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Zero Downtime

The DCD data center podcast, published every two weeks by the award-winning Editorial team

Brought to you by Wesco

  • Bonus episode - What should the data center industry expect from the next UK Prime Minister? With Kao Data CEO Spencer Lamb

    With today's announcement that he is resigning, we look at UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer's data center legacy.

    Talking to Kao Data CEO Spencer Lamb, we look at the impact (or lack of) AI Growth Zones, why UK energy prices are so high, if copyright is a challenge, and more. Plus, we learn about prospective national leader Andy Burnham's data center visits, and what the data center industry should look for in a new PM.

  • Episode 105 - Using AI to build AI, with James Stirrat-Ellis of Build

    Data center site selection is a crucial step in the construction process, and picking the right piece of land can be the difference between a project succeeding and failing.

    For AI data center developers with money burning a hole in their corporate back pockets, separating the promising propositions from duds is a time-consuming business.

    Build thinks it can help with an AI-powered system that it says can help sift through potential sites to identify the best parcels of land.

    In this podcast, CEO James Stirrat-Ellis explains how his company's system combines artificial and human intelligence to speed up projects, and how it has worked with the UK government on its much-vaunted AI Growth Zones

  • Episode 104 - Re-introducing SDx, with senior editor Ben Wodecki

    Did you know that DCD has a sister publication?

    In April 2025, DCD acquired networking publication SDx, and with it now having been part of the InfraX family for a year, we thought it was about time we sat down with senior editor Ben Wodecki to give the publication a proper introduction.

    Tune into the episode to meet Ben and hear about what SDx covers, as well as a bit of a discussion on the key upcoming topics you can expect to see on the website.

  • Episode 103 - Networking at hyperscale with Pradeep Vincent, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

    It can seem like GPUs get all the headlines when it comes to AI workloads, but there are a lot more challenges when it comes to handling massive training jobs.

    We talk to Pradeep Vincent, Oracle’s Executive Vice President & Chief Technical Architect of OCI, about the importance of power and the oft-overlooked networking in large-scale AI clusters, particularly as we approach multibuilding scale, and potentially multi-campus.

  • Bonus episode - The telco build out with Patrick Halley, Wireless Infrastructure Association

    DCD catches up with Patrick Halley, president and CEO, Wireless Infrastructure Association, to discuss the requirements of the telecommunications industry’s infrastructure build-out.

    Halley outlines how AI, fiber, and spectrum are essential for meeting the demands to support these networks, as he examines the opportunities for the mobile carriers, fiber providers, and tower companies.

  • Episode 102 - The training to inference passageway with Sumti Jairath, SambaNova

    With the AI industry fueling a shift away from training and towards inference, and claiming agentic AI as its next frontier, the need for hardware to support workloads that require high-compute and low-latency performance has never been greater.

    On this episode of Zero Downtime, DCD talks to Sumti Jairath, chief architect at SambaNova, about some of these driving forces, how the semiconductor industry has changed over the last decade, and what some of the biggest challenges facing chip companies right now are

  • Episode 100 - It's good being Mr Wonderful, with Kevin O'Leary

    It is the 100th episode of Zero Downtime! Before we get into the episode, a huge thank you to all of our listeners - new and those who have been with us since the beginning.

    In this episode, we are joined by Kevin O'Leary, AKA Mr Wonderful, best known for being on Dragons' Den/Shark Tank, with a recent debut in the Marty Supreme movie.

    Lesser known is O'Leary's involvement in the data center sector. We talk about his investment in Bitzero, plans for the "Wonder Valley" data center campuses, and his thoughts on the data center market in North America as a whole.

  • Episode 98 - Insuring uptime with Jonathon Hatzor, Parametrix

    That data centers need insurance goes without saying. Any commercial building will typically be insured against standard damages and risks, but data centers are far more complicated than an average warehouse or office.

    One area that has emerged of late is the idea of “SLA” insurance, or Service Level Agreement insurance. Parametrix is one of the pioneering companies in this realm, and we discuss where the idea came from, and why it is growing drastically in popularity.

  • Bonus episode - Dangerous liaisons with Tommy Schuch, Climber Protection Group

    Mobile devices require networks to make them function, and these networks are often deployed in places most people wouldn’t dare to visit, such as telecom towers. Some can be found thousands of miles high, but for tower contractors, it’s their everyday job, and across all sorts of weather conditions.

    Tommy Schuch, a former tower contractor and now documentary maker and founder of Climber Protection Group, explains the risks of the job to DCD, and why the sector needs a shake-up to protect those risking their lives. Is this the most dangerous job in the world?

  • Episode 97 with David Bacino, Symphony Towers Infrastructure

    With the deployment of 4G and 5G services still an important focus for US carriers, the need for telecoms infrastructure to house this equipment couldn’t be greater, which presents an opportunity for infrastructure companies such as Palistar Capital-backed Symphony Towers Infrastructure. DCD caught up with David Bacino, CEO, Symphony Towers Infrastructure, to discuss his first few months in the role, opportunities in the market, and plans for 2026.

    *Editor's note: This episode was recorded in November when Bacino was CEO. He's since transitioned into a vice chairman role at the company since the appointment of veteran wireless industry executive Jason Hirsch as president & chief operating officer at Symphony in February, as part of a reshuffle.

  • Episode 96 - Reinventing the rack, with Iggy Kogan of Air2O

    Anyone who has entered a data center will be familiar with the upright rack design that has become standard in data halls around the world.

    But while piling up the “pizza boxes” has served the industry well for decades, the advent of liquid cooling systems, developed to meet the thermal needs of advanced chips, means a new approach may be needed.

    Cooling firm Air2O is thinking outside the (pizza) box, and has come up with a modular, stackable design for data center racks, which it says can improve cooling efficiency.

    On this episode, DCD speaks to Air2O’s Iggy Kogan about the new design, dubbed the High Thermal Density Air-Cooled Rack Assembly.

  • Episode 95 - The copper collapse and telephone exchanges with Lisa Kinch, Historic England

    The UK is calling time on its copper networks, and thousands of telephone exchanges across the UK are set to be closed in the coming years.

    The end of an era, some of these buildings date back around 100 years or more. If recent history is anything to go by, many will be turned into residential buildings.

    Lisa Kinch, a historic places adviser for Historic England and associate lecturer at the Manchester School of Architecture, did her PhD research on telephone exchanges in the UK, giving her a unique view on these buildings and their historical context.

    We discuss her research and the unique place the UK's telephone exchanges have in the country's architectural history.

