Data centers now face overwhelming pressures to bring compute capacity online quickly and at scale, while also protecting mission-critical uptime. Finding this balance isn’t an easy task, as the industry currently grapples with issues of power, labor shortages, and hot-work risk.

Could the solution lie in press-connect piping?

To explore this question, Viega’s business development DCMC Stephen McAfee shares his expertise on how piping could be the key to data center infrastructure progress. He speaks about the importance of designing for speed, uptime, and scale, while encouraging long-term facility reliability and how piping should be strategic, rather than a commodity decision.

“Press technology is the fastest means of connecting piping systems available on the market today,” McAfee says. “Any process or system that can be installed in a more efficient way, and in a more reliable way, is going to be a major driver for accelerating timelines.”

Material worth

The primary pressure that data center owners and construction teams are facing in the market currently is the issue of speed to market. The challenge is bringing compute capacity online quickly, without compromising reliability and uptime, during a time where data center demand is growing rapidly.

This growth has many parallels with advanced manufacturing trends. Plenty of modern data centers are being built at an industrial scale with fairly strict industrial requirements where even the materials used must align with a high build quality.

Viega’s customer base extends beyond data centers into advanced manufacturing organizations.

“We are built into their specifications for their construction processes and, as we expand and look into further developing the data center market, our systems are being integrated across all facets of the piping systems throughout the facility,” McAfee explains. “Whether that’s for chilled water systems, technical water cooling loops, or technical cooling systems across the board, even back to facility water and fuel systems.”

As a leader in press connection technology, plumbing, and HVAC solutions, Viega prides itself on delivering permanent and reliable connections – rather than waiting for traditional processes that can take hours.

“We can definitely accelerate the entire process and enable data center owners to take possession of their property faster,” McAfee adds.

Piping infrastructure is transitioning from a specialized plumbing alternative into a strategic aspect of data center deployment. When it comes to modern data centers that require AI enablement, these facilities demand liquid cooling. Piping systems are therefore increasingly critical in supporting the actual processing of data.

“Failure of a cooling system can completely shut down a single rack, or worse, and that’s contrary to the levels of reliability they strive for, which in the industry is referred to as ‘five nines,’ basically allowing for approximately five minutes of downtime in a given year,” McAfee says.

Viega’s systems offer a range of quality and performance guarantees to provide greater confidence to data center operators aiming for five-nines.

“This is entirely critical to the operation of the facility,” McAfee adds.

Eliminating risk

Press-connect piping can also help to address some of the wider issues data center companies face, particularly as facilities seek to accommodate high-density AI workloads. Traditional piping methods like welding, clamping, or threading can fall short of new demands in terms of contamination or the flow line.

Welded and brazed connections need the entire system passivated to prevent contamination and, with threading, it has to be torqued appropriately to ensure pipe connection issues aren’t happening. Additionally, clamping needs to be positioned appropriately – if it’s over-tightened, gaskets can be displaced and pressed into the flow, which creates issues for turbulence and pressure loss within the pipes.

Construction safety and minimizing risk is equally important to securing speed to market. If any form of hot work is taking place, like the welding or brazing of a pipe, it incurs a lengthy process. First, the space needs to be isolated and no parallel activities should be taking place in the same area, meaning other trades would need to be paused.

“If you eliminate the hot work activity, you eliminate associated fire risk,” McAfee says. “When you get into small-diameter piping, that’s where welded connections tend to have higher rates of failure; these failures often show up during inspection when X-rays can show cracks, porosity, inclusions or incomplete fusions.”

Traditionally, if a system is being put together and one joint is out of place, or fails, the entire system basically needs disassembling and redoing. This also doubles the risk of a similar issue as you put it back together, McAfee notes.

“Contamination risk is substantial, particularly with secondary cooling loops that feed the chill plates on the processors themselves,” he says. “The micro‑fin cooling vanes in those systems are very susceptible to clogging if a contaminant gets into them, which would impact cooling performance.”

With grooved and clamped-type connections, risk is reduced, but the process of prepping the pipe for connection takes much longer.

To confront these more traditional challenges, Viega’s pipe connections are pressed effectively against one another.

“The sealing elements that are used are not in the flow line,” McAfee says. “The mechanical press is actually outside of that sealing element. It’s not a gasket in the traditional sense, so that prevents any liquid incursion from making its way to or past the sealing element, and the liquid is able to flow straight through without ever contacting any non‑metallic surface.”

These processes also isolate the sealing elements from potential damage because the tooling used in making the connections is calibrated and standardized. The end goal is for the customer to be able to make a consistent connection based on the performance of the tool, rather than the user.

“That stability is something we've tested to the extreme,” McAfee continues. “Our press systems went through rigorous seismic testing at the University at Buffalo’s SEESL facility, following the test procedures referenced in the IBC and ASCE 7, and our fittings and valves withstood extreme acceleration forces equivalent to a Richter magnitude 9 earthquake. That durability is engineered into every connection.”

