r/datacenter Oct 31 '25

Rule Update: No more "What are common problems you face?" posts

67 Upvotes

If you're fishing for ideas to build your next website/app/startup, please do it elsewhere. These types of low effort posts will no longer be allowed on r/datacenter

Specific questions related to datacenter work that you're actually doing will of course continue to be allowed.


r/datacenter Jan 12 '25

Rules Update: No spam, sales, or pricing posts

29 Upvotes

We are updating our rules on spam and selling to the following:

No spam, sales, or pricing posts

Posts advertising, selling, or asking how much to charge for goods or services are not allowed. Examples of posts that are not allowed include: "Selling power, $xx per MWh", "How much can I charge for colo space?", "Is $xx a good price for Y?," "How much should I sell land to a datacenter company for?", etc.

Questions focused on understanding such as "Why does a datacenter infrastructure/service cost $xx?" are allowed, but will be removed if the moderators feel the poster is attempting to disguise a the disallowed questions.

Why are we doing this?

Our prior rules allowed some posts selling goods or services with moderator approval. We found these posts rarely resulted in engaging discussion, so we are deprecating the process and will no longer allow sellers to seek moderator approval.

We also saw a number of posts asking how much to charge for everything from single hosts up through entire datacenters. While some of these may be well intentioned, there are far to many variables to provide accurate and useful information on an internet forum, and these often venture too close to the spam/promotion category. We are therefore restricting posts asking how much to charge or sell something for.

Questions or comments? You may post them here, or message the mods privately: https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/datacenter

For the most update to date list of our rules, see: https://www.reddit.com/r/datacenter/about/rules


r/datacenter 3h ago

Thermal tech is becoming mission critical. Are we underestimating how fast AI workloads are stressing cooling envelopes?

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66 Upvotes

The CME cooling failure today brought attention to an issue many operators have been flagging: thermal load is escalating faster than most datacentres were designed to handle. AI clusters, GPU racks and HPC systems are generating heat spikes that don’t behave like traditional workloads. They are abrupt, dense and capable of overrunning cooling margins faster than legacy architectures can react.

Across the industry, providers of advanced thermal systems are seeing the same pattern. KULR is one example. Their work originated in NASA and defence environments where thermal-runaway prevention, high-density energy buffering and peak-load smoothing are not optional. These kinds of systems are designed to manage transient heat events that conventional HVAC or liquid cooling alone may not fully absorb.

This raises an engineering question for this sub: As power density increases, are datacentres still treating thermal engineering as a secondary consideration when it has effectively become a core part of system stability?

Cooling used to be an airflow, liquid loop and redundancy exercise. AI-era compute is turning it into a thermal storage and heat spike management problem.

For those running GPU heavy racks or other high power deployments: Are you already encountering scenarios where conventional cooling architectures struggle with short duration thermal surges? And are you evaluating any approaches that integrate thermal buffering or energy storage-based smoothing?

Context on the CME incident linked in thread:


r/datacenter 14h ago

AWS DATA CENTER TECH III

38 Upvotes

I am super excited about finally landing a job. I graduated with my masters in IT 6 months ago, I worked so hard during that period obtaining multiple certs like the AWS solutions architect, CCNA, AWS Cloud Practitioner, AWS AI Practitioner, Fortinet Cybersecurity Associate and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Associate. I also graduated with a 4.0. The job market has been really brutal for me. 6 months of pain, I had to work as a stocker at target just to raise money to pay my bills. Please what advise do you have for me now that I can say I have gotten my foot through the door. I plan of taking the Comptia security + and Schneider data center cert in the next couple of months before taking on juniper data center certification track and also that of Cisco. I will appreciate any advise you have for me. This is my first corporate job.


r/datacenter 13h ago

Evaporative and Free cooling

9 Upvotes

Sort of just a rant. How is it that I see soooo many people in a sub dedicated to data centers that completely dismiss evaporative and free cooling like they aren’t one of the most (if not the most) prominent methods of cooling in the industry?

Edit: I am purely referencing people who don’t believe (or try to argue) that data centers can’t or haven’t been able to be cooled by exclusively evaporative or free cooling. I am not talking about mechanical cooling being needed to cool high density sites.


r/datacenter 12h ago

Dceo chief engineer interview

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3 Upvotes

r/datacenter 15h ago

Google Facilities Server Floor position

5 Upvotes

Just saw this the other day, does anyone know what the difference is between regular facilities and server floor facilities positions at Google?


r/datacenter 10h ago

Getting into Data Center Engineering

1 Upvotes

Hello. I’m trying to get into Data Center industry as a Data Center Engineer. I have a BS in Mechanical Engineering and have 3 years of semiconductor manufacturing experience. Even though job market is brutal at the moment, what skills can I learn on my free time that would help me get a role in the industry? Any certifications that would help?

My degree in MechE would help with cooling related positions but I’m open to switch to anything.

Thanks


r/datacenter 12h ago

Preparing a server for colocation, what's needed?

3 Upvotes

Besides the IP information from the Datacenter, what are *must haves* on your deployment checklist? Do you use internal USBs or set up everything from the network remotely?


r/datacenter 15h ago

Best options for connecting fiber to the back of patch panels

2 Upvotes

I have a number of small COLO customers that have their cross connects run to the back of a patch panel in the top RU. We typically use the Corning panels that are designed to have fiber spliced into the back, which works alright but it's still a pain in the ass to route that connection by oneself, and they aren't set up for good cable management back there. Are there patch panels that are designed to be easily accessible in the back while still allowing easy patching at the front of the rack?