  • Episode 94 - Your next job could be in critical infrastructure (you just don’t know it yet) – with Kao Data

    While critical infrastructure has always been the backbone of the digital landscape, the recent data center boom has caused more people than ever before to become aware of the industry and consider the career opportunities it might have to offer.

    However, like the tech industry writ large, there’s a perception amongst some outside of the critical infrastructure sector that its workforce lacks diversity and therefore isn't an industry in which they could excel professionally.

    In this episode, Lizzy McDowell, director of marketing, Kao Data, tries to dispel some of the myths about the industry and discusses the importance of promoting diversity within the data center sector and why there’s never been a better time to consider a career in critical infrastructure.

  • Bonus festive episode - 2025 in review with the DCD editorial team

    This episode is a bit different.

    With the festive period officially peaking, DCD decided to change tack and instead give you a "year in review," where we talk about our favorite stories from 2025.

    Join Charlotte Trueman, Zachary Skidmore, Georgia Butler, and Paul Lipscombe as they cover their respective beats.

    We hope you enjoy it - and happy holidays!

  • Episode 93 - Assessing the UK’s fiber landscape with Lee Myall, Neos Networks

    The UK wants more data centers. The government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, announced in January, is driving operators to look outside of Greater London. We talk to Lee Myall, CEO of Neos Networks – a B2B fiber provider in the UK – about the state of the UK’s connectivity infrastructure, what kind of delays are faced by data center operators in the country, and the impact of AI workloads on fiber buildouts.

  • Bonus episode - The world of data center funding with Brian Pryor, Houlihan Lokey

    At DCD, we frequently cover stories about data centers getting funding, mergers and acquisitions, and investment in general. But we rarely get to talk to the investment bankers about it. 

    In this episode, we discuss the current financial market in the data center industry - the trends Pryor is seeing, and the inevitability of the AI bubble. Tune it to hear what an investment banker focused on the technology sector thinks of the current climate. 

  • Bonus Episode - How AI changed the regional Edge game with Tesh Durvasula, AtlasEdge

    AtlasEdge emerged in 2021 after Liberty Global and Digital Bridge combined their European assets to make an “Edge” data center player on the continent. Initially, the company targeted smaller data centers - previously positing 4-6MW as the largest it would deploy when talking to DCD, but things have changed. The world has changed.

    Durvasula was hired in May 2024 and has since been leading the company through the new era, one where it's embracing larger facilities that before, and that’s for one simple reason: AI.

    We discuss the changing strategy and what AtlasEdge looks like today.

  • Episode 90 - The financial side of data centers, with Julie Brewer, EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure

    There is plenty of talk about power and land availability, but another hurdle to data center growth and development is capital.

    In this episode, we talk to Julie Brewer, EdgeCore’s EVP of finance, about the different ways data center developers and operators can secure funding - be it through equity or debt.

    In addition, we discuss how Brewer’s experience of secure funding has varied between her roles, from the retail colocation space, to hyperscaler properties.

  • Bonus episode - Forming a cryptomining venture with Donald Trump's sons while pivoting to AI data centers with Asher Genoot, Hut8

    The price of Bitcoin might be higher than ever, but that isn’t stopping companies from pivoting to hosting AI and HPC infrastructure as well as cryptomining rigs.

    In this episode of DCD>Zero Downtime, Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot talks about the company’s pivot away from mining cryptocurrencies to become a data center provider for both the crypto and AI sectors, and how to create a base facility design that can tailor to both worlds.

    He also talks about the American Bitcoin venture the company has formed with Eric and Donald Trump Junior, and what the sons of the US president are like to work with.

  • Episode 85 - Making critical infrastructure think with Jad Jebara, Hyperview

    AI is changing how data centers operate, and particularly in the case of retrofit facilities, it is more important than ever that operators have all the data they need to ensure uptime.

    We talk to Jad Jebara, CEO and president of Hyperview - an AI-powered DCIM provider - about some of the pitfalls data center operators are falling into as they handle more demanding workloads, and how a surprising number of operators are still actually using Excel for capacity planning.

  • Episode 83 - Data sovereignty and cloud competition in the UK with Mark Boost, Civo

    With global political uncertainty, data sovereignty has become a key conversation for governments, enterprises, and cloud providers alike.

    In this episode, we talk to Civo’s Mark Boost about the importance of data sovereignty - as well as establishing a definition - and how this links to the ongoing issue of increasing competition in the cloud market beyond the US hyperscalers.

    We also touch on how the UK’s CMA investigation, and whether such anticompetitive investigations really go far enough.

    Global Data centers EMEA | NTT

  • Episode 82 – Pivoting from crypto to AI colocation with Core Scientific's Matt Brown

    In this episode, we talk to Core Scientific COO Matt Brown about the company’s pivot away from housing cryptomining rigs to hosting GPUs for the likes of AI cloud firm CoreWeave.

    We talk about the wider crypto market and why the move to AI hosting is becoming so common, the rise of the neoclouds and why they’re willing to work with companies that might not be used to working to Tier III-quality uptime requirements, and Matt’s own experience coming to the crypto space from world of traditional colo.

    This discussion took place prior to CoreWeave's $9 billion acquisition of Core Scientific in July.

  • Episode 81 - Telecom tower opportunities in Africa and the Middle East with Sainesh Vallabh, Helios Towers

    In this episode, we talk to Sainesh Vallabh, group chief commercial officer, Helios Towers, about the company’s strategic focus to drive tenants to its mobile tower infrastructure.

    Sainesh explains the company’s plans for the year, opportunities to look at new markets, and the challenges that Africa and the Middle East present for Helios.

  • Episode 80 - Old blighty with Mike Hoy, Pulsant

    In this episode, we are staying in the editorial team’s home county - the UK. Pulsant is a regional Edge provider focusing on the UK market, and has recently launched a new Sovereign Cloud offering.

    We talk with Pulsant’s CTO Mike Hoy about the data center industry in the UK in the context of the Labour government, how enterprise strategies are changing in relation to cloud deployments, and discuss the ongoing CMA investigation into the cloud services market.

  • Episode 79 - Competing clouds with Kevin Cochrane, Vultr

    With the cloud market in a constant war for market share, alternative providers to the “big three” have emerged.

    With 32 regions globally, Vultr has a huge worldwide reach, and claims to be able to offer core cloud services (and GPUs) at a significantly lower cost than the hyperscalers.

    In this episode, Kevin Cochrane joins us to discuss the cloud computing market, how Vultr is able to offer its services for less, and the company's push into AI.

