DCF Show: Site Selection and Why It Matters in 2022

Oct. 17, 2022
Around the globe, data center operators are facing challenges in finding enough land, power and water. On the DCF Show, we talk with Ernest Popescu of Iron Mountain, who shares lessons from his lengthy experience in hyperscale site development and capacity planning.

All around the globe, data center operators are facing challenges in finding enough land, power and water to support the rapid growth of cloud computing. As campuses become MegaCampuses, finding suitable real estate is becoming difficult. That’s why site selection has become one of the most important skillsets in the data center business.

On this week’s Data Center Frontier Show, we talk with Ernest Popescu, the Vice President for Global Site Development, Data Centers for Iron Mountain. Popescu has lengthy experience in hyperscale site development and capacity planning for Amazon Web Services and Facebook, but saw a unique opportunity in the growth of Iron Mountain Data Centers, which has been winning both enterprise and cloud deals. Popescu is also intrigued by the potential for tapping Iron Mountain’s global real estate footprint of more than 1,400 document to support edge computing.

Listen to today’s show:

Here’s a timeline of topics Ernest and I discuss on the podcast:

  • 1:00 – Ernest’s Data Center Journey.
  • 2:45 – Why data center capacity planning is difficult. “The past isn’t necessarily a good indicator of the future,” says Ernest.
  • 5:30 – After working so much with hyperscalers, why Iron Mountain?
  • 10:00 – Why site selection is such a hot topic in 2022.
  • 12:45 – How about faster networks? Do they change any of the methodology around site selection.
  • 16:00 – Edge computing, and why this is an opportunity for Iron Mountain.
  • 23:00 – What Ernest likes best about this job.

Here are some links with more about the topics we discuss:

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This episode of the Data Center Frontier Show is supported by Iron Mountain Data Centers.

About the Author

Rich Miller

I write about the places where the Internet lives, telling the story of data centers and the people who build them. I founded Data Center Knowledge, the data center industry's leading news site. Now I'm exploring the future of cloud computing at Data Center Frontier.

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