DCD Zero Downtime: The Bi-Weekly Data Center Show

25 years ago, the first content delivery networks (CDNs) emerged, to solve a specific problem - how to make web pages load faster. More than two decades later, 72 percent of Internet content is delivered through CDNs. But the companies involved are still almost invisible - until something goes wrong. In 2021, in a series of outages, large numbers of unrelated websites all went out of action at the same time. It turned out that these sites had all come to rely on the same CDNs, effectively installing a single point of failure for large sections of the Internet. Since then, large service providers have worked out how to avoid this problem - and one CDN provider told us in a podcast what to do when it does happen. Major CDN players have extended into a distributed cloud role, running applications at the edge, and Cloudflare, for one, believes CDNs have a huge opportunity in "inference" - when AI pre-trained systems are deployed for actual applications. 2021 also saw the formation of the CDN Alliance, an industry body that aims to be a voice and forum for CDN players, along with the ecosystem that has grown up around them. Mark de Jong, founder and chair of the CDN Alliance, tells us why CDNs need a voice, and what they need to be saying.

At the start of 2023, Yuval Bachar told us about his latest project - to build off-grid, hydrogen-powered data centers. As 2023 came to an end, he was back to tell us he'd done it. He's got 1MW of capacity fed by hydrogen in Mountain View California, and he's telling potential customers he can build the same thing anywhere you can get hydrogen shipped by pipe or tanker. He's keen on the benefits. No long waits for power distribution, no struggles getting permits for diesel. And the building is quick and cheap too. He can make them with a 3D concrete printer - which incidentally is environmentally better than tilt-up building, he says. He picked up the Environmental Impact prize at this year's DCD Awards, and joined the podcast to give us some more details on what he has done.... and what's coming next

The European data center market has a forecasted take-up of 440MW for 2023. But within the context of erratic power availability, moratoriums, and the need to move to renewable energy, the FLAP-D markets are facing several challenges. In this episode we talk to Neal Kalita about the obstacles facing those looking to build in Europe, and what the future holds for the region. Tune in for the conversation where we find the solution to keeping up with the pace of demand while prioritizing sustainability.

Artificial intelligence could grow from almost nothing to using half a percent of the world's electrical power within five years, according to Alex de Vries of Digiconomist. That's a crazy rate of growth, but it's not unprecedented. Bitcoin followed almost exactly the same trajectory, expanding from nothing to a sector whose energy use is comparable with that of regular data centers. But the similarities end there, says de Vries, who provided the reliable tracking data for the growth of Bitcoin, and is ready to do the same for AI. A year ago, he talked us through his methodology for analyzing Bitcoin energy usage. Now he's back, explaining how we can estimate the consumption of AI systems, This time round, it's all about tracking how many GPUs Nvidia can make, and seeing where they are likely to end up. The actual figure depends on a lot of things, and could be higher if more GPUs emerge, or if they are deployed differently. There are questions around the depreciation of the hardware, and how and where AI inference is delivered. Listen in to find out how AI's thirst for power is going to affect the world.

Data centers have outgrown their anonymity. They are large enough consumers of energy and space, that they have to enter the political landscape and justify their existence. But how do we know if a data really brings benefits to its location? In some places (like London), it appears that they soak up grid connection capacity and block housing projects. In others (like Denmark and Ireland) they use renewable energy and jeopardize local decarbonization targets. It's not easy to know the net benefits brought by a data center, because much of what it does is in the virtual world, and is delivered to people far away. Max Schulze has some thoughts on how to start working out the real benefits of a data center - and we hope for more input from DCD readers and listeners.

In 2022, Mark Monroe's podcast about hydrogen was one of our most popular podcasts ever. At Microsoft, Mark had just made a prototype hydrogen fuel cell UPS system that could potentially replace diesel generators to provide low-carbon backup power at data centers. One year on, he's back for some more detail. A hydrogen economy will need a distribution system - but will that look like a power network, a gas grid, or a system of trucks? Data centers won't be the first big users of hydrogen: Mark tells us where it will take off. This year, we've heard stories of natural hydrogen mined from underground. Mark assesses that prospect, along with the other sources of hydrogen, and suggests that the new energy source could rewrite the world's map of energy providers. Listen to our talk with Mark to find out where and when you will start using hydrogen.

If you think transitioning the tech sector to net zero is all about renewable energy and heat reuse, think again. Small changes in software could make entire data centers redundant - for a much bigger saving for the planet. Green Software is not just about more efficient code, says Anne Currie. Rewriting everything in C might cut energy use - but it would destroy your company. As a leader in the Green Software Foundation, and a seasoned green developer and entrepreneur, Anne has much better ideas. She is working with Sarah Hsu and Sara Bergman, on Building Green Software, an O'Reilly book about what green software really means, and how we can achieve it. Find out more in this podcast.