Good Friday morning, and welcome to Data Center Digest.
We’re looking at data centers and the people, technologies, and trends that make them run.

Today’s Newsletter:

🍃 An $8 billion clean hydrogen hypercampus in WV
🚨 Trellix finds DCIM vulnerabilities and shows how to hack a data center
Big Deals: $7.5 million amazon campus gets approval, Cerebrus building 9 US supercomputers, Namla gets a cloud-to-edge partner
Resources: Bill Kleyman goes in on modular DCs

Est. read time: 6mins, 45secs

- News -

1. $8 billion clean-hydrogen hypercampus coming to WV

Fidelis New Energy announced Wednesday that Mason County, WV will host its new next-gen campus. The site will include net-zero carbon hydrogen production, hydrogen-powered data center facilities, and a waste heat-fueled greenhouse food production system.

Clean-Hydrogen ‘Gigasystem’: Details of the project are sparse, but we know the star of the show is a clean hydrogen facility and microgrid called the Mountaineer Gigasystem.
The facility will utilize proprietary FidelisH2 technology to produce lifecycle carbon-neutral hydrogen from a combination of natural gas, renewable energy, and CCUS (carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration).
The Gigasystem phase of the project is estimated at $2 billion with planned completion in 2028.

Data centers, too: Fidelis also plans to build a data center campus called the Monarch Cloud Campus, which will be located on the site and will extend onto additional, to-be-acquired land.

Covering a planned 1100 acre area, they’re thinking full build-out capacity could reach 1000 MW.

Fidelis has novel technology planned for their data centers, too. Their H2PowerCool will use the clean hydrogen from Gigasystem to both power and cool the cloud facilities without using any off-site indirect carbon offsets or credits.

What’s more: Fidelis will use what it calls “CO2PowerGrow” technology paired with a number of greenhouses on the campus to utilize CO2 from hydrogen production, and waste heat from the data centers to decarbonize and produce low-cost food.

It sounds like the massive project showcases the end-to-end clean power production and utilization that Fidelis is capable of. At $8 billion those better be some good tomatoes.

Trellix highlights the threat that’s lurking inside data centers

In a report released last week that scrutinized various data center software platforms, Trellix uncovered a series of vulnerabilities in two popular platforms.

Some background: According to Sunbird Software, 83% of enterprise data center operators have increased their rack densities in the last three years – and thus are looking to tools like DCIM platforms to help manage their infrastructure, prevent outages, and maintain uptime.

A vulnerability on a single data center management platform or device can quickly lead to a complete compromise of the internal network and give threat actors a foothold to attack any connected cloud infrastructure further.

The specifics: In their security probe, Trellix found bugs in both CyberPower's PowerPanel Enterprise DCIM platform and Dataprobe's iBoot PDU. The researchers were able to identify four vulnerabilities in CyberPower’s software and five in Dataprobe’s.

Using multiple vulnerabilities found in the software, the researchers bypassed authentication allowing them to see and configure devices on that network. The vulnerability allowed Trellix researchers to turn off the power for a company’s server space that can cost potentially millions for the organization relying on that data, the report noted.

The report noted that aside from turning off the power, hackers could use the access to install malware and make connections to potentially hundreds of businesses.

What’s more: In the coolest part of Trellix’s report is a video that shows a walkthrough of the steps they took to hack into these critical software platforms. If you’re interested in the software side of things, it’s worth a watch. Check it out, HERE.

- Big Deals -

1. Preliminary approval granted for Amazon’s 7.5 million square foot campus in King George County, VA.

   The approval was requested by Birchwood Power Partners, who’s been seeking to redevelop the former coal plant site for more than a year.
   Initial documents indicate eight total data center buildings are planned over a 15-year period.

2. In a $900 million deal, Cerebras Systems to deploy nine US-based AI supercomputers for UAE-based AI developer G42. One of the systems is online now and eight more are scheduled to come online in 2024. The goal of the partnership is to deliver the world’s fastest supercomputer.

3. Cloud-to-Edge startup Namla joins forces with Supermicro to deploy and manage edge infrastructure to large enterprises. Supermicro manufactures servers, storage, and 5g edge solutions, and in partnership with Namla they hope to serve industries including retail, manufacturing, oil and gas, and smart buildings.

Resources

Check this out: the legend Bill Kleyman talks about modular dcs and some of what’s underneath.

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- Taylor