Iron Mountain was originally founded by a mushroom farmer in the 1950s. However, in the pivot of the century, the company launched a paper records storage service using the very mine that once housed mushrooms As the world around them digitized, Iron Mountain had to adapt to change and eventually became the data center company we know today. Howeve…

India’s data center industry is rapidly growing, and companies are taking notice. Singapore-based CapitaLand Investment is currently developing major data centers throughout the country in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore. While these developments are running smoothly, building large data center campuses in any location is never simple. We…

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

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

We are all acutely aware that the data center industry has an aging, and thus thinning, workforce. But what can we do about it? In this episode, we talk to Nabeel Mahmood, managing director of Nomad Futurist - a non-profit dedicated to increasing awareness about the world of digital infrastructure - about how we can bring more people into the indus…

Data center operators are getting serious about waste heat and, more specifically, what to do with it. While the solution for many is to pump it back into nearby district heating systems, other companies are getting more creative and using warmth from servers to heat aquafarms and greenhouses. European operator Data4 has joined a project which aims…

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

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

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

Sourcing adequate amounts of power to run new facilities is a problem that keeps even the most seasoned data center operators awake at night. Many are looking at new technologies such as battery storage to help meet their power demands, but ensuring these assets operate efficiently can be a challenge. Dublin-based GridBeyond thinks it can help by p…

With AI dramatically driving up density, data center cooling is getting much more interesting. Iceotope is one of the companies exploring the most efficient and sustainable way to cool down data centers - and their solution is precision cooling. On the face of it, precision cooling resembles immersion cooling - viscous liquid? Check. Bathtub-like c…

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

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

Sustainability needs to be applied at all levels of the data center industry, and we are not doing enough, says John Booth of Carbon3IT. In this episode of Zero Downtime, we sit down with sustainability consultant John Booth to talk about how he got where he is in his career, and the fundamental sustainability issues that he is seeing in the data c…

Bringing the L to FLAP-D, the UK has a prominent data center market. But like all other tier-one markets, London is struggling with space and power capacity. Because of this, the UK's data center industry will have to diversify, all while meeting increasingly regimented regulations. In this episode, we talk to trade association TechUK's Luisa Carda…

Oxide Computer has been rebuilding the rack. In this podcast, CTO Bryan Cantrill tells us why. The data center industry has been building its own infrastructure for years, with the wrong components. Servers weren't designed to be operated in data centers, and the 1U rack unit is the wrong size, because of simple science. Part of the success of the …

Think hard drives have hit their storage limits, and should be replaced by solid-state units? You could be wrong. Hard drives have been holding our data for nearly 70 years since IBM created the 350, which stored something like 4 Mbyte on dozens of spinning disks in a unit the size of a washing machine. Today's devices are orders of magnitude bette…

In this episode of Zero Downtime, we break down the fundamentals of quantum computing - the different approaches out there, the challenges to bringing it into a widespread commercial reality, and the potential use cases that quantum may help with. To help divulge this, we speak to QuEra's Yuval Boger who shares a little about the company's experien…

25 years ago, the first content delivery networks (CDNs) emerged, to solve a specific problem - how to make web pages load faster. More than two decades later, 72 percent of Internet content is delivered through CDNs. But the companies involved are still almost invisible - until something goes wrong. In 2021, in a series of outages, large numbers o…

Europe has an Energy Efficiency Directive, Germany has an Energy Efficiency Act, and operators there can be fined for inefficiency. Meanwhile, Amsterdam has declared war on sleeping servers, and set limits on where facilities can be built. Across Europe, in response to congested electric grids and shortages of land, local governments are stepping i…

At the start of 2023, Yuval Bachar told us about his latest project - to build off-grid, hydrogen-powered data centers. As 2023 came to an end, he was back to tell us he'd done it. He's got 1MW of capacity fed by hydrogen in Mountain View California, and he's telling potential customers he can build the same thing anywhere you can get hydrogen ship…

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

The European data center market has a forecasted take-up of 440MW for 2023. But within the context of erratic power availability, moratoriums, and the need to move to renewable energy, the FLAP-D markets are facing several challenges. In this episode we talk to Neal Kalita about the obstacles facing those looking to build in Europe, and what the fu…

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

Artificial intelligence could grow from almost nothing to using half a percent of the world's electrical power within five years, according to Alex de Vries of Digiconomist. That's a crazy rate of growth, but it's not unprecedented. Bitcoin followed almost exactly the same trajectory, expanding from nothing to a sector whose energy use is comparabl…

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

Data centers have outgrown their anonymity. They are large enough consumers of energy and space, that they have to enter the political landscape and justify their existence. But how do we know if a data really brings benefits to its location? In some places (like London), it appears that they soak up grid connection capacity and block housing proje…

Ever wondered about the practical challenges of connecting our continents? In this podcast episode, we talk with Exa Infrastructure's Elena Badiola about the process of getting subsea cables underwater: from environmental surveys to climate change, to funding challenges. Elena also shares her experience of living on a cable ship for five weeks afte…

In 2022, Mark Monroe's podcast about hydrogen was one of our most popular podcasts ever. At Microsoft, Mark had just made a prototype hydrogen fuel cell UPS system that could potentially replace diesel generators to provide low-carbon backup power at data centers. One year on, he's back for some more detail. A hydrogen economy will need a distribut…

