Good morning, this is Cold Isle Insights.
We talk about data centers, the technology inside them, the energy that makes them go, and the people that make it all happen.

Here’s what’s going on:

Est. read time: 3mins, 42secs

- Big Deals -

Another sweet data center retrofit in Europe

We talk about cool data centers here (See featured). And the coolest ones, which always seem to be in Europe, are those converted from structures used previously for totally unrelated purposes.

Digital Realty announced last week that they’re converting a French sugar silo in Marseille. It’s about a $260 million project for DR, and the new facility will feature 107,000 sqft and be up and running by Q4 2025.

The silos were built in the ’60s but have been abandoned for at least the last eight years. As with its other two Marseille data centers, Digital Realty’s sweet new data center will utilize river cooling.

Amidst a digital boom, Cyxtera takes a knee

Burdened with a huge debt load, the colocation provider filed for Chapter 11 this week after it was unable to find a buyer. Per the restructuring agreement, Cyxtera will have access to at least $200 million from Lenders to continue operating, but the company will likely lose control of its existing equity interest in the company.

Cyxtera currently supports 2300 customers over 60 data centers across the globe. The Florida-based company had revenues of nearly $750 million in 2022, but is sitting on only $40 million cash and a billion in outstanding debt. Not the position you want to be in, ideally.

- Featured -

The Citadel is a gigantic digital desert fortress

If you’re not familiar with Switch’s Citadel campus at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, you’re missing out. The facility, which was completed in 2016, is a paragon of scale, security, and computing power.

The specs: 2000 acres and 1.3 million sqft of data center space. That’s Tahoe Reno 1, the flagship facility at the Citadel campus. It cost almost $1 billion to build and is the largest colocation site in the world. A Tier 5 platinum facility, the Citadel boasts 7 ms fiber connections to Vegas and 4.5 ms fiber connections to Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

And they have more coming. Switch plans to grow its Citadel campus to as large as 7 million sqft.

What’s cooler: The whole thing is run with renewables. Accessing solar, wind, and geothermal power, Switch claims that the 650 MW technology stronghold is run entirely on clean energy.

Intense physical security: The Citadel is surrounded by a 2.5-story cement wall and the site is patrolled 24/7 by security staff made up of ex-military personnel and others with similar backgrounds.

Fear of fires? The campus literally has its own dedicated fire department on-site ready to deal with incidents in minutes.

Most famous is the roof. To deal with the whipping Nevada winds, the Citadel is outfitted with a patented roofing system known as Switch Shield. It’s an inner and outer roof, both solid steel and able to withstand winds up to 200mph.

What’s more: The campus is connected through a 500-mile network of fiber, called Superloop. Superloop is what allows Switch to operate an extremely low-latency data center in the middle of the Nevada desert where power is cheap, taxes are low and earthquakes don’t happen.

Hot links are here! 🌭

The wait is over. I’ve got some fresh hot links for your Thursday morning. See what’s cooking below.

1. We wrote about Quantum Loophole last month. That’s the master-planned data center community concept in Virginia connected by a fiber loop. It’s not going well. They’ve paused work due to “numerous environmental regulations.” Check it out

2. If you’re an automation analytics nerd, check out this interview SilconAngle did at Cisco Live. Dr. Hennig Loeser, head of Audi’s Production Lab, talks about the evolving nature of automation and the transition from physical to virtual PLCs.

3. A mystery company is behind a new $1 billion data center project announced in South Carolina. It’s called Project Cobra (which sounds like a Google project name) and they're discussing tax breaks with the York County Council now. Read more here

4. Whoops. Gen 2 AMD server chips apparently have a crash bug. The bug can cause system failure after 1044 days of uptime. Not great news from a company that’s having their lunch eaten by NVIDIA right now. Here’s the article

5. If you’re involved/interested in the design side of the data center world, and like podcasts, check this one out. Design trends in data centers.
Jackson Metcalf of Gensler talks to the Thought Cloud guys about how design can impact performance of critical facilities, and trends he’s seeing on the design side. Listen

Daily Dall-E

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- Taylor