  • Episode 78 - Optimizing Linux to cut data center energy use, with Prof. Martin Karsten and Joe Domato, Fastly

    Could changing just 30 lines of code in Linux help cut data center energy use?

    In this episode, we speak to Professor Martin Karsten, professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, and Joe Domato, distinguished engineer at Fastly, about their work optimizing the Linux kernel, which could have big implications if applied by digital infrastructure operators

  • Bonus episode - Understanding AWS' chip strategy with Gadi Hutt

    In a compute world dominated by Nvidia, hyperscalers are looking to build out their own semiconductor infrastructure capable of training and inference workloads at scale.


    We chat to senior director for customer and product engineering at AWS’s Annapurna Labs Gadi Hutt about his company's approach, based on its 2015 Annapurna acquisition. We talk about Trainium and Inferentia, how the company balances against its GPU fleet, and what it's cooking with Anthropic and Rainier.

  • Episode 76 - Start(ing) again in Portugal with Omer Wilson, Start Campus

    The start campus data center project has big dreams, aiming to build a 1.2GW data center campus in Sines, Portugal.

    While things have progressed on the campus, its entanglement in the corruption probe that saw the Prime Minister resign and led to the arrest of several of Start’s executives including then CEO Afonso Salema caused some hiccups.

    With the charges now dropped (and a new CEO in place) and the first data center on the campus live, Start is back on the grind to see the project through to fruition.

    Omer Wilson, chief marketing officer at Start Campus, talks to DCD about the project - its sustainability efforts, how it is using seawater for cooling, and addresses the issue of starting again after the disruption.

  • Episode 75 - Data centers under the hammer with Julian Hennessy, Telehouse Europe

    In this episode, we talk to Julian Hennessy, projects director at Telehouse Europe, about the company’s most recent project in the London Docklands area.

    The Telehouse South facility was entirely retrofitted with a mission to strive for better sustainability. Julian explains the challenges and the benefits of retrofitting in the London data center landscape.

  • Episode 74 - Spreading awareness of the data center industry with Carrie Goetz

    Carrie Goetz is the definition of an industry veteran. With decades of experience, she now works as a “fractional CTO” via her StrategITcom company, but over the years she has done a lot of outreach work to bring in new faces to the sector, not to mention the several books she has written.

    Tune in to hear about Goetz’ career so far, and her perspective on how we can bring in a new generation of data center obsessives

  • Bonus Episode - The need for basic science research, with Vint Cerf

    US scientific research institutions are under attack. DOGE-led cuts to National Science Foundation funding, caps on indirect research costs, firings at the National Institute of Health, layoffs at the Department of Energy, and more will profoundly weaken the US' scientific standing.

    But what does this mean for the country, for companies, and for the data center sector?

    We speak to the 'father of the Internet' Vint Cerf, co-developer of the TCP/IP protocol, about why the Internet had to come out of government-backed research, what he learned from his time at the National Science Board, and how we can win back our future.

  • Episode 73 - Understanding Stargate's Masayoshi Son, with Lionel Barber

    From visionary bets in Yahoo, Alibaba, and Arm, to disastrous gambles on WeWork and Vision Funds, SoftBank's Masayoshi Son has defied both logic and expectations. Self-styled as a modern Ghengis Khan, the once richest man in the world has rolled the dice yet again, plowing money into OpenAI and Stargate.

    What can we learn from his past? We talk to Lionel Barber, author of Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son.

  • Episode 72 - Subsea cable resilience, security, and redundancy with Steve Roberts, Exa Infrastructure

    This episode with Steve Roberts from Exa Infrastructure discusses the resilience, security, and redundancy of today’s subsea cables, particularly in the face of adversities such as wars and natural disasters.

    Join us to discuss who should be investing, how the cable landscape is set to change in the coming years, and all things subsea.

  • Episode 69 - Diamonds are for semiconductors with Diamond Quanta CEO and founder Adam Khan

    While silicon is still the semiconductor king, alternative chip materials are increasingly being sought in order to find their successor and address some of the biggest challenges facing the chips of today.

    In today’s episode of Zero Downtime, CEO and founder of Diamond Quanta, Adam Khan, discusses the benefits of diamond semiconductor technology, its applications, and the work Diamond Quanta is undertaking.

  • Episode 68 - How cryogenic CMOS could solve the AI energy challenge, with Synopsys' Jamil Kawa and William Ruby

    Earlier this year, Synopsys' R&D team developed a new model that allows design teams to create and test circuits at cryogenic temperatures.

    In this episode, Jamil Kawa and William Ruby from Synopsys talk about the cryogenic CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors) research project and how it could support the development of low-power chips to help solve the worsening AI energy crisis.

  • Episode 67 - Adapting to change with Mark Kidd, Iron Mountain

    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. However, they have still kept some of its underground mines.

    In this episode of Zero Downtime, we talk to Mark Kidd about Iron Mountain's evolution and the lessons that can be learned by the data center industry.

  • Episode 66 - Making a mark on India, with Surajit Chatterjee, CapitaLand Investment

    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 Mumbaim Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore. While these developments are running smoothly, building large data center campuses in any location is never simple. 

    We talk with managing director Surajit Chatterjee about the challenges and opportunities presented by India, its choices of location, development process, goals for sustainability, and the investment company's future plans.

  • Episode 65 - Connecting the land, the sea, and AI, with Gil Santaliz, CEO of NJFX

    When Gil Santaliz first founded NJFX, he saw an opportunity to create an environment where data centers and cable landing stations could co-exist on the same campus.

    But even he could not predict how the emergence of AI and Edge technology has changed and developed conventional cable landing stations for the better. We talk to NJFX about the history of NJFX, the importance of colocation cable landing stations, and the future of AI and subsea infrastructure.

  • Episode 63 - Growing the workforce with Nabeel Mahmood, Nomad Futurist

    We are all acutely aware that the data center industry has an aging, and thus thinning, workforce. But what can we do about it?


    In this episode, we talk to Nabeel Mahmood, managing director of Nomad Futurist - a non-profit dedicated to increasing awareness about the world of digital infrastructure - about how we can bring more people into the industry, especially those positioned at a disadvantage, be it because of a lack of resource, their location, or even society expectations.

  • Episode 62 - Using data center heat to grow algae with Linda Lescuyer, Data4

    Data center operators are getting serious about waste heat and, more specifically, what to do with it.

    While the solution for many is to pump it back into nearby district heating systems, other companies are getting more creative and using warmth from servers to heat aquafarms and greenhouses.

