Despite literally living beside this building for a year and it being next to a major tourist spot, not a single person I spoke to about it had any idea what it was, let alone the company’s name. Thanks for satiating this long dormant curiosity of* mine
You dont really want to draw attention to these buildings considering the amount of kit in them and in cases like this place the infrastructure they have is critical. I also work for a data center and you'd never know that the datacenters we have are there or whats in the buildings. Really cool seeing this on a larger sscale
@@rollingthunderinho Yes the CIA defiantly doesn't go to Canada....The US doesn't spy on its allies, We would never do that ~the CIA. Tell me again, the NSA doesn't have fiber splitters at 33 Thomas street.
I'd like to imagine that either Linus used GPS to time the bus's appearance correctly or that he just repeated the same lines over and over until the bus came.
Nice job to the team on balancing the audio for this video. Having done some work in datacenters, it's ridiculous how you have to yell just to be heard over some background noise. I was surprised how quiet this video was.
The former IBM UK headquarters built in 1976 have a cooling system that uses 2 lakes 1 either side of the main building to cool the servers inside. The building sits on reclaimed land so it requires that the water is managed between the two to make sure the building doesn't subside. Each of the lakes was also designated a nature reserve.
Thank you for taking the world on a tour of one of our sites! It's awesome for people to finally see what we do on a daily basis. Our on-site IBX Critical Facilities and IBX Customer Operations Technicians are our backbone, thank you for all that you do for us and our customers.
Kind of baffling I'd never heard of Equinix before Linus mentioned it in their podcast. Seems to be a great company doing extremely cool things, was also surprised to see that you guys have a datacenter in my very small city right next to a climbing gym I go to every once in a while haha.
Man, i recently changed work from ISP, my previous team (tech sup people) was located at datacenter. Each time I would go to do stuff with our equipment I would see stuff at this DC that I would geek around for hours. Seeing this video I just realised why cages and pillars were color coded in the same way at our DC for example. Equinix is wild comparing to my previous workplace. I envy you in the best way possible. Good luck you and your team.
@@KomodoSoup this is peak engineering, done by very good engineers with very real passion. Every aspect has received so much thought and consideration, and the end result is astonishing and brutally functional. This is art, dude
Having worked on one of my country's biggest and most important data center until about a decade ago, this video certainly brought back some memories. DCs are nothing if not marvels of modern engineering.
This has to be one of the coolest videos I've ever seen uploaded on this channel. Linus teasing this visit on the WAN show got me hyped but the full version exceeded my expectations. Well done guys.
If you’re relatively new to LTT, you should definitely check out some of the older tours they’ve done of destruction, companies system builders, and the chip Fab mentioned at the end good stuff
Been waiting for this video ever since the tease on WAN show, and I am so happy that it not even met my expectations but surpassed them by far! Great job to the entire team and shout out to Equinix for allowing this level of unrepresented access. Best building tour ever!
I never worked on that data center, but I worked on 6 data centers that Microsoft purpose built they are located in Richmond Hill off Major Mckenzie. We did fiber, cat6a, and security installations everything shy of programming as that is proprietary, so they sent a guy from the US with a secure laptop to commission the system. the time we spent there is quite valuable, and I watched WAN show on many occasions while terminating fiber cables in the main feed racks. I hope you guys come back to Toronto again and possibly get access. Great work as always. Hopefully you didn't hate us so much with all the traffic 😂
19:28 that vesda black box might not look like much but it costs $12000 USD one of electricans broke one while driving the scissor lift he's lucky was lucky to keep his job. The site shutdown that day because of him. If he triggered the system by mistake he would've cost the builder tens of thousands of dollars in damage. I've seen that system work first hand makes sprinkler systems look like an invention from the 50s. I wanted linus to get in the operations room it looks like the "bridge" from a star trek starship the technology and system running in there look insane no matter what data center you're in. This video is absolutely beautiful and shows the work of true engineering and what it truly means to have redundancy
I see this building all the time, i know it was a data center but its cool to see the insides finally. Friends would ask me why this building had no windows and I always told them its because computers don't need to look outside.
I had the opportunity to walk through a HUGE data center in Philadelphia that was a multi-level data center. The technology, security, and size of the place is SO impressive!
Having spent the last 8 years working in a critical data center in the US. It's fun to see that nearly everything looks exactly the same. Layout, colors, down to models of equipment. They really do have it down to a science.
Ah, my old company. Brings back lots of memories! Good to see it being highlighted on how a large datacenter is run and designed. FYI different Equinix data centers are designed differently, depending on the building, or existing data center and city.
