Happy Friday, and thanks for checking in!
This is the newsletter that examines data centers and the people, technologies, and trends that make them run.

Here’s what we’re looking at today:

👑 Why we should be putting respect on these colocators’ names…
💦 Modular immersion liquid cooling is coming to an edge data center near you!
Big Deals: EdgeConneX designed by HKS, and Aligned adding to the Ohio dc boom
Resources: A youtube channel you need to check out

Est. read time: 4mins 32

- News -

Put more respect on these colos’ names!

In 2022, public cloud providers like Microsoft, Google, and AWS, invested $120 billion in data center infrastructure, marking a 13% increase from the previous year.
And it paid off: the cloud giants witnessed nearly 30% growth in their Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings.

But don’t forget the colos

However, what’s not mentioned often is the pivotal role that colocation providers play in supporting this hyperscale explosion. First, most of the centers our data travels through is owned by smaller colo operators.

Colos own 37% of the total data center capacity, compared to 33% owned by hyperscalers. Plus, these smaller cloud purveyors added 4.6 million square feet of new data center capacity in just the second half of 2022.

Here’s what else isn’t mentioned much: half of hyperscale providers' capacity is in leased colo facilities.

What’s more, global spending on cloud infrastructure services continues to grow, rising by $10 billion each quarter in 2022, and colocation providers play a necessary role in supporting this expansion. Approximately 26 million more square feet of capacity will come online, with colos contributing around 40% of this total.

Where colos have the edge is that by specializing in smaller facilities, they excel at rapidly bringing new facilities online, typically within 12 months, thanks to refined construction processes, supply chains, and standardized infrastructure.

The intense competition among hyperscalers is pushing them to offer more services in more locations with lower latency and higher performance. To achieve this, they rely on colocation providers in key markets to stay ahead of the competition.

Modular liquid cooling, coming to an edge dc near you

A great article from EdgeIR.com details the moves that LiquidStack is taking to bring its prefabricated modular cooling solutions to the edge with “MicroModular” and “MegaModular” offerings.

LiquidStack

LiquidStack is the pioneer and the world’s largest provider of the 2-phase immersion cooling technology that has grown in adoption over the past few years.
2-phase cooling submerges servers in a dielectric liquid that boils from the servers’ heat, captures the steam created from the boiling, and converts it back into liquid to be used again for cooling.

LiquidStack launched this technology for use in data centers in 2012 and has since cooled over 160MW of servers.

Micro and Mega

The new MicroModular product will contain a 48U DataTank, whereas the Mega will hold up to six 48U DataTanks.

The company says that “the new modular solutions will enable enterprises to rapidly deploy compute at the local and regional edge level while capturing the energy efficiency, heat rejection and water saving benefits of liquid immersion cooling.”

Joe Capes, LiquidStack CEO said of the necessity of these modular edge solutions, “Traditional air-cooling doesn’t scale well in prefabricated data centers and has much lower thermal conductivity than liquid.”

More benefits

• Up to 1.5MW of computer power per module

• Up to Tier III redundancy

• Increased power densities at a PUE of 1.02

• Potentially zero water usage

• Can be installed in a matter of weeks

- Big Deals -

Aligned adding another hyperscale to a booming Northeast Ohio market

Aligned will be converting an existing 129-acre brownfield site in Perkins Township, Ohio.

Brownfield sites are those deemed to be affected by real or perceived environmental contamination. This parcel is a former automotive equipment manufacturing facility. (Developing brownfield sites has been part of Aligned’s sustainability strategy.)

Nicknamed NEO-01, this is the first of four planned facilities in the area.

- Big Deals -

HKS the architect for new EdgeConneX Mesa campus

It looks like HKS is the architect on the new EdgeConneX project announced for East Mesa this week.

An EdgeConneX data center was originally proposed for this 93-acre site back in 2017, and records show that the project is back.
At full build-out, the data center will include over 1 million sqft.

HKS is one of the premier data center architects in the country, out of their Dallas office, and has done Valley projects for Aligned and others. Last year they made news when they launched their separate mission-critical practice.

Resources

That’s enough out of me. Thanks a lot for reading, and let us know how we’re doing by replying directly to this email.
And if you want to help grow this, share it with someone who loves data centers.

- Taylor