    European operator Data4 has joined a project which aims to demonstrate that waste heat from its data center can help to grow algae, which could in turn be used as biofuel. Linda Lescuyer, Data4’s innovation manager, joins us to explain how the project is taking shape.

  • Episode 61 - Data centers down under with David Hirst, Macquarie Data Centres

    Data center markets vary wildly by location, and in this episode we head "down under" to the wonderful land of Australia.

    With the AI boom in full across the globe, Australia is no different and experiencing increased demand.

    We talk to David Hirst, who heads up Australia's Macquarie Data Centers, about the trends he is seeing in the country, how Macquarie is approaching AI, and the company's recent news, including its forthcoming IC3 Super West data center.

  • Episode 60 - Verizon on preparing its network for natural disasters, with Mark Paff and Cory Davis

    During a natural disaster, networks often go down. This can massively impact rescue missions in some cases. The importance of network operators and the role they play in responding to unpredictable moments is something that should be highlighted.

    We spoke to Verizon to see how it prepares its response to hurricanes and tornados, and find out the level of training required to support its efforts.

  • Episode 59 - Entering the cloud market as a new player, with Cory Hawkvelt, CTO of NexGen Cloud

    With the cloud market already over-saturated, it is hard to imagine how a new company can make its mark. 

    NexGen Cloud is seeking to do just that, with plans to build a sustainable cloud specializing in HPC and GPU infrastructure called "super cloud."

    We talk about how NexGen is going to achieve this, the steps taken thus far and why the company thinks it is a solid competitor for some of the bigger players.

  • Episode 58 - Smarter energy and the future of Ireland's power grid with Michael Phelan, GridBeyond

    Sourcing adequate amounts of power to run new facilities is a problem that keeps even the most seasoned data center operators awake at night.

    Many are looking at new technologies such as battery storage to help meet their power demands, but ensuring these assets operate efficiently can be a challenge.

    Dublin-based GridBeyond thinks it can help by providing grid-connected battery technologies and management software to data centers and other clients across a range of industries. In this episode, Michael Phelan, founder and CEO of GridBeyond, talks about the challenges and opportunities presented by the clean energy transition, and the future of Ireland’s overstretched power grid.

  • Episode 57 - Precision cooling and political optimism, with David Craig, Iceotope

    With AI dramatically driving up density, data center cooling is getting much more interesting.

    Iceotope is one of the companies exploring the most efficient and sustainable way to cool down data centers - and their solution is precision cooling. On the face of it, precision cooling resembles immersion cooling - viscous liquid? Check. Bathtub-like container? Check.

    But as CEO David Craig explains, it is actually a far more efficient solution. Beyond the world of liquid cooling, we talk about political optimism and how the next generation will hopefully help us all towards a greener world.

  • Episode 55 - The half-life of nuclear data centers with Chris Lohse, Idaho National Laboratory

    Nuclear power may have its detractors, but amid a growing capacity crunch data center operators are becoming increasingly interested in whether atoms can provide the electrons needed to power tomorrow's high-density facilities.

    In this episode, Chris Lohse of the Idaho National Laboratory, talks about the recent innovations around nuclear power, the highs and lows of recent years, and what the future might hold for nuclear-powered data centers.

  • Episode 54 - Industry-wide sustainability with John Booth, Carbon3IT

    Sustainability needs to be applied at all levels of the data center industry, and we are not doing enough, says John Booth of Carbon3IT.

    In this episode of Zero Downtime, we sit down with sustainability consultant John Booth to talk about how he got where he is in his career, and the fundamental sustainability issues that he is seeing in the data center industry.

    We also talk about a past trip to Belarus that proved more exciting than expected. Tune in now for the latest episode.

  • Episode 53 - The UK data center market with Luisa Cardani, TechUK

    Bringing the L to FLAP-D, the UK has a prominent data center market. But like all other tier-one markets, London is struggling with space and power capacity. 

    Because of this, the UK's data center industry will have to diversify, all while meeting increasingly regimented regulations. 

    In this episode, we talk to trade association TechUK's Luisa Cardani about what the UK's data center industry is currently experiencing, from upcoming rules and regulations to emerging new markets, to the association's role in influencing policy.

  • Episode 52 - Why Oxide rebuilt the rack from scratch, with Bryan Cantrill

    Oxide Computer has been rebuilding the rack. In this podcast, CTO Bryan Cantrill tells us why.

    The data center industry has been building its own infrastructure for years, with the wrong components.

    Servers weren't designed to be operated in data centers, and the 1U rack unit is the wrong size, because of simple science. Part of the success of the cloud is that it takes that integration away, and gives users an easily consumed set of virtual servers and elastic infrastructure. But it costs, and it has pushed users to renting something they would be better off owning. That's why we heard of the "cloud diaspora" - organizations people bringing their IT back from the cloud.

    But what people need, Cantrill says, is an elastic infrastructure for the on-premise facility. In this podcast, you can hear him explaining why his team found they had to rebuild almost everything to deliver it.

  • Episode 51 - Make way for bigger hard drives with B S Teh, CCO of Seagate

    Think hard drives have hit their storage limits, and should be replaced by solid-state units? You could be wrong.

    Hard drives have been holding our data for nearly 70 years since IBM created the 350, which stored something like 4 Mbyte on dozens of spinning disks in a unit the size of a washing machine.

    Today's devices are orders of magnitude better on every axis including price, capacity, size, and performance. But solid-state providers say it's time they moved over to make way for modern storage. Hard drives have been in a slump, but a new technique promises to double their capacity.

    Seagate is the first to bring heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) to the market, so we invited chief commercial officer B S Teh to tell us why it is such a big deal, why it's taken so long - and how it could change what you do in your data center.

  • Episode 50 - The fundamentals of quantum computing with Yuval Boger, QuEra

    In this episode of Zero Downtime, we break down the fundamentals of quantum computing - the different approaches out there, the challenges to bringing it into a widespread commercial reality, and the potential use cases that quantum may help with.

    To help divulge this, we speak to QuEra's Yuval Boger who shares a little about the company's experience with the technology, including how we can go about deploying quantum computers inside data centers.

  • Episode 49 - How CDNs quietly took over the Internet, with Mark de Jong, CDN Alliance

    Twenty-five years ago, the first content delivery networks (CDNs) emerged, to solve a specific problem - how to make web pages load faster.

    More than two decades later, 72 percent of Internet content is delivered through CDNs. But the companies involved are still almost invisible - until something goes wrong.

