What were the year’s biggest data center stories? As we approach the New Year, it’s a good time to reflect on 2018 and look back at the trends and stories that mattered.
The prevailing themes in 2018 were similar to 2017: all things Northern Virginia, new frontier technologies and megascale data centers. Within that, .
But what were the biggest individual stories? For that, we turn to our audience of data center decision-makers, who voted with their time and attention to 2018. Here’s a look at the 10 stories that attracted the most pageviews this year on Data Center Frontier, ranked in order.
The Eight Tends That Will Shape the Data Center Industry in 2018: Our annual January forecast of “Frontier” trends for the year to come was our most popular story. How did we do on our predictions? Take a look and give us your take. In coming days we will grade how our crystal ball did in 2018, and look ahead with DCF’s analysis of the most important trends for 2019.
Facebook Accelerates its Data Center Expansion: In 2018 Facebook kicked its infrastructure growth into a whole new gear. The company accelerated its data center construction program, announcing new cloud campuses and a major expansion into the Asia-Pacific region with an 11-story hyperscale data center project in Singapore..
Google Shifts to Liquid Cooling for AI Data Crunching: Google’s revelation that it has shifted to liquid cooling for its latest version of its artificial intelligence hardware was not a surprise, as the heat generated by its new Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) has exceeded the limits of its previous data center cooling solutions. Is Google an outlier, or will more hyperscale and enterprise companies embrace liquid cooling?
Edge is Eating Away at the Cloud, and the Data Center Will Benefit: Bill Kleyman has become a popular contributor here at Data Center Frontier, and Bill’s take on the edge movement was his most popular article of the year. Bill’s take: Edge computing installations will be distributed, denser versions of traditional data centers. They will support new applications and services, and send data – and business – back to core data centers.
Infrastructure Masons founder Dean Nelson (left) interviews former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy at the 2018 iMasons Summit in Sunnyvale.
In iMasons Talk, Scott McNealy Reflects on Sun, Open Source: The work of the Infrastructure Masons has been of keen interest to readers of DCF, and that was certainly true of this year’s iMasons’ Leadership Summit in April. Former Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy reflected on the legacy of Sun, its role in the open source movement, and the power of culture and education.
Uber Prepares for Major Data Center Expansion: Lots of folks in the industry have been curious what Dean Nelson has been up to as he builds the infrastructure for Uber’s ride-sharing and logistics services. As Uber experiences rapid growth, the company is preparing to expand its data center network. Dean provided a first look during Datacloud Europe in Monaco, and DCF readers were the first to read the details.
HPC Gets Bigger in Texas: 40,000 Servers, Immersed in Coolant: As systems are get bigger and more powerful, cooling is scaling up to meet the challenge. In October, DCF provided an exclusive first look at an extraordinary new HPC system housed at Skybox Datacenters in Houston. The massive system from DownUnder GeoSolutions will immerse 40,000 servers in liquid coolant, and is expected to deliver 250 petaflops of computing power.
An aerial view of QTS Data Centers’ new facility in Ashburn, Virginia. (Photo: QTS)
Ashburn: A Landscape Transformed by Cloud Computing: To understand hyperscale computing, you must understand the amazing growth in Northern Virginia. DCF documented many of 2018’s deals, projects and new players. But we also took a deeper dive into how the unprecedented data center building boom in Ashburn offers early lessons on how the Internet knits itself into the fabric of modern life, and how data centers impact the life of a community.
Hyperscale Data Center Deals Will Get Bigger. Much Bigger: Wholesale data center leases are growing rapidly, according to CloudHQ founder Hossein Fateh, who said hyperscale deals will soon reach into the hundreds of megawatts. Get used to bigger numbers. No, seriously. We mean BIGGER.
IPI Partners Acquires Three Data Centers: After Equinix acquired the Dallas Infomart, there was strong interest in the fate of the wholesale data centers that comprised the remainder of the Infomart Data Centers portfolio – hence the strong interest in our coverage of that portfolio’s acquisition by investment firm IPI Data Center Partners.
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