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Issue 47 • December 2022

MADE IN THE USA www.amcoenclosures.com/data 847-391-8100

14 Data centers’ Buddy

16 Digital Realty’s next move

36 There’s something about Maryland

27 22 We dive into the winners of the 2022

78 Exploring immersion cooling

82 Asia explores the multi-cloud

88 Op-ed: Social media drama

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From the Editor Meet the team

Virginia enters its

next phase News Editor

Issue 47 • December 2022 | 5

Google starts to pay tax on

Datagrid files land use

Leap second set to be killed

“rescoped” globally universal time (UTC) to keep it aligned

6 | DCD Magazine • datacenterdynamics.com

in cooling, and will start the process to move

hotter, eventually unnecessarily cooler than required,” says

Digital Realty CEO Bill Stein leaving,

Issue 47 • December 2022 | 7

reason for this seems to be a change in

QTS New Jersey data center roof

8 | DCD Magazine • datacenterdynamics.com

Being involved in a project as are engaged with Distribution

allows us to manage and co- High Voltage

and significantly reduce the Procurement and Construction

Eco-Caverne: Underground data centers can be built

French startup Denv-R plans EU to study space data centers

10 | DCD Magazine • datacenterdynamics.com

©2022 Cummins Inc.

Nvidia and Microsoft

Microsoft acquires struggling DPU

12 | DCD Magazine • datacenterdynamics.com

Proud sponsors of the Middle East and

Keeping Data Centres

14 | DCD Magazine • datacenterdynamics.com

Issue 47 • December 2022 | 15

Touring a million square foot data

16 | DCD Magazine • datacenterdynamics.com

A s one of the world’s largest data

The company has some of the earliest

“The largest cloud availability zones on

18 | DCD Magazine • datacenterdynamics.com

The company hopes that the facilities

That fundamental land limit will

“The largest cloud availability zones on

Issue 47 • December 2022 | 19

That requires a lot of interconnection. “Once you build an epicenter,

“ServiceFabric is absolutely everything,” he said, referencing the

Given the desire for every major company to have an IT presence in

14 Data centers’ Buddy

16 Digital Realty’s next move

36 There’s something about Maryland

78 Exploring immersion cooling

82 Asia explores the multi-cloud

88 Op-ed: Social media drama