    In 2021, in a ⁠series ⁠of ⁠outages⁠, large numbers of unrelated websites all went out of action at the same time. It turned out that these sites had all come to rely on the same CDNs, effectively installing a single point of failure for large sections of the Internet.

    Since then, large service providers have worked out how to avoid this problem - and one CDN provider told us in a podcast ⁠what to do⁠ when it does happen.

    Major CDN players have extended into a distributed cloud role, running applications at the Edge, and Cloudflare, for one, believes CDNs have a huge opportunity in "inference" - when AI pre-trained systems are deployed for actual applications.

    In 2021 the CDN Alliance, an industry body that aims to be a voice and forum for CDN players, along with the ecosystem that has grown up around them, was formed.

    Mark de Jong, founder and chair of the CDN Alliance, tells us why CDNs need a voice, and what they need to be saying.

  • Episode 48 - How to face up to regulations, with Venessa Moffat, EkkoSense

    Europe has an Energy Efficiency Directive, Germany has an Energy Efficiency Act, and operators there can be fined for inefficiency.

    Meanwhile, Amsterdam has declared war on sleeping servers, and set limits on where facilities can be built.

    Across Europe, in response to congested electric grids and shortages of land, local governments are stepping in to regulate data centers.

    Sometimes they want them to be greener, sometimes they want them to be quieter, and sometimes they just want them somewhere else. But any data center operator now has to be prepared to meet new reporting requirements and talk to the local authorities about their business.

    This is not a bad thing, says Venessa Moffat, head of channel partner manager EMEA Europe for Ekkosense. It's about time those discussions happened.

    People who run cities need to understand the businesses that are located there - and from those discussions, new partnerships can emerge.

  • Episode 47 - Hydrogen data centers get real, with Yuval Bachar, ECL

    At the start of 2023, Yuval Bachar told us about his latest project - to build off-grid, hydrogen-powered data centers. As 2023 came to an end, he was back to tell us he'd done it.

    He's got 1MW of capacity fed by hydrogen in Mountain View California, and he's telling potential customers he can build the same thing anywhere you can get hydrogen shipped by pipe or tanker.

    He's keen on the benefits. No long waits for power distribution, no struggles getting permits for diesel. And the building is quick and cheap too. He can make them with a 3D concrete printer - which incidentally is environmentally better than tilt-up building, he says.

    He picked up the Environmental Impact prize at this year's DCD Awards, and joined the podcast to give us some more details on what he has done.... and what's coming next

  • Episode 46 - Telecoms in troubling times with Ineke Botter

    Ever wonder what it would be like to be a CEO at a telecom company in a country that is at war?

    That’s been the reality on a couple of occasions for Ineke Botter, who has headed telecom companies in Kosovo and Lebanon.

    Her career has taken across Europe and beyond, spanning more than 30 years.

    She’s even worked in the data center industry too.

    Listen to find out more about Ineke’s incredible journey into telecoms.

  • Episode 45 - Europe's data center regulations, smart grids, and the rise of AI with Neal Kalita, NTT GDC

    Europe is regulating data centers, starting with Germany, where an Energy Efficiency Act is making demands on PUE and heat reuse.

    Neal Kalita thinks the German Act is a "pilot" that other countries will adopt and adapt. It's a test case, he says, on whether regulations will "drive away data center operators" in that country.

    However that plays out, data centers will have to be more transparent about their operations, their demands, and how they plan to evolve. There are big hopes that heat sharing will encourage communities to warm to the data centers in their midst, but how quickly can they be built and connected?

    And finally, with all this to contend with there's a huge change coming, as the demand for AI data centers will push demand out from traditional hubs, so AI training sites can get the power they need, while AI inference operations can have low latency to end users.

    Kalita says that as we digitize the energy grid, and shift towards AI, a lot of things will have to change. Listen in to find out more.

  • Episode 44 - Are SMRs still the best nuclear option? With Tony Grayson, Compass Datacenters

    A year ago, we spoke to Tony Grayson, about nuclear-powered data centers - and small modular reactors (SMRs) looked like the silver bullet, which could deliver low carbon energy at the size and speed the industry wanted, without the cost overruns and complexity of traditional large nuclear installations.

    This year Grayson, a nuclear sub-mariner turned data center engineer, explains to us why SMRs have begun to lose their luster a little, getting mired in redesigns.

    And days after we spoke to him the SMR front runner, NuScale in the US, lost its flagship customer, the North American utility UAMPS. NuScale's CEO is optimistic but listen to Grayson's thoughts on the underlying issues of the SMR sector.

    Could there be a better approach? This year microreactors look promising. Small enough to transport by truck, and powerful enough to power an Edge facility, could they mass-produced and ore-approved?

    Listen to this episode and find out.

  • Episode 43 - Energy use and AI with Alex de Vries, Digiconomist

    Artificial intelligence could grow from almost nothing to using half a percent of the world's electrical power within five years, according to Alex de Vries of Digiconomist.

    That's a crazy rate of growth, but it's not unprecedented. Bitcoin followed almost exactly the same trajectory, expanding from nothing to a sector whose energy use is comparable with that of regular data centers. But the similarities end there, says de Vries, who provided the reliable tracking data for the growth of Bitcoin, and is ready to do the same for AI.

    A year ago, he talked us through his methodology for analyzing Bitcoin energy usage. Now he's back, explaining how we can estimate the consumption of AI systems, This time round, it's all about tracking how many GPUs Nvidia can make, and seeing where they are likely to end up.

    The actual figure depends on a lot of things, and could be higher if more GPUs emerge, or if they are deployed differently. There are questions around the depreciation of the hardware, and how and where AI inference is delivered.

    Listen in to find out how AI's thirst for power is going to affect the world.

  • Episode 42 - The irrepressible Bill Kleyman

    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.

  • Episode 41 - Do data centers truly bring economic benefits to their location? With Max Schulze, SDIA

    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 center really brings benefits to its location?

    In some places (like London), it appears that they soak up grid connection capacity and block housing projects. In others (like Denmark and Ireland) they use renewable energy and jeopardize local decarbonization targets.

    It's not easy to know the net benefits brought by a data center, because much of what it does is in the virtual world, and is delivered to people far away.

    Max Schulze has some thoughts on how to start working out the real benefits of a data center - and we hope for more input from DCD readers and listeners.

  • Episode 40 - Plenty of submarine cables in the sea with Elena Badiola, Exa Infrastructure

    Ever wondered about the practical challenges of connecting our continents?