If you want to make infrastructure sustainable, you need to be very careful what words you use. That's what Hunter Vaughan and Nicole Starosielski found, through their involvement in a project to make subsea cables sustainable. Words like "sustainability" and "climate neutral" can mean different things, depending on who is talking. And if what you …

If you think transitioning the tech sector to net zero is all about renewable energy and heat reuse, think again. Small changes in software could make entire data centers redundant - for a much bigger saving for the planet. Green Software is not just about more efficient code, says Anne Currie. Rewriting everything in C might cut energy use - but i…

How does the Internet keep running? A close-knit community of engineers has been developing and supporting the protocols that support it for more than forty years. During that time, new Internet services have emerged and scaled beyond recognition, and new features have been added, all without breaking the whole system. Mirjam Kuhne has been closely…

The global interests of the mobile industry are represented by the GSM Association (GSMA). This governing body was established in 1995 to support mobile operators using the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard for cellular networks. It has become synonymous with the mobile industry and has driven it forward through industry progra…

Quantum computing is still pretty mysterious, but data center operators have real questions: when will they need installation and support? And how much cooling will they need? Chris Monroe, chief scientist at IonQ, gives us the answers, along with plenty of other solid facts about an emerging technology that can seem as illusory as Schrodinger's ca…

There has been an ongoing issue with the representation of women in the tech industry, but why? In this episode, we talk to Kelley Mullick about her career to date, the factors that have helped her get to where she is, and the importance of supporting and empowering women to pursue these careers so they can find confidence within themselves. We als…

Having trouble finding a location for your data center project? This DCD podcast could have the answer. Build underground. Andrew Bourget of Swiss engineering firm Eccus has a design for a 2MW data center built in an underground tunnel - and he can dig that tunnel wherever you want it, even under existing buildings. The way he tells it, tunneling i…

In March this year, a swimming pool in Devon, UK, was the unlikely setting for the most widely covered data center story (so far) of 2023. A small immersion-cooled high-performance computing module from Deep Green is giving its heat to the swimming pool, saving Exmouth Leisure Centres £20,000 ($24,000) per year. It's not the first time data center …

Cloud gaming was heralded as the future of games, and was set to become a major data center workload. Now, after the death of Google Stadia and layoffs at Amazon's Luna, what's left for data center gaming? We catch up with Omdia's George Jijiashvili to discuss all things gaming, as well as VR, AR, and a dash of the metaverse.…

As 2030 approaches, the pressure on data centers to meet their carbon pledges continues to increase. This, compounded with the challenge of energy supply insecurity and rising costs, is driving data centers to look to new methods of powering their operations, which has triggered nuclear power to come to the fore. However, as a result of historical …

As data center demands grow, hyperscalers are building out vast networks that will help define the future of how infrastructure is interconnected. In the latest episode of the DCD Zero Downtime podcast, we connect with Juniper Networks' group vice president of cloud-ready data center, Mike Bushong, to discuss what this means, and what we should exp…

Recently there’s been a number of mobile operators switching off their 3G networks around the world, or scheduling to phase out this old technology. 2G has also been spoken about at length, but has a slightly longer shelf-life than 3G, as it provides a backbone that still supports the IoT industry today. But what does any of this mean, and why does…

As land and power in Virginia's Loudoun County become increasingly scarce, data center developers are seeking fresh ground on which build. While many are moving south within Virginia to the likes of Prince William County, Quantum Loophole is hoping to lure companies north into Maryland. A former aluminum smelting works, the company's maiden campus …

Hunter Newby doesn't claim to have invented the Meet-Me Room, but he created one of the first, in the iconic and historical Manhattan facility, 60 Hudson Street, in about 1998 At the time data centers had separate connections from multiple carriers, and linking between those carriers meant running a link between their connection points - and paying…

Join us for an extended discussion with CTO and founder of North American Access Technologies Julius Neudorfer about the history of liquid cooling, and where he sees the market developing in the future.

Formed by DigitalBridge and Liberty Global, AtlasEdge has quickly become one of the Edge industry's largest players. We chat to COO Zahl Limbuwala about how it defines the Edge and where it places its servers.

For years, operators have been trying to make their data centers more efficient by optimizing the cooling and power distribution in the facility - and have more or less ignored the IT equipment in the racks. PUE - the most popular data center metric - simply optimized the ancillary equipment, trying to approach a "perfect" figure of 1.0, where all …

In this episode, we talk to Cloudflare's CTO John Graham-Cumming about how to respond to an outage at your company. We also discuss why the company bans the use of the word "Edge," and talk about the company's 'Supercloud.'

Can light be used to compute? We talk to Nick Harris, CEO of chip startup Lightmatter, about how the company hopes to harness photons for AI computing and as a data center interconnect.

What does a technologist do at a real estate company? We talk to Digital Realty's CTO Chris Sharp about the importance of understanding both bits and bricks, discuss the company's interconnection efforts, and do a quickfire round on which future technologies will transform the data center.

Most people think the Internet of Things is a recent idea, maybe dating to around the year 2000. In fact, the idea is some 15 years older than that. In 1985, the Internet was officially two years old. It linked up some 2000 hosts, and a handful of people used email. In that year, cellular phones were the size of bricks, and almost no one had one. A…