Balancing The Needs of Machines and Humans in Data Centers

Transcript

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OK, Perfect. All right. Hi. And welcome to the beyond the screen podcast. I'm your host, Joe Nash. And today I'm joined by U er head of data Centre Construction at Ion to chat about how this vital piece of infrastructure that is the data centre that drives our modern Internet and arguably the world comes to be uva. Welcome. Welcome to thank you for joining me.

So to kick us off, I have my first question. As we get into this topic of, you know, building data centres and data centre construction.

How did you come to be the head of data centre construction?

What is the journey to building data centres for a living?

Uh, originally I started as a project manager at it was in 2009. I think and, um yeah, the first thing I I I managed were network project or, um, our core router infrastructure, for example, our switching systems and and the data centre.

And, uh, later they were searching for somebody who can support him to manage data centre construction project. So my first data centre I was constructing or where I was managing the project was in 2011. It was a prototype for a new data centre. And so I turned more and more in the topic of data centre construction.

And finally, last year, um, I I changed my role from from a project manager, um, to a team lead.

Uh, now I'm leading a team of, uh, construction managers and engineers who are designing our data centres who take care of, um, the coordination of the construction process and so on. Right. Fascinating.

OK, that's quite the journey.

And oh, God, I had to start with this. So obviously the the data centres are such an well, quite regularly such enormous facilities.

What like, how long does it does it take to build a data centre?

Like what's what's when when does the project start?

And how long until it's up and running and serving customers. So the the the project starts very early because you have first to search land or existing building where you can fit in a data centre. Of course.

Um, but the whole construction process, from from starting the Earth, work until handover and commissioning takes about. It depends on the size and the scale of the data centre, but it takes normally 1.5 year to two years.

Um, but we are also constructed in the past data centre within 12 months. That was a different design approach. So apparently we are building more, um um, Shell and Co. In a shell and core models or or um, the data centre we built in in within 12 months was was a data centre, which is based on containers. So you you you can parallel.

In this case, you can prepare the land or the basis, um, infrastructure.

Um, and in parallel, you fit out the container somewhere in in a factory.

Um, this makes it more quicker and faster.

And, uh, yeah, that's that's really interesting. That's yeah, and I've I've seen a lot of construction kind of being expedited by using containers, but interesting to hear. That's also happening in data centres.

So you mentioned So you mentioned there that you know, the time frame varies depending on, you know, fitting the building in, Um, what are some of the considerations that you're looking for?

Where you're choosing, like the data centre site, like, what do you need to be aware of?

Or, um, at the very beginning, you look into risk. If there are any risks in the environment around.

So you make a risk analysis of of the the environment around the site, then you are looking is power available is a fibre optic networks Are they available?

Available close to the site.

And also, you have to consider, um, data centres are making noise because you cool things in the data. If you don't cool the servers inside, they will overheat.

So, um, you will cause some noise. And so you have also to your neighbours If if if this this would be a pain for them, um and, uh, yeah, you have also to consider measures to to mitigate noise.

Um, and so on.

Yeah, that that that's it is it sounds really easy, but, uh, data centre needs a lot of power.

And also, um, we need, um we have to integrate our data centre into our network backbone. And so we need also enough fibre.

Um, capacity available.

Um, yeah.

The, uh the you mentioned the network backbone there. Like I imagine for a whole data centre. That is a a large pipe.

Like what?

What kind of requirements are there on that at the end?

It's pretty easy because you can almost do a lot of bandwidth through one single fibre pair.

Um, um yeah.

Um, it it you, you. You say it are big pipes at the at the end. These are small pipes, very small pipe. And but yeah, of course, you need a, um a back hole that work behind it. And so you have to go come to major locations like er if it's in the US, you have to come to Washington DC. You have to come to to l. A.

And if it is in the UK, you have to come to London or or if it isn't Germany, you have to come to Frankfurt and yeah, you have to check all these route and also you need diverse routes because, uh, you need redundancy.

Um, if there is, uh, excavation running, Uh, if if if if the excavator cuts one of the fibre pairs, um, it shouldn't be have any effect on the data centre itself. You have also to look for diverse routes which are going into a back network or a bigger network.

Um, yeah, yeah. Building them for redundancy is is very interesting.

Um, so one of the things we've heard about with other guests, um, on this show is, uh, what onus is doing around sustainability of his data centres. And you mentioned energy use.