    In this podcast episode, we talk with Exa Infrastructure's Elena Badiola about the process of getting subsea cables underwater: from environmental surveys to climate change, to funding challenges.

    Elena also shares her experience of living on a cable ship for five weeks after an earthquake caused an outage - and how a military coup almost stopped her from getting home.

  • Episode 39 - How will we start to use hydrogen? with Mark Monroe

    In 2022, Mark Monroe's podcast about hydrogen was one of our most popular podcasts ever.

    At Microsoft, Mark had just made a prototype hydrogen fuel cell UPS system that could potentially replace diesel generators to provide low-carbon backup power at data centers. One year on, he's back for some more detail.

    A hydrogen economy will need a distribution system - but will that look like a power network, a gas grid, or a system of trucks? 

    Data centers won't be the first big users of hydrogen: Mark tells us where it will take off. 

    This year, we've heard stories of natural hydrogen mined from underground. Mark assesses that prospect, along with the other sources of hydrogen, and suggests that the new energy source could rewrite the world's map of energy providers.

    Listen to our talk with Mark to find out where and when you will start using hydrogen. 

  • Episode 38 - ICT Environmentalism and the Sustainability Game, with Hunter Vaughan and Nicole Starosielski

    If you want to make infrastructure sustainable, you need to be very careful what words you use.

    That's what Hunter Vaughan and Nicole Starosielski found, through their involvement in a project to make subsea cables sustainable. Words like "sustainability" and "climate neutral" can mean different things, depending on who is talking. And if what you say is vague, then your efforts to be sustainable can get misdirected, or diverted into greenwash, or simply end up (like the words) meaningless. 

    Hunter Vaughan of the University of Cambridge and Nicole Starosielski of the University of California, Berkeley are part of Sustainable Subsea Network. They are also co-authors of a paper called ICT Environmentalism and the Sustainability Game, which looks at how players like Greenpeace used language to build pressure for green infrastructure.

    They spoke to DCD about both: how we communicate about sustainability, and how sustainable are our communications systems. 

  • Episode 37 - Actions speak louder than code with Anne Currie, Green Software Foundation

    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 - delivering a much bigger saving for the planet. 

    Green Software is not just about more efficient code, says Anne Currie. Rewriting everything in C might cut energy use - but it would destroy your company.  

    As a leader in the Green Software Foundation, and a seasoned green developer and entrepreneur, Anne has much better ideas. She is working with Sarah Hsu and Sara Bergman, on Building Green Software, an O'Reilly book about what green software really means, and how we can achieve it. 

    Find out more in this podcast.

  • Episode 36 - Developing Internet protocols with Mirjam Kühne, RIPE Chair

    How does the Internet keep running? A close-knit community of engineers has been developing and supporting the protocols that support it for more than forty years.

    During that time, new Internet services have emerged and scaled beyond recognition, and new features have been added, all without breaking the whole system.

    Mirjam Kuhne has been closely involved with this for 20 years, and in 2020 became chair of the European forum for Internet development - RIPE (Réseaux IP Européens, French for "European IP Networks").

    Since then, Internet services became crucial to the continued operation of society during the pandemic, and European Internet services have faced unprecedented technical and political challenges during the war in Ukraine.

    Mirjam says the protocols take care of themselves. What you need is a community of motivated engineers to maintain them.

    RIPE is open to new members, and when you hear how it all works, why wouldn't you get involved?

  • Episode 35 - Taking inspiration from the GSMA in a push to drive the broadband industry with Martin Creaner

    The global interests of the mobile industry are represented by the GSM Association (GSMA). 

    This governing body was established in 1995 to support mobile operators using the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard for cellular networks. 

    It has become synonymous with the mobile industry and has driven it forward through industry programs, working groups, and initiatives. 

    The GSMA’s legacy has even inspired something similar but for broadband instead, with Martin Creaner, director general of the Worldwide Broadband Association (WBBA) seeking to use this model. 

    Can the GSMA’s model be replicated for broadband as well? Creaner explains why the need for a governing body representing broadband interests is important. 

    “It’s all about creating a member-led organization that creates a platform to drive broadband cooperation and partnership across the whole industry to accelerate broadband adoption everywhere in the world,” said Creaner. 
    If you liked this discussion or any of our other episodes, please give it a like or subscribe on your platform of choice. If we are not available on your favorite podcast player, get in touch.

  • Episode 34 - When will quantum computers reach the data center? With Chris Monroe, IonQ

    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 cat. 

    It turns out that quantum computing is reaching a point where lots of us could soon start to use it. The market may have to choose from an array of different kinds of quantum bits (or "qubits"), but it is quite likely that a brand new quantum computer could fit into a couple of racks of your classical data center.

    Don't believe us? Let Chris explain... 

  • Episode 33 - Empowering women in tech with Kelley Mullick, Iceotope

    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 also talk a little about her recent job change from Intel to vice president of advancement and alliances at Iceotope - what drew her to the company and why she thinks precision liquid cooling is the future.

  • Episode 32 - Underground data centers with Andrew Bourget, Eccus

    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 is the future. There's no planning permission required, and you can build under your existing facility. You can migrate underground, and still have your above-ground space available for offices or to rent out. Is he serious?

    Time will tell. He's currently working on projects in Switzerland and France - with his eye on London, where the clay subsoil is apparently ideal for underground data center vaults.

  • Episode 31 - Mark Bjornsgaard of Deep Green on heating swimming pools with data center heat

    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 waste heat has been harnessed. It's not even the first time it has heated a swimming pool. 

    But Deep Green CEO Mark Bjornsgaard tells us that, this time, all the pieces are in place to make the idea mainstream. 

    In the future, he asks, why should the heat from any computing be wasted?

    Put it another way: if all our heating needs were produced by GPUs and CPUs, that would provide way more computing power than we currently know how to use.  

  • Episode 29 - The nuclear energy silver bullet with Tony Grayson, Compass Datacenters and Alan Howard, OMDIA

    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 disasters as well as the upfront costs, there is hesitancy in the data center industry to make the move to nuclear.

    This podcast will take a deep dive into the future of nuclear in the data center market, and explore how the heavy regulation of this industry makes it a safe and reliable method of energy generation. However, despite there being some clear use cases of its viability, we are many years off from nuclear becoming a widely used power source owing to its economic feasibility. This begs the questions: when will it be deployed at scale? What is the practicality of SMRs? What technology will be used to bridge the gap as we wait for a nuclear solution?

  • Episode 28 - The future of hyperscale networking, with Juniper Networks' Mike Bushong

    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 expect next. Plus we discuss AI, silicon photonics, telecoms, the race to 800G, and more.