Strengthening connections

Viega’s repeatable systems are designed to reduce risk across the entire facility. Its mindset is the more repeatable a process is, the more familiar a team can become with it, without necessarily needing specialist labor.

“Viega can provide on‑site training for a contractor, installer, or whoever is going to use it and have somebody ready to press in about an hour,” McAfee says. “Having that degree of flexibility and standardization of performance not only provides assurance that the system will be done correctly, but also eliminates labor availability risks.”

As specialist labor becomes more of an important issue across the industry, processes like this mean specialist individuals can be used for more complex tasks – whereas Viega can step in and enable better connection quality with a lower level of training required.

“You don’t need to have a ten‑year certified welder. You can have somebody who’s effectively new making the same exact connection as someone who's been using the tool for ten years,” McAfee adds. “From a reliability perspective, Viega’s Smart Connect technology identifies unpressed connections 100% of the time, so issues are found during pressure testing, not after the system is live.”

Viega also has its MegaPress and ProPress systems that can help with the data center cooling process. Its MegaPress stainless and ProPress stainless systems recently gained recognition from the Open Compute Project (OCP) as the only current press-connect piping systems to be OCP Accepted.

Viega has a robust stainless steel offering through both its MegaPress and ProPress lines. This material option is becoming more common in addition to copper, which is also part of the ProPress line. McAfee explains a recent site he visited where both metals were in place and the customer was able to exchange between the two through Viega’s solutions portfolio and its copper-nickel exchange.

“That means you can prevent having a galvanic effect in the flow line,” he says.

The company has also seen success with its MegaPress line, its chemical and fuel-rated system, with MegaPress G in particular helping data centers stay live via emergency generators.

Turbocharging the AI boom

As the AI boom is expected to continue, Viega is aware of its position to help data centers manage the immense heat generated by AI workloads. When it comes to cooling, McAfee sees a future where demand is only going to get more substantial.

“Higher flows, more demanding conditions – systems are going to drive towards more advanced cooling methodologies as opposed to more conventional evaporative chiller technologies that have been used in the past for traditional data centers,” he says.

In considering this, Viega is developing and building systems and fittings that will be appropriate for these demands. The success of its ProPress and MegaPress systems, as far as material compatibility, has enabled the company to validate chemical compatibility across all other types of fluids moved through a data center, as well as compressed gas.

“Viega is lined up for most systems, whether it’s going directly to the cooling loop on an AI platform going to the GPU and the rack itself, or driving chilled water from the chillers into the units,” McAfee explains. “It’s also approved for both tubing and up to Schedule 40 piping, which is the most commonly deployed pipe system we’re seeing in the field.”

The speed efficiency of this next-generation data center infrastructure prompts further conversations about safety and sustainability. Particularly with facilities that have been operational for some time, issues with existing piping systems or with racks reaching the end of their service life can arise.

“Just like any computer, these components need replacing after a specified number of years,” McAfee says. “When these conversions take place, Viega has positioned itself to support owner-operators in making the transition to newer connections.”

The goal is being fast, efficient, safe, and reliable.

“If you’re taking the connection from an older server rack to a new AI deployment, we can do that very efficiently, very quickly, and with a very low instance of failure because of the features we've already talked about,” McAfee adds.

A sustainable future

As sustainability becomes more important to the ongoing life of a data center, companies like Viega are looking to prioritize energy efficiency and transparency through its work. It’s looking beyond its own manufacturing to consider its entire supply chain – how it receives raw materials, how it transports them, and how everything is deployed globally to its customers – to make sure it’s as efficient and sustainable as possible.

“We’re very focused on sustainability across our entire process,” McAfee says. “Our newest facility built in Ohio for domestic production is fully electric, with the exception of emergency generators, and that facility has earned LEED Gold certification.”

“That’s a value that Viega holds very strongly as we look to become carbon‑neutral by 2035.”

When systems run efficiently, consistently, and without failure, the need for new material to be delivered to a site reduces. Viega views its reliability as preventing unnecessary new materials from being deployed, therefore reducing its energy use.

Likewise, it prides itself on the longevity of its ProPress system, which has a 50-year limited warranty, meaning the customer can expect a longer lifecycle for its use across the data center.

“Viega is a substantial game‑changer in this business,” McAfee shares. “When you look at the standard practices and processes that are being followed and have been followed for a very long time, Viega is not a new technology by any stretch. We’ve been operating in the US since 1999 – but the conversation with data center operators is expanding.”

He adds: “As we continue to grow in this area, the way operators adopt our systems will ultimately improve their efficiencies and speed to market. That’s the prize.”

Explore Viega solutions for data centers here.