I did commercial HVAC for a while. Those cooling systems are no joke! I worked on the NSA's data system in Utah, absolutely crazy!!! 22:53 - its 4 S's Linus
@@kmcat Sure was the first couple of times, but as Linus said correctly, if you are surrounded by all those amazing things regularly you sadly dont appreciate it that much anymore.
Who knew that Canadian internet infrastructure could be such compelling viewing? As someone who lives on the other side of Lake Ontario, it was especially enjoyable.
Love videos like this. The amount of work, engineering, planning, and BCP processes to ensure the internet runs like it does is insane. These "behind the curtain" looks are always welcome.
I really like the aspect ratio of this video. After upgrading my phone to an iPhone X (my sister's now-'old' one) from the iPhone 8+, this ratio is very close to the limits of the screen without having to zoom and seeing the notch. Just wanted to say good job =D and thank you!
12:43 I like how there's biometrics and all that to access the cage and meanwhile there's a big door with a simple lock you could just jump through to get in 😆
When people used to ask what we did, I would say, "Do you use the internet?" and if they said yes (which you know, everyone does), I would say "You're welcome."
Such a fun video to see! It's delightful when a sponsored video lines up so well with something you'd love to show off anyways! It's so cool of this company to give so much access, and an overall good mark towards their culture.
Everytime I go for a run outside in Amsterdam, I run past a massive 15+ floor datacenter owned by Equinix. I always wondered what it was like inside. I have helped design datacenter IT infrastructure but I've never been in one oddly enough. Recently I switched projects and I got to visit the very datacenter I run by twice a week, and it was so cool!!
one of the reasons I follow this and other channels: there's just SO much happening behind those walls which a "normal mortal" won't ever see... Been working for a really big telecommunications company, and had access to those rooms .. it's still mind blowing today! So, from the deepest of my heart: thanks for this chance!!
No. The infrastructure is here to plunk severs in and replace at will. Lots of server systems use the facility and they'll be upgraded regularly. The cooling capacity and energy requirements are at a scale that a handheld device could never attain.
@killax7 pretty sure he meant the fact that according to Moores law (which yes, is admittedly dead) in about 20 years we will likely have similar compute power in our own homes to the compute power held in any of these servers. Probably not the whole building, but that would genuinely only take another 10 or 15 years at the rate compute power USED to grow
i loved the fibre room as thats what i do. Those nodes where massive. just wondering how many trays they would hold and how many splitters where coming out
It is a bit of a simplification of how the mechanical side of the building works, but I know this video is made for the general public. They did a good job at explaining most of it.
I work in the industry and seen a lot of cool data halls, but, it’s really cool to see it in a channel you love! Man I wish we had natural cold water in every major connectivity hub, that would increase efficiency by a substantial margin
I also had the privilege to work in Equinix data centers as an engineer in London 10 years ago. From London to Canada you can see so many similarities.
Work in a major farmers business IT departement and basically they told me if you're ever in the server room and you hear the fire alarm "RUN". Because the server room's door auto closes in a certain amount of time and then the fire suppression system goes off to either kill fire or prevent any from getting near the server. But basically if you were in there you'd be dead .
Fun fact for 19:38. Today oxygen levels are typically kept above 12% in data centres (you'll pass out, but you'll survive), and Halon is no longer commonly used. I learned just how dangerous Halon was around 15 years ago when I went to work with my father, back when that was a thing. We started at Glasgow Pentagon (bold name I know), then went to a more secure place later in the day that had the servers on the first floor, with 6 MASSIVE Halon tanks sitting at either side of the self sealing doors. He told me that if the alarm goes off, get out immediately. Oddly enough the coolest thing to me at that age was how they ran the cables, not to mention Halon sounding cool. I don't remember much as I was 8-10, but I still remember the exact path to get to both servers, calling a technician in that couldn't fix the first one, examining the rats nest of cables underneath the tiles, having to get my small hands under to manually reboot a server, then asking him what the padding was for inside the server since in my head I was like "but wouldn't that stop air getting in?" Obviously, this pales in comparison to equinox security, but with the 2 data centres combined it's shockingly similar, from the 4 security doors we had to pass through just to get to the caged area in the first data centre, to the servers being on the first floor (although they were racks and not in cages) in the second data centre. I'm pretty sure I even remember some water cooling pipes sitting in the second one too. Honestly they've not changed that much in the past decade or so, they've just got more safety points and a little smarter with handling water leaks.
A month ago I finished work on building a Microsoft data center near Amsterdam, even larger than the one shown with even newer and more advanced technologies.