  • Episode 27 - The 2G and 3G switch-off and what it means for 5G and IoT with Wireless Logic Group CPO, Paul Bullock

    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 it matter? Well, Wireless Logic Group Chief Product Officer Paul Bullock explains why the need to switch off 3G is necessary for the future of 5G.

    It’s not just 5G, he adds, noting that IoT will gain a lot from the switch off of this service, although he acknowledges that 2G will be more of a challenge to phase out.

    Tune in to listen to the full discussion...

  • Episode 26 - There's something about Maryland, with Quantum Loophole CEO Josh Snowhorn

    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 is reportedly luring cloud companies and the hyperscale developers serving them on a huge scale.

    CEO Josh Snowhorn talks us through the company's history and its 2,000+acre gigawatt project located just north from Loudoun across the Potomac river.

  • Episode 25 - Meeting the pioneer of Meet-me rooms with Hunter Newby

    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 them heavily. Hunter set up a room where the networks all met up for physical (layer 0) connections - and the rest is history.

    It's a well-documented history because he went on to write a series of magazine articles "Meet Me In New York", "Meet Me In Chicago" etc, about interconnection facilities in major US cities. That series is archived on his site, alongside live data of connections for each of those cities from the open peering resource, PeeringDB.

    Today, there are still not enough Meet-Me rooms. Some US states with large cloud facilities don't have nearby carrier hotels, so local user traffic has to go out to a city like Chicago and back. Hunter wants to foster neutral carrier hotels where there are none.

    Why is 60 Hudson Street the Ellis Island of the Internet? And did Hunter ever write "Meet Me In St Louis"?

    Listen in, and meet Hunter Newby...

  • Episode 22 - Understanding IT Efficiency with Rich Kenny, Interact managing director

    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 the power goes into the rack.

    But what if you could measure the power used by your IT equipment, run comparative tests, and find out how to reconfigure, replace or update your hardware to improve energy efficiency?

    Rich Kenny claims to be able to do that. Interact started as a project by refurbished hardware supplier TechBuyer, aiming to prove that refurbished hardware could be as good as new kit, and grew into a consultancy that compares hardware configurations, and gives guidance on how to do more with less hardware.

    Server manufacturers do their business on the basis that new hardware is always more efficient than old hardware, and colo providers would rather you didn't find out that you could do away with half the racks you are renting.

    Kenny is shining a light into a dark corner that has not had enough exposure, dissecting the 1 in that PUE figure. He could be about to step on some industry toes...

  • Episode 18 - The origin of the Internet of Things with Peter Lewis

    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. And yet, in 1985, Peter T Lewis predicted the two could be combined, so devices could communicate over wireless links.

    "I predict that not only humans, but machines and other things will interactively communicate via the Internet," he said. "The Internet of Things, or IoT, is the integration of people, processes, and technology with connectable devices and sensors to enable remote monitoring, status, manipulation, and evaluation of trends of such devices."

    Listen to our podcast to find out how Lewis made this astonishingly accurate prediction, years ahead of his time. in a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in 1985. We also find out how his ideas were almost forgotten, and what he thinks of today's IoT.

  • Episode 17 - The impact of climate legislation on digital infrastructure with Stephen Harper, global director of Intel

    After a hiatus of several years, climate change policy is taking off in the US, with the Biden-Harris Administration using the Inflation Reduction Act and the Energy Earthshot to accelerate the clean energy economy.

    But data center energy policy goes back a lot further than that. Stephen Harper, Intel's Global Director, Environment and Energy Policy, was there 20 years ago when data centers first came onto the climate change radar, and he's been tracking progress since then.

    As well as their own emissions "footprint", data centers have a positive impact on emissions elsewhere, known as the environmental "handprint"

    But how do we measure that handprint, and set it against the negative impact of infrastructure.

    And coming after this backstory, just what impact of these Biden-Harris initiatives have?

    DCD speaks to Stephen about the likely impact of historic climate legislation for the digital infrastructure sector.

  • Episode 16 - Green software with David Mytton, CEO and co-founder of Console

    Efforts to reduce the environmental impact of our digital world tend to start with the cooling systems at data centers, and rarely get any further.

    The tech industry created PUE as a simple metric which could express how efficiently power is delivered to the racks, but did not consider what happens to that power when it gets there.

    That’s not good enough, because poorly written software could be wasting that power in unnecessary loops and fruitless calculations.

    The Green Software Foundation has emerged to propose a measure of Software Carbon Intensity that will tell developers if their software is a good planetary citizen.

    But this is an issue that gets more complex, the more you look at it. Software that completes quickly must save energy, but what if the software is running on multiple hardware platforms? What about the embodied energy of the hardware you choose for it?

    David Mytton is Co-founder & CEO of Console, a company that makes tools for developers. He’s also looked at the energy used in technology, bothy at Imperial College and at the Uptime Institute.

    He’s now working on a PhD in sustainable computing at the University of Oxford.

    He talks to us about the prospects for Green Software finding its way from academic research, through sponsorship by large vendors, into the hands of developers and consumers.

  • Episode 15 - Tracking data center power use with LBNL's Dr. Arman Shehabi

    As grids around the world struggle to meet demand amid heatwaves and wars, data center power and water usage is increasingly coming under scrutiny. We talk to the researcher who has spent years trying to track the sector's consumption, so that regulators and companies alike can access accurate figures on a secretive sector.

  • Episode 14 - What it’s like building facilities for Google with Sarah Godbehere

    What's it like building facilities for Google, in the epicenter of data center construction - Northern Virginia?  Sarah Godbehere has spent the last three years managing construction on a Google campus in Northern Virginia. She tells us what it's like to be a young woman in an industry full of older men, and shares how she turns potential conflicts by asking the right questions.

  • Episode 13 - Carbon accounting and 24x7 green energy with Simone Accornero, FlexiDAO

    When a data center firm claims to be 100 percent carbon neutral, can we believe them?  Does every electron used in that data come from a solar panel or a wind farm?   Until we have reliable carbon accounting, we won't know for sure, and operators will continue to rely on renewable energy certificates (RECs) which match energy consumption over a year, instead of hour by hour.

    Simone Accornero, CEO of FlexiDAO says we need "RECs on steroids" to move to hourly carbon accounting, and a blockchain-based protocol can deliver this without costing the earth in energy overheads.

    Data centers are a small part of the global electricity market, Accornero says they are ideally suited to drive that market to better carbon accounting, and renewable generation which better matches electricity consumption.