What kind of, um, you know, construction or new technologies Are you looking at as you build these data centres in order to, you know, drive towards sustainability?

Um, yes, we have a bit more road map available there.

Um, there is mentioned what sustainability features are available at which time and we're always looking into it.

So, for example, it becomes in the future, it becomes more interesting to use carbon reduce or carbon neutral concrete, steel, and so on. But everything is depending on green hydro chain right hydrogen because, um, yeah, at the end, you can produce only green steel or cream concrete with hydrogen.

And yeah, the AVA availability of cream power is not so super. At the moment it's increasing, um, every day availability of green power. But But at the end, in Germany, for example, there's already one steel factory or, um, one steel.

Um, yeah, factory at at the end. They have a wind farm around it, and and they they are producing green hydrogen to produce clean steel at the end. But this is this is the future thing.

Um, because it will take another five or 10 years until, um everywhere clean steel would be will be available.

Or, um, yeah, at the end. It it it's a It's a journey to sustainability construction. But we have already started. We are placing everywhere a solar PV um um on the roofs of our data centre or close to our data centres.

Um, we are using, um, for example to to run our generators. We are using HBO, which is oil which is made from vegetables, which is, um, yeah, and and yeah, we we are also compensating.

So, for for our new data centre, for example, we we set the whole, um, the building envelope, the materials which are used for it. We set it all offset.

So, um um yeah, all the carbon which was produced during the whole chain, um, was at the end, compensated And with, um, spending into green projects or yeah, yeah. Also makes that makes a lot of sense. We've heard a bit of that from From Rand, Head of Sustainability in another episode as well.

So, uh, we will link that down below for that conversation.

Um, so I guess moving on.

So we've spoken a bit about, you know, um the what?

It what it takes to build these centres What you look for?

Um, obviously, you're the head of data centre construction.

How many people are working on Data centre construction?

Uh, at the end, we have a court team of 15 people. They are coming from all disciplines.

Uh, um uh, we have we have a design team.

Um, we have a, um, a architect. We We have a structural engineer. We have a mechanical engineer, which takes, um, is responsible for all the cooling parts and so on. We have electrical engineer.

Um, we have operations experts we have.

Um, yeah, um, all the network infrastructure experts, though all these come together for a project, they are not. All in my team. I have more or less only construction men and some industries in my team.

But, uh uh, for a data centre construction, you need a big team. And finally, at the end, we are more or less only managing the construction process. We have third party partners, Um, which, um so we do the the design the base design of of the Data centre, and we hand it over to a third party, which makes together with us a detailed design.

And, um later. We are also managing the construction process together with with our partners, um, and that the right thing is coming on the right time or at the right time.

Um, and that they are available and everything comes together.

And, uh, finally, uh, we are also taking care of commissioning of the data centre, testing them more. The the operation experts come into the game and and they they they support us with with getting it commissioned and finally tested, and I'm getting it into production. Awesome.

OK, so lots of different specialties there. You mentioned third parties as well. Lots of different bodies involved. Lots of different teams.

Obviously, with such a complicated project as A as a data centre, I imagine things change in the middle of construction. New requirements around or new things are discovered.

How do you with all those different stakeholders involved?

How do you prioritise changes?

How do you structure your teams to to be successful in that environment if something you know ever changed does arise. So if there a curse or anybody raises a change request, we assess it first, and we also tell them the implications.

So, for example, we need for more time for it or we need more money for it. And at the end, yeah, we finally assess it, present it to the stakeholder back or to the higher management, and then they can make a decision if they want really to apply this change or if, um maybe, um, yeah, we we we we don't do it.

And because, um, in such a big pro project or, um, minor changes like, um, much, much more easy. So and in in, in current times, you all work more a child and also in the construction contract. Construction is a big thing.

Um, um So you can either apply changes as you had in the past in the past, as you have done in the past, because, um yeah, but at the end, any change has an implication. You have to assess it, and somebody has to decide if it will be applied or not.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Um, and you mentioned that your team, you know, has some of the initial design. What are some of the I guess like design fundamental some of the principles that you're looking at and what what are the The The core challenges of designing a data centre or core principle is making it simple.

Um, um, yeah, there are a lot of data centres in the world. They are very complex, and they had a lot of auto automatic in it and and a lot of complexity. But somebody has later order to operate it, right. And And if you have too many complex things, Er, um, nobody really understands it and understand it. A lot of human errors occur and and and Yeah.