This is cool to see; I've done work in one of their datacenters (in Slough, near London), but of course due to security I only saw specific areas with specific cages so had no idea about a lot of this stuff...
I got to see a lot of those cooling rooms at my previous job. We made chemical blends to treat the water in these systems to prevent corrosion, scaling, and growth.
It's fascinating to me that customers handle a lot more of their hardware use than I was expecting. I mean, I wasn't expecting the customer to even want to do any of that work, but I guess, in instances of really high sensitivity, that makes sense! Cool!
This was so awesome! Probably my favorite video to date. I work as a Critical Operations Technician at a US based Data Center. Mine is a Hyper Scaler for Machine Learning. If you ever get to tour a AI specific DC like mine. You’ll find it is surprising how much smaller they are but they still use the same amount of power as standard centers 4-6 times the size, if not even more power. It’s is one of the coolest jobs I’ve aver had and I use to work building and repairing sonar systems in submarines for the US Navy.
This is one of the most incredible videos I have seen in a while. It really brings home just what a marvel the internet is. It's so easy to forget how intricate it is. I would love to see more like this!
This is the coolest, scariest buildings I've seen. Just looking at the amount of security makes me feel like I'll be jailed from so much as entering the first door by accident
This... this was great! The dream of young nerds born in the late 80s and 90s... I'm glad you put the intro into this video, because, at least for me, is the why I watch LTT.
I have gear in >4 Equinix datacenters in multiple countries, and I've had ZERO downtime at ANY of them in ten years. They are *super competent*. Not to mention EVERY one of them looks like this. Their consistency is top notch.
I had the opportunity to tour a place that used an oxygen replacement fire suppression system. And even though we were only going to be in the room that had the replacement system for about half an hour, we were required to be fitted with and to cary rescue oxygen supplies for the entire trip. The safety briefing and usage training took longer than the tour did. I'm not surprised these people are using a dry stand pipe system. It's cheaper, it's safer, and it can be more targeted.
Twenty or so years ago, I got a tour of my school's computer center, and it was even for that time very old-school. Application source code kept printed in binders, actual mainframes (which had to be like a decade or more out of date even twenty years ago), and an oxygen replacement fire suppression system. They're illegal here now, but weren't at the time. They didn't give us any special briefing (other than, if the alarm goes off, get out of the room as quickly as possible), but did point out the oxygen masks hanging everywhere in case of emergency.
This is my company!!!!! We have been so excited to see this.
DAYM cool company
Bs
r u hiring?
Your company is awesome!!!! Using the old telecom system to get that extra bit of speed is genius!!!!
@@IgoByaGo must be so cool to work for Equinix!
Despite literally living beside this building for a year and it being next to a major tourist spot, not a single person I spoke to about it had any idea what it was, let alone the company’s name. Thanks for satiating this long dormant curiosity of* mine
You dont really want to draw attention to these buildings considering the amount of kit in them and in cases like this place the infrastructure they have is critical. I also work for a data center and you'd never know that the datacenters we have are there or whats in the buildings.
Really cool seeing this on a larger sscale
CIA
@@MattyEnglandit’s not CIA its in Canada
that is common for most datacenters
@@rollingthunderinho Yes the CIA defiantly doesn't go to Canada....The US doesn't spy on its allies, We would never do that ~the CIA.
Tell me again, the NSA doesn't have fiber splitters at 33 Thomas street.
No way did you just time the city bus that perfectly. Epic!
I'd like to imagine that either Linus used GPS to time the bus's appearance correctly or that he just repeated the same lines over and over until the bus came.
It’s Toronto. In that area there’s a bus probably every 30 seconds for different routes.
The only time the TTC would ever be on time
@@leonro Or have someone stand like 1 block away and radio when to start?
@@katrinabryceor maybe it’s just somewhere with regular public transit lol
Nice job to the team on balancing the audio for this video. Having done some work in datacenters, it's ridiculous how you have to yell just to be heard over some background noise. I was surprised how quiet this video was.
It's funny I was thinking the same thing.
They have had louder videos in the past. But Linus was standing literally in the rack aisle. At least here, it was probably a decent distance away.
I have to wear hearing protection in the DC. If I'm in there for more than an hour. The white noise of the AC is torture.
The former IBM UK headquarters built in 1976 have a cooling system that uses 2 lakes 1 either side of the main building to cool the servers inside. The building sits on reclaimed land so it requires that the water is managed between the two to make sure the building doesn't subside. Each of the lakes was also designated a nature reserve.
Yea this has been done for a while
Leave it to an internet personality to think they came up with a unique idea
@@irysh9 this guy doesn't get titles...... They're for clickbait.