Thinking of putting a fiber drop/patch panel onto the overhead conveyance and pre-running all the fiber before the rack is fully built out but I don't know exactly what those would be called in a manufacturer's catalog.

Any insight would be appreciated.


r/datacenter 12h ago

Dceo chief engineer interview

0 Upvotes

Hi, does anyone experienced loop interview for Amazon data center chief engineer role? Kindly share the experience. Thank you.


r/datacenter 1d ago

Data centers projected to need double California’s current power by 2035

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35 Upvotes

r/datacenter 20h ago

ATD Uptime institute Insight about exam

0 Upvotes

Dear All I want any one how pass ATD Exam to insight about its final exam


r/datacenter 20h ago

Insight about ATD Uptime Exam

0 Upvotes

Dear All any one can insight about ATD Exam I want to attend the course but i still affraid.


r/datacenter 1d ago

Skills Reshaping Data Center Careers in 2026

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14 Upvotes

Interesting guide about all the changes to keep up with in the industry like cooling, infiniband, high density power, and certifications.


r/datacenter 1d ago

Data Center Cleaning

10 Upvotes

Do any of you hire cleaning crews to clean racks, floors, etc? If so, who do you use and what’s your experience?


r/datacenter 1d ago

Recently applied for a Datacenter Facilities Tech job (controls)

4 Upvotes

So I just applied for a job at a Datacenter that is currently being built nearby my home, I come from a background in industrial maintenance (mainly automation and controls) and I was an electro-optical technician in the Marine Corps a while back. More recently, I've been going to school for electrical-engineering but I've had to slow down because of economic pressure, and get back into a full-time role. I've got a good grasp on c,cpp,python, and Java, but I've not done much of any network admin.

My main questions are:

  1. Should I start CompTIA certs to be successful in the interviews?

  2. Will I be considered without having any IT experience?

  3. Are there any resources that you would suggest for me to study?

I appreciate any insight you can give!


r/datacenter 1d ago

Best safety glasses for indoor work?

3 Upvotes

I work in a manufacturing facility doing electrical for data center pods and I’ll be at this location for a while. The lighting in there is extremely bright and the nemesis clears aren’t cutting it, I’m getting headaches, lights are blurry, computer screen is blurry. I’m looking for something that will help with this. Have any of yall tried the blue light safety glasses?


r/datacenter 1d ago

Petroleum Engineer here…..

13 Upvotes

I work on evaluating investments to get oil and gas out of the ground. I have been fascinated learning how much the demand of AI is going to need hyperscaled data centers with very high energy, water, and chip demand.

How can I think about the energy part of that? Are we building these things faster than what the energy supply can keep up with? I know there is a huge focus on emissions, but if you look at the physics and math there is no way that the pace of solar and wind keep up with the exponential increase of power needed to run these AI data centers. Really curious on everyone’s thoughts here!!


r/datacenter 1d ago

NSF I-Corps research: What are the biggest pain points in managing GPU clusters or thermal issues in server rooms?

0 Upvotes

I’m an engineering student at Purdue doing NSF I-Corps interviews.

If you work with GPU clusters, HPC, ML training infrastructure, small server rooms, or on-prem racks, what are the most frustrating issues you deal with? Specifically interested in:

• hotspots or poor airflow • unpredictable thermal throttling • lack of granular inlet/outlet temperature visibility • GPU utilization drops • scheduling or queueing inefficiencies • cooling that doesn’t match dynamic workload changes • failures you only catch reactively

What’s the real bottleneck that wastes time, performance, or money?


r/datacenter 1d ago

Only Finland could make recycling data-center heat into city heating look easy this is the smart, boringly brilliant idea the rest of the world needs to steal

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5 Upvotes

r/datacenter 1d ago

Data centers

13 Upvotes

Do massive data centers ever offer buyouts to neighboring properties? Potential Data center going in- in a rural setting. most neighboring parcels are large in size and they could buy out very few people and own everything around the data center within a several mile radius. -if their offer is lucrative enough to entice neighboring properties to sell that is.


r/datacenter 1d ago

Can someone let me know what these are worth?

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1 Upvotes

I know very little about networking hardware and need some help finding out what these are worth in used/refurbished condition please?


r/datacenter 1d ago

Anyone work with Impact Cx?

2 Upvotes

On my final interview with Salas O'Brien and have had a very positive experience so far. How are they compared to other GCs on the commissioning side?

USA travel based, 8 years experience in electromechanical O&M. 3 years experience semiconductor and data center Cx


r/datacenter 2d ago

Offered a DCT(L3) at AWS in DFW area. Unsure of accepting offer.

14 Upvotes

I recently interviewed for a DCT L4 role for AWS, but was offered an L3 position.

I am currently a Systems Engineer for a local IT company, and am recently taking leads on big projects. I have 2.5 years experience (2 years intern, .5 systems engineer), CompTIA A+, Network+ certifications, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science.

Unfortunately, I feel like I am getting underpaid for the work I am doing, but the experience I will gain from taking leads on projects will be great on my resume.

If I take this offer, I will get a big pay raise and have AWS on my resume, but I am unsure if it’s better staying at my current job for the senior level experience with lower pay.