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The 'cloud' is nothing but a clever marketing scheme. There is no 'cloud'. Just gazillions of data centers, polluting the skies, consuming too much energy, and guzzling billions of gallons of water every year. No amount of holiday selfies is worth the amount of environmental damage these beasts inflict. No amount of bingable shows can mitigate the damage on local communities. Do your research (but use a regular privacy-focused green search engine like DuckDuckGo or Ecosia instead of AI).

If you have been around the #datacenter industry for a while, you may have heard of the impending proliferation of #edge computing and liquid #cooling. According to Steven Carlini, VP of Innovation and Data Centers, 2024 will be the year when real catalysts exist for both. Discover the latest data center trends according to Steve in the upcoming months: http://spr.ly/6047gyaIW

NEW Data center operators are starting to shift their new construction projects out of hotspots like Santa Clara, California, and Ashburn, Virginia, but they're not doing it to chase edge computing opportunities. Instead, they're looking for locations close to available sources of power. "There has been a surge in interest in secondary and new markets, to skirt some of the power challenges facing major markets, especially for latency-insensitive workloads, like AI training," wrote the financial analysts at MoffettNathanson in their takeaways from a recent investor conference in New York City. Data center operators like DigitalBridge are looking to build new data centers in locations where the local utility can quickly provide the massive amounts of electricity needed for cloud computing, including AI operations, according to DigitalBridge CEO Marc Ganzi. "There's this whole next generation of cloud workloads that are showing up ... but they're not traditionally in Virginia, they're not traditionally in Santa Clara. And you see that the customers are navigating to different places," Ganzi said during DigitalBridge's recent quarterly conference call, according to Seeking Alpha. As Light Reading has previously reported, it can take up to two-and-a-half years for data center operators in Dallas to obtain permits for the power necessary to operate a new data center. In Atlanta that can stretch to six years and in Silicon Valley, seven. That's because data centers, electric cars, bitcoin mining and other power draws have maxed out electricity utility power production and transmission in many locations around the country. "The power challenge is not going away soon," wrote the MoffettNathanson analysts, citing their conversations with officials from DigitalBridge. MORE; https://lnkd.in/g4UFcdAZ #edgecomputing #datacenter

Power is the ballgame for the continued development of AI. The greatest technology in the world is utterly irrelevant if there’s no place to plug it in. Within the emerging economy, the fortunes of tech will be inextricably linked to energy. Yet, as this piece illustrates, this isn’t a matter of investment - it’s literally an issue of a project and power backlog that could keep the AI rocket permanently on the launchpad in the U.S. Tech can’t invent its way out of this and power companies can’t play it safe. Both sectors need to find a middle ground between their inherent sensibilities to solve the problem, with an assist from regulators and elected officials. Energy and Tech 🤝

Recent Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2024 indicated many interesting findings. My comments included in the list (with fact based commercial twist at this time). 1) Average PUE (1,56) value has not improved over 5 years. Must notice, that PUE definition already now, and especially in the future needs renewal because of several reasons, e.g., liquid cooling and heat reuse. Telia Helsinki Data Center PUE was 1,17 in July 2024. That was due the MW size heat reuse in production. Local energy company Helen needs heat also at summertime, which naturally has been time for higher PUE values because of warm summer days - yes, there is sometimes warm also in Nordic:) 2) Over half of the Data Center operators are sleeping with tracking their sustainability metrics. Let´s see, if EED will bring the change in EU. This first reporting round of energy efficiency metrics to EU is definitely more or less a rehearsal, but in the future there might be also sanctions for poor performers. Telia HDC tracks sustainability KPIs widely already. 3) DC outages remained at the same level. Operators are countering increases with complexity, density and extreme weather. Telia HDC has not faced any outages since the start in June 2018. Behind of that is well designed and built redundancy and great electricity grid in Finland and of course skilled operations staff. 4) The densest workloads in DCs are not AI workloads, but business applications and HPC. That makes sense, because possibility to host true and dense AI workloads does not fit to all of the data centers mainly because of cooling limitations (technical difficulties or high investment level). The amount of liquid cooled workloads in DCs is yet rather small against overall computing, but increasing rapidly, though. Current AI customer requirements are typically many MWs already in the first phase and growth options indicated as well. Telia HDC welcomes also new AI workloads indulging green, stable and secure production environment. #datacenter #trends #AI #sustainability

2023 Tape Market Report sheds light on the storage industry, tape usage and lots more! The report notes that “IT services [have] placed energy usage, carbon emissions and the overall environmental impact of data centers squarely in the bull’s eye for most organizations to address.” The report from the Tape Storage Council goes on to examine a number of key topics including the shift to secondary storage, big data trends, social media impact, cloud repatriation, LTO technology milestones and roadmap details and more. https://buff.ly/3t7wO1C #sustainabilitystrategy #sustainabilitygoals #bigdata #lto #tapefortomorrow

2023 Tape Market Report sheds light on the storage industry, tape usage and lots more! The report notes that “IT services [have] placed energy usage, carbon emissions and the overall environmental impact of data centers squarely in the bull’s eye for most organizations to address.” The report from the Tape Storage Council goes on to examine a number of key topics including the shift to secondary storage, big data trends, social media impact, cloud repatriation, LTO technology milestones and roadmap details and more. https://buff.ly/3t7wO1C #sustainabilitystrategy #sustainabilitygoals #bigdata #lto #tapefortomorrow

Are you leveraging the full potential of your Data Centre? Many businesses overlook the vital role of Edge Computing in optimizing cloud services. Google is investing $1.1bn in expanding their Edge Computing Data Centre in Finland, showing their commitment to renewable energy and innovative cooling systems. With the data centre industry rapidly evolving, it is crucial to stay updated with the latest trends, such as Edge Computing. Don't let your business fall behind in the digital revolution. Reach out to us at Sigma Data Centres for expert insights and solutions that can help you maximize efficiency and stay ahead in this competitive marketplace. #DataCentres #EdgeComputing #Cloudcomputing #AI #MachineLearning #Engineering #Construction

In my conversations about cloud and data centres, this word has been coming up more and more... Power. As data centres continue to pop up around the UK, the energy suck on the grid is going to become even more impactful than it already is. Decarbonising the grid is certainly an exciting thought, but does its timeline match up to that of AI adoption? You can read John Pettigrew (CEO of the National Grid) full speech on this very important topic here: https://lnkd.in/gVc9SnwS #cloud #sustainability #ai #datacentre #nationalgrid https://lnkd.in/g8E_TCxW

[···] Repatriation is a strategic initiative, gaining momentum and fueling the rise of tape based hybrid clouds. Many enterprises have experienced significantly higher costs associated with cloud storage outsourcing compared to on premises storage.” The report explains that “The hybrid tape cloud provides organizations with much better TCO, higher security, availability and fault tolerance since data is stored both on-premises and in a cloud storage infrastructure increasing the effectiveness of the popular 3-2-1-1 data protection strategy.” [···]