@@irysh9 So you're admitting to lacking enough media literacy to get the gag?
@@dannyb1441 at least make them believable at first glance
Thank you for taking the world on a tour of one of our sites! It's awesome for people to finally see what we do on a daily basis. Our on-site IBX Critical Facilities and IBX Customer Operations Technicians are our backbone, thank you for all that you do for us and our customers.
@@IgoByaGo You do awesome work! Thanks so much
@@munzlp You're welcome and thank you as well.
Kind of baffling I'd never heard of Equinix before Linus mentioned it in their podcast. Seems to be a great company doing extremely cool things, was also surprised to see that you guys have a datacenter in my very small city right next to a climbing gym I go to every once in a while haha.
Man, i recently changed work from ISP, my previous team (tech sup people) was located at datacenter. Each time I would go to do stuff with our equipment I would see stuff at this DC that I would geek around for hours. Seeing this video I just realised why cages and pillars were color coded in the same way at our DC for example. Equinix is wild comparing to my previous workplace.
I envy you in the best way possible. Good luck you and your team.
This sounds like a building built with 50 years of experience
It doesn’t sound futuristic, but it is the result of extreme thoughtful design
Having worked with Equinix for a tenant fit-out, yes their design standards are incredibly well thought out.
@@KomodoSoup this is peak engineering, done by very good engineers with very real passion. Every aspect has received so much thought and consideration, and the end result is astonishing and brutally functional. This is art, dude
You don't want futuristic. You want reliable.
I really wanted to check this out after you mentioned on the wan show! This looks sick! And great that they let you guys access to it
I work in a data center at Microsoft and i can say this video was amazingly demonstrated
Having worked on one of my country's biggest and most important data center until about a decade ago, this video certainly brought back some memories. DCs are nothing if not marvels of modern engineering.
the safeguids, redundancy, and general "we thought of everything 2X over" design is a dreaaaaam. God this is dope.
You know they gotta have building engineers who are super experts to manage this facility. It is extremely well done and taken care of.
1:29 City bus was a paid actor 😂
@@GigawattGarage TTC ftw!
This has to be one of the coolest videos I've ever seen uploaded on this channel. Linus teasing this visit on the WAN show got me hyped but the full version exceeded my expectations. Well done guys.
If you’re relatively new to LTT, you should definitely check out some of the older tours they’ve done of destruction, companies system builders, and the chip Fab mentioned at the end good stuff
Been waiting for this video ever since the tease on WAN show, and I am so happy that it not even met my expectations but surpassed them by far! Great job to the entire team and shout out to Equinix for allowing this level of unrepresented access. Best building tour ever!
I never worked on that data center, but I worked on 6 data centers that Microsoft purpose built they are located in Richmond Hill off Major Mckenzie. We did fiber, cat6a, and security installations everything shy of programming as that is proprietary, so they sent a guy from the US with a secure laptop to commission the system. the time we spent there is quite valuable, and I watched WAN show on many occasions while terminating fiber cables in the main feed racks. I hope you guys come back to Toronto again and possibly get access. Great work as always. Hopefully you didn't hate us so much with all the traffic 😂
19:28 that vesda black box might not look like much but it costs $12000 USD one of electricans broke one while driving the scissor lift he's lucky was lucky to keep his job. The site shutdown that day because of him. If he triggered the system by mistake he would've cost the builder tens of thousands of dollars in damage. I've seen that system work first hand makes sprinkler systems look like an invention from the 50s. I wanted linus to get in the operations room it looks like the "bridge" from a star trek starship the technology and system running in there look insane no matter what data center you're in. This video is absolutely beautiful and shows the work of true engineering and what it truly means to have redundancy
4 loaded mini coopers, ah yes, the measuring system we all know
@@bohdan7630 anything but the metric system.
I'd like to think this was a reference to The Italian Job, but that was 3 custom loaded mini coopers
@@wizkidweb I'm not a native speaker, so this reference flew over my head, unfortunately
What model of mini cooper tho ? I'm not a fan of this measuring unit 🤔 Should have used a one-model-car unit to be more precise.
@@metaleuman We also have to question whether those Mini coopers are in fact full of gold
I see this building all the time, i know it was a data center but its cool to see the insides finally. Friends would ask me why this building had no windows and I always told them its because computers don't need to look outside.
Thanks Equinix, that's an awesome overview of a Datacenter to show to everyone !
So happy to be able to see a building that complex
A lot of us here have been very, very excited to see this video. It feels really good for the public to see what we do on a daily basis.
