April was a Microsoft-centric month at Data Center Frontier, as three of our top five stories track innovation initiatives for the Azure cloud. For the second month in a row, a fire-driven outage was of wide interest to the data center industry, while a foiled bomb plot involving an AWS facility had the attention of the cloud sector – and law enforcement as well, fortunately.

Here are the 10 most popular stories on Data Center Frontier in April 2021, in order of article views:

• Generator Catches Fire, Causes Lengthy Data Center Outage at WebNX: An emergency generator caught fire at a data center in Ogden, Utah, causing the full shutdown of the data center and lengthy outages for customers. The incident at WebNX follows a more serious fire that destroyed an entire OVH data center in France.
• Foiled Plot to Attack Amazon Reflects Changing Nature of Data Center Threats: A foiled plot to attack a data center in Virginia underscores the evolving landscape for data center security. Conspiracies create new risks, but modern data centers remain among the best protected buildings in the world.
• Microsoft’s Belady on Immersion:’Air Cooling is Not Enough’: Microsoft has begun using immersion-cooled servers in production, the company said this week. The announcement is a meaningful milestone for adoption of two-phase immersion, which promises major gains in density and efficiency.
• Inside A Microsoft Data Center: Virtual Tour Showcases Cloud Innovation: Microsoft is offering the world a look inside its cloud data centers with a new virtual tour, an immersive experience that provides a walk-through of simulated data halls, network rooms, and equipment yards.
• Microsoft Using Mixed Reality for Remote Audits of Azure Data Centers: Microsoft has begun using its HoloLens mixed reality technology to provide remote auditors a detailed look inside Microsoft Azure data centers, enabling compliance audits to continue during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Data Center Jobs: Engineering Positions Available in Major Markets We’re seeing growing interest in the Data Center Frontier job board, which we operate in partnership with Pkaza. Here’s a look at some of the latest job postings.
• The Data Vessel: Nautilus Data Launches Waterborne Data Center:Nautilus Data Technologies has launched its first facility, a 7-megawatt data center on the San Joaquin River in Stockton, Calif. The company taps bodies of water for its cooling, but says it plans to deploy data centers on land and water.
• Phoenix Preps for Next Phase of Data Center Growth: Phoenix is home to nearly 2 million square feet of data center space, and nearly every major hyperscale platform and wholesale data center developer has lined up land for future capacity. A DCF special report looks at what lies ahead for this important market.
• Iron Mountain Adds Hourly Renewable Energy Tracking for its Data Centers: Iron Mountain will begin tracking the hourly renewable content of the energy used in several of its data centers, reflecting the growing enterprise interest in the sustainability of their IT supply chain.
• NTT Global Continues Expansion With New Santa Clara Data Center: NTT Global Data Centers Americas has opened its SV1 data center in Santa Clara, which is the company’s first presence in the supply-constrained Silicon Valley market. The facility features a base isolation system to provide advanced protection against earthquakes.

Education is part of our mission at Data Center Frontier. In our Voices of the Industry feature, we share the experience of data center executives on the front lines of innovation. Here’s a look at the most popular Voices columns for DCF readers last month:

• Data Center Sustainability: Evolution or Revolution (KOHLER Power): There is no doubt that data centers’ voracious appetite for ping, power, and pipe will continue to grow – even accelerate due to unheralded force majeure events. Therefore, sustainability must have Board-level priority and investment across the entire data center ecosystem.
• Water Scarcity: How Data Centers Can Help (Nortek Air Solutions, Nalco Water): Water scarcity is a looming global crisis. Kris Holla, Group Vice President, Channel Sales, Nortek Air Solutions, and Michael Lesniak, AVP Global Corporate Accounts, Global Data Center Solutions at Nalco Water, discuss how data centers can conserve the planet’s diminishing fresh water supply and practice water stewardship.
• Reduce Your Water Footprint Cost-Effectively: Three Tips for Data Centers (Chemstar WATER): Cem Candir, CEO of Chemstar WATER, provides three tips for data centers looking for cost-effective ways to reduce their water footprint.

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