So our core principle is keep it simple. Make it easy.

And, uh, yeah, First you start always with a, um with a complex design, and then you try to make it more simple and so on.

And, um yeah, improve it. That makes sense. And you mentioned that obviously, someone needs to maintain it. So humans operate in the space. And in many ways the requirements of humans for a comfortable space are opposed to that of a computer and to optimise.

So how do you make these these buildings like functional for both?

You know, the machines that need to work in there, but also the humans that need to maintain them. So the first priority has for us all with health and safety. So we we we making it also safe. Or though there are many, many, many things everybody is is allowed to go in every space or, for example, in electrical spaces.

Only special experts are allowed to go inside and and yeah, we we also like to make our facility in the future more nice that people like to work there, or, um, we are currently working on many print design ideas for our data centres that you have nice pictures on the walls that you for for example, see our business principles everywhere in the world so that people also which are working in the space, uh, can identify with the company and also with our core value use and all our customers, which are coming to our facilities to visit it to see it, uh, that they they feel well in the facility and also can Oh, this is a cool thing.

Has a lot of machinery inside it. It's it's very technical, but the at the end, it's all feel, well, atmosphere available.

So, um, these are things we are working currently with our brand team, um, on on how to make our our facility much more nicer in the future. Even they are very technical.

Right, Right, right.

Oh, God, that's there Must be so many myriad challenges there just to just go ahead.

Sorry for, for example, if we just have have made our our, um, our own designs that we have now blue racks in in a blue with a logo in front of it. So everybody who is going into a to a cold, I can see at first hand that he is now in a facility.

And, uh um, yeah, um, that's cool.

Yeah, yeah, it's nice. It's nice to, you know, when an office is well decorated and feels like the brand and the space, Like, you know, lots of lots of people talk about various tech offices and the experience of visiting them. And it's I imagine a data centre is a very visiting a data centre. Must be a very sci-fi experience.

Um, so moving on, I guess a bit from, uh, the design and the construction process. Once the data centre is is built and it's it's operational.

You know what, How how do you tell that's been successful?

What do you look for in a successful data centre?

If nobody complains from about operation stuff about things, then you have done a perfect job. But at the end, you find every every every time anything which you can improve improve next time. But at the end, our my customer is the operations in the data centre operations team.

If they have nothing to claim at the end, I have done a good job and and if if everybody can or not me as only me, sir, my whole team has done a great job at at the end.

And, uh, also if you if you get several, um, awards, prizes, certifications this, uh, makes you, um, yeah.

Then you, um so for, for example, for our last day, we got a tier four certification, which is, uh, yeah, and who knows?

The Uptime institute.

Uh, if they are happy with your facility, you can say, also, this is a good thing, because that's really hard. Such a certification. Interesting. So I've not heard of the Uptime Institute.

So what What are the uptime Institute?

I I'm getting an impression that they, you know, are looking at the performance of data centres and awarding something.

How does that system work?

Yeah, this is an independent organisation that's coming from the from the US.

And, um and they, um they they built a A framework.

Um, um, about the performance and availability, um, of, um, data centres.

Or or um, they assess your data centre against their, um um guideline or standard.

Um, if you fulfil all the requirements and, um, at the end, or, um, this makes, uh, you you can see how, um yeah, reliable your data centre is at with regards especially, um is looking for availability of electricity or of energy and and to cooling.

And, um yeah, very interesting.

OK, so you mentioned that this this late state centre you got got a tier four.

How many?

Where does that sit?

How many tiers are there?

Is that near the top?

Yes, the best. Because there are four levels of four tiers at the end.

Um, um, which starting at tier one, which has only base capacity or, um, no redundancy.

No, really. Redundancy. And it's coming.

Um, Tier two. And then you have base redundancy. All all the capacity components are redundant.

You'll, um you can say in average, it has availability of 99.74 or something like this percent average availability.

And, uh, yeah. Then it is coming. Tier three. This means concurrently. Maintainable.

So, without interruption, you can maintain everything in the data centre.

Um, yeah. And finally there is Tier four.

It means, um yeah, all the fault tolerance. Whenever there's a fault, somewhere in a component somewhere in the supply path, you need to respond to it automatically.

And, uh, your data centre should not go. Not have any down time. If something fails and and yeah, then then you are looking to availability of 99 about 99 5% at the end. It means all the continuous cooling, or you are not allowed to increase the temperature in the cold. I more than five degrees within a certain time. And you need unlimited run time of your generators outside.