  • Episode 12 - Sustainability-linked financing and data centers, with Aligned’s Matthew Chambliss

    As sustainability continues to become an increasingly important issue for data center owners and operators, many are tying their financing into ESG-related goals. The likes of Green Bonds see proceeds going towards specific green projects, while Sustainability-Linked Loans see interest payments tied to specific targets such as PUE or water use.

    Such financing options have been adopted by cloud and data center companies including Equinix, Digital Realty, Atos, Baidu, AirTrunk, and telcos such as Telefonica, NTT, and Verizon.   

    US operator Aligned’s whole debt pile – more than $3 billion –  is entirely made up of sustainable-tied financing. Aligned’s VP of Finance, Matthew Chambliss discusses the company’s reasoning and journey to adopting sustainable financing.

  • Episode 10 - Working from home during the lockdown, with Alex Cruz Farmer, ThousandEyes

    Working from home expanded massively during the pandemic - but were we ready for such a massive change? The proportion of remote workers grew from 17% of all employees worldwide in 2019 to 32% but the companies weren't fully ready for the change and collaboration tools were often pushed beyond what they were designed for. 

    Alex Cruz Farmer of Cisco ThousandEyes has the tools to look objectively at the user experience and talks to us about how we can improve it.

  • Episode 9 - Hydrogen with Mark Monroe, Microsoft

    The world needs hydrogen as part of the replacement for fossil fuels - and data centers could be the catalyst for that.  

    Mark Monroe, Principal Engineer at Microsoft, explains how the hydrogen economy works. He shows us that hydrogen is not just a proven alternative to diesel for backup, but brings other benefits with it. 

    If data centers switch this small part of their energy needs to hydrogen, this could enable much larger industries to get started - and catalyze a hydrogen economy

  • Episode 7 - Biodiversity & bees with Michelle Wallace, Host in Ireland

    It's easy to think that sustainable data centers are all about reducing carbon. In fact the earth faces a biodiversity crisis as big as the climate crisis. Data centers can have a role in fighting to prevent extinctions, and produce a lot of other benefits in the process.

    When you build a data center, you have to see the unintended consequences, says Michelle Wallace of data center promotion group Host In Ireland. Build badly, and local species will suffer. But it's also easy to get it wrong, to put in measures that don't help.

    Host in Ireland went to Ireland's National Biodiversity Data Centre, found how important pollinators are, and put together a set of actions to protect and promote them, DCs for Bees is now having influence beyond Ireland, and beyond the data center industry.

    It's being followed up with a scheme to plant orchards - and there are more ideas beyond that.

    This is the Zero Downtime episode which could make your data center into a haven for nature, and change your life for the better!

  • Episode 6 - Astrid Wynne Rogers, TechBuyer

    Data center operators who want to be sustainable tend to focus in on carbon - but there are a lot more elements in the Periodic Table, And as we progress towards sustainability, we are going to have to consider all of them.

    In this podcast, Astrid Wynne Rogers, sustainability lead at TechBuyer tells us why we should pay close attention to the lifecycle of our physical servers and the other equipment in our facilities.

    It takes a lot of materials and energy to make equipment, and keeping it out of the waste stream could avoid wasting those resources. But there's more to it than sticking it in a skip for recycling. The circular economy has to join up. With a value put on refurbished equipment, and people actively working to reuse and extend that kit.

    It used to be said that replacing old kit with new always saved energy, because Moore's law meant the new equipment was much faster. That is no longer the case, and TechBuyer did the research to prove it.

    TechBuyer's paper is available here from IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing or here from Techbuyer.

    Want another reason to increase your hardware's life?  It's a powerful way to reduce "Scope 3" emissions from your supply chain. And you can't get to Net Zero without dealing with Scope 3.

  • Episode 5 - Holland Barry, Cyxtera

    CTOs have traditionally been key positions for research-driven software and technology companies. As colocation companies increasingly move beyond merely serving space and power, the role of the CTO becomes more important.  

    Holland Barry, Field CTO for Cyxtera, discusses the role of the CTO and Field CTO at the company, the key skills required, and some of the interesting projects the company is working on.

    We also discuss the wider skills market and the shift from ‘dumb colo’ to service provider, and get a boots-on-the-ground view of Cyxtera’s journey to becoming a public company via a SPAC merger.

  • Episode 4 - Wes Swenson, Novva Data Centers

    Data center automation is one thing, but what about automatons walking in the data halls? Robots in the data center are often discussed but rarely make it beyond the pilot project stage. Those that are deployed are often closer to Short Circuit’s Johnny 5 than Neill Blomkamp's CHAPPiE.

    Utah-based Novva data centers has deployed Boston Dynamics' Spot robot dog – possibly the most advanced robot that is currently commercially available – at its flagship data center and is looking to create a replicable and scalable model for deploying robots in its other current and future facilities. DCD discusses the pains of deploying a robot that is still a way off enterprise-ready plug-and-play with CEO Wes Swenson along with the lack of a wider support ecosystem for robotic deployments, and the future role of humans in the data center.

  • Episode 3 - Anders Andrae, Huawei Technologies

    Figures quoted in 2021 suggested that data centers and communications technology could use eight percent or even 20 percent of the world's electricity by 2030. That seemed too high to us, so we tracked down the original source of the quotes, only to find he feels the same way. Anders Andrae is an academic, currently working at Huawei's Swedish R&D center. Since his original 2015 paper he has revised his predictions down, but the old figures still often show up out of context. More importantly, he thinks we should be looking at the benefits of IT as well as the energy cost. He talks of a "handprint" that counter-balances the environmental "footprint." Andrae says the Internet saves far more emissions, through offering a digital alternative to physical services, than it consumes.

  • Episode 2 - Max Schulze, the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance

    Max Schulze is the founder of the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA), a group of stakeholders aiming to achieve a sustainable digital infrastructure by 2030. He thinks the answer to heat reuse is economics, not engineering.

    And when we've sorted that out, he foresees that the big cloud providers will be disaggregated, and the cloud will become the same kind of market as the electricity grid.

  • Episode 1 - Lex Coors, Interxion

    In the first episode of the DCD>Zero-Downtime podcast, we spoke to Lex Coors, Chief Data Center Technology & Engineering Officer at Digital Realty's Interxion, about his two decades at the company, from the early days, to the rise of cloud, and the recent Digital Realty acquisition. We also discussed sustainability efforts, the European energy crisis, and how to ensure that local communities don't turn against data centers.