Uh, yeah.

Um, yeah, that's a lot.

So between the redundancy and the calling concerns, obviously like these tier awards aren't just you build a data centre and one accidentally happens, right?

They're obviously something you're designing for. So do you. Is there a decision process when you come when you know when a new data centre is being designed or built that someone says we want this to be a tier four. We want this to be a tier three.

Is that how that plays out?

Um, to tell you the truth, The truth. At our last data centre, the original design intent was tier three, and and yeah, And then we had a workshop with the up Time Institute and they they said to us, your design is pretty close to tier four um, if you do some little upgrades, uh, it it will be tier four.

And we went back to our higher management or or we have little little have to do little upgrades. It will cost, um, this and this and and and they said, Oh, cool. For this price, we will do tier four. And because our design was pretty simple and smart and normally you say tier four is very expensive because you have to automate a lot of things.

Um, it's getting very complex.

Uh, you need a lot of redundancies. And and our design was very simple and smart at the end. And though we finally decided to go not for tier three, we go to it for tier four, um, the best of the best normally only finance institute or banks and important public authorities. And take the journey to tier four because, uh, normally you say it's very expensive, But our design was very clever.

And that Time Institute was impressed as well that you can build a, um, with such a simple tier four data centre.

It's It's, um it fulfils all the requirements of, um um um but it it it's pretty simple at the time.

Yeah, Yeah, fascinating. So the primary driver of kind of of a company choosing what tier they're going to go for is cost.

Yes, yes, it cost cost and risk risk analysis. So if you are working, if you are a finance institute, your your data or your data is very important. So if you lose or, um and data at some point, uh, you not only 100,000 customers affected millions of customers.

Also, in our case, because we are a Web hosting cloud service provider, um, many people are, um, or many customers will will have impact if we have a problem in our base infrastructure. Because our services, the base of the service, is the data centre and this is the base infrastructure, and then it comes to the I t. And finally to the software.

And if the base infrastructure does not work well, you have a problem at the end because all the I T components can fail. All the software can fail. The base infrastructure has to be very liable.

But, um, normally, you say tier four is too costly or too expensive.

Um, so you're pretty normally that that everybody is going to tier three.

Um, but we made it working with a very simple design and not so much more cost to make Tier four working. Fascinating.

OK, um, I have I have a poorly formed follow up question about that, I guess which is so like my a lot of I guess a lot of listeners, uh, interaction with cloud.

And, you know, a lot of my interaction with cloud has been kind of on the commodity side, right?

Like, you know, I go and I go for an online portal and I get access to the servers that I need and, you know, it's it's all automated. It's all for an API.

And so the tier system is really fascinating to me in that, because if I'm, you know, representing a financial institution, that's not necessarily exposed to me at that that commodity front, Right?

So how are you, like do you distribute?

Where am I going with this?

Never mind. I can't think of how to avoid this question. Maybe you're thinking about availability so so that you can distribute it. So we have a very modular approach. For example, our latest state of centre is built in, in, In, In, in, in more than one. It's not not one data centre. It are Two independent data centre in one.

So, um, the infrastructure of module one is in completely independent from the infrastructure of, um um of module two. So if one of the models the second module is still running all the time.

But as I said, we we have built t four, so it's very unlikely that it happens that we lose lose the whole module, but and it's also very unlikely that there is a fire because we mitigate everything to have a fire on on site.

Um um, but the end, er, yeah, you are looking to in a availability zones when you when you go to cloud and other in regions and so on. So you distribute your, um, your services over regions, you distribute it about over, um, availability zones And um, yeah, we support this with our data centre design.

We can also make in one data centre more than one, um, availability available because we built in a model approach and make everything, um, the models independent from each other.

So, um, so if if the whole infrastructure or the whole model failed.

We still have another model which is still running, and you can decide in your, um, in your cloud planner or in your cloud panel, Um, to which ability?

So you you you like to have your i resources deployed.

So, um, at the end, the customer can also decide by his own how distributed and how redundant he wants to have it set up. Perfect. That makes that makes no sense. That answers.

Where are we trying to go?

So I think, Yeah, that's great. Thank you.

Um, so I guess we've kind of spoken a lot about, uh, you know, the the present of our state centres.

And, you know, we're talking a little bit about looking forward to the future in terms of sustainability, but going into, you know, the data sense of tomorrow and what you're thinking about in the future.

What?

What's kind of top of mind for you on in terms of advances that you're looking forward to for your work. Make it more sustainability. Make it more sustainable. So at the end, this is the journey we have currently to go. If you if you're looking to the press.

Um, everybody is. Everybody wants to go digital. Everybody wants to use his smartphone. Everybody wants to use an app. But all everything is depending on data centres. So digitalization for every each and every app you need at the end. A data centre where your data is or where something is calculated, uh, in in the back end and so on.

Um and And people are, um, are coming now and say data centres are evil because they are consuming a lot of energy. They are pro producing waste heat and so on. So we have to look now, um, how to make this all more sustainability, The next big thing Where you which you can read every each and everywhere, is making our waste heat available.

Um, so, um, all for the the energy or revolution or the the energy is getting more expensive every time and we have was it for free, We just blow it currently in the atmosphere.

So, um yeah, but but but it it depends also that we can get more sustainable, that the governments are supporting us with it making networks available or strict heat networks available everywhere where you can just, uh um um supply or waste heat too. And and heat homes, heat buildings and heat swimming pools and so on.

Um, yeah, it's it's it's a waste product. Heat is a waste product from the data in our data centres.

And, um, yeah, we have also to get a, um you know, um, I don't know if you know it, but maybe it was already told in one of the former episode er we are sourcing pure energy at, um um but we like to produce our own energy as well. So we're looking every each and everywhere.

If you can construct a PV installation on our building on close to our building, because you you, um to all these or in the grid, you you're losing all the, um um energy, because it has to be transformed and so on. And to use it directly at, um, at your site, um, you don't lose so much energy.

Um, and of course, we have also to to look into, um um more sustainable concrete, steel and air air in our, um, latest data centre, which we have built. We have also be hotels on site or insect hotels on site.

We have Korean rules, and and, um yeah, we like also to do something for the nature because we want data centres are not evil, and and, um, at the end, But we can do better.

Yeah, that makes sense. So there's a couple of things you said there that I want to go back to. So first of all, I was laughing about the swimming pools because I think we were discussing in another episode, uh, that someone recently put a data centre at the bottom of a swimming pool to heat it, which was very cool.

So I like that idea of the excess, Uh, the the heat usage, Um, you mentioned that the concrete and the steel And so obviously one of the things that's occurred over the last couple of years has been exacerbated by, um, the COVID-19 pandemic has been, you know, supply chain issues and in in in concept of sustainability. I imagine that's changing the way you're thinking about the construction materials.

A lot like how has how have you know, the availability of materials impacted?

You know, these these huge projects for you, It it it actually has a big impact at the end.

Um, at our, um, the latest construction project took about Fif five months, um, more, um, than the original plan, because we didn't get the equipment on site. So suddenly when we ordered it, everything was available, and everybody was telling us You will get it in three or 43 or four months, but it and it turned out that it sometimes took eight months and so on. This has changed the whole industries.

Um um um so at at, um, in former times, you you, um you you purchase equipment.

Uh, just in time. And now people are starting to store equipment, even if they don't really require create it yet.

But, um, they have some project in mind. They start ordering, put it into stock, or in, um, somewhere, store it and and and later use it, even if they don't know, even know if they really require.

But, uh, yeah, um, you see it, uh, many data centre.

Um, companies are are doing this now.

Um, yeah. Early order equipment that they can that they have it just that they have later have it in time.

And, um Yeah, there's something which, which has totally changed with this all this, um, supply chain crisis and, um, yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes that makes total sense, I guess.

Yeah, I asked that in terms of, you know, like construction materials. But I guess the the worldwide chip shortage has probably had a bigger impact on on on the infrastructure component. Because in a in A in a chiller, you'll have all the chips and sites or and also even fans in the cooling equipment have chips now, nowadays, inside. And this was a big problem.

And to get a cooling equipment available because, uh, they they are using a lot of chips, and the chips were not available, right?

Yeah, that makes sense.

All right, well, we are coming up on time, so I guess to To wrap us up If you could change just one thing. Anything at all about data centre construction. You. I have absolute dream build out.

What would What would you change?

My dream is to have is to have a, um, carbon negative data centre facility at the end.

Um, So, um, we are not only producing, um um carbon we we even turn it to negative or not even become carbon neutral.

Uh, my dream is to have a carbon negative data centre up and running. Perfect. Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you, Joe. Alrighty. I'll end the recording.