1.21 Gigawatts!! Love that line from Back To The Future. And we are sort of there....
I had the opportunity to walk through a HUGE data center in Philadelphia that was a multi-level data center. The technology, security, and size of the place is SO impressive!
@@cky2k04 the one that has a bunch of different individual data center providers within it?
As a telecommunications IT guy who regularly tasked out guys to work on equipment in Equinix locations, this was a special level of nerdy neat for me)
Love the “on site” content, please bring more of this
Used to work in and out of Equinix Data centers as a client. This video was a nostalgia trip.
6:10 There was probably a no-socks-and-sandals rule. Poor Linus
I'd bet he's just wearing his badminton shoes
0:37 thats not a tall guy in the background, linus is just very short
Goated comment sir
It could be both 😂
Having spent the last 8 years working in a critical data center in the US. It's fun to see that nearly everything looks exactly the same. Layout, colors, down to models of equipment. They really do have it down to a science.
aperture science infrastructure tour goes crazy
Ah, my old company. Brings back lots of memories! Good to see it being highlighted on how a large datacenter is run and designed. FYI different Equinix data centers are designed differently, depending on the building, or existing data center and city.
I did commercial HVAC for a while. Those cooling systems are no joke! I worked on the NSA's data system in Utah, absolutely crazy!!!
22:53 - its 4 S's Linus
It's really 6. Though the last two if done within that facility would get someone fired.
2:10 From the "No food and or drink" sign.....to the kitchen. Nice cut.
Ive been in a particular Equinix Datacenter a ton of times and its really nice to see some other locations!
It's weird feeling being on the other side of the fence. Don't know if it is just me.
@@kmcat Sure was the first couple of times, but as Linus said correctly, if you are surrounded by all those amazing things regularly you sadly dont appreciate it that much anymore.
Finally! The wait is over! Was so excited to hear about this on the Wan Show, left even happier! Absolutely marvelous....
Who knew that Canadian internet infrastructure could be such compelling viewing? As someone who lives on the other side of Lake Ontario, it was especially enjoyable.
Anyone else notice Linus keeps touching the controller thing hanging off his belt like every 5-10 seconds? Can't unsee it now that I noticed.
Woow the timing with the city bus was great haha
Love videos like this. The amount of work, engineering, planning, and BCP processes to ensure the internet runs like it does is insane. These "behind the curtain" looks are always welcome.
These facility tours are incredibly fascinating, my favorite videos on RUclips by far!
I really like the aspect ratio of this video.
After upgrading my phone to an iPhone X (my sister's now-'old' one) from the iPhone 8+, this ratio is very close to the limits of the screen without having to zoom and seeing the notch. Just wanted to say good job =D and thank you!
the timing of that bus driving by when linus was explaining how you would need a large vehicle to drive into the building was impeccable lmao
Thanks for the amazing fab and datacenter tours. It’s mind-boggling to see what’s required to make the world go round.
The batteries are just to give enough time to start the generators. Like regular UPSs, they're meant to allow for a safe response to a loss in power.
12:43 I like how there's biometrics and all that to access the cage and meanwhile there's a big door with a simple lock you could just jump through to get in 😆
finally, I have been waiting for this since you guys announced it on the wan show.
indeed, the hype from the WAN Show did not disappoint
@@jessieablang7638 agreed
One of my favorites from LTT. Love seeing how the big guys handle their infrastructure.
The most important company you've never heard of.
That accolade should go to ASML I believe
90% of the world's traffic goes through their ashburn va campus. Also, working there as a customer is fantastic.
@MrinmayDhar That's a very fair contender for the title.
When people used to ask what we did, I would say, "Do you use the internet?" and if they said yes (which you know, everyone does), I would say "You're welcome."
@IgoByaGo That sounds so fun! Nice line to use at a party.
Such a fun video to see! It's delightful when a sponsored video lines up so well with something you'd love to show off anyways! It's so cool of this company to give so much access, and an overall good mark towards their culture.
FINALLLYYYYY BEEN waiting for this since WAN show, love DC videos!
This brings me back to my data center days! I believe Equinix bought the data center I used to work with in Rio de Janeiro - Brazil!
did anyone else notice the "faulty pixel" somewhere in the middle throughout the video?
Yupp it's there, I thought my monitor went bad lmao.
I think this is one of the coolest videos I have ever seen on RUclips!!! Thank you Ltt for this amazing experience!
Linus touring a data center while I’m building one 😂
I've been SO excited for this video since Linus talked about it on WAN. Never clicked a video so fast in my life lol
This is the best kind of video LMG does: visiting big tech's cool places ❤
Awh man, how cool! I’ve done a fair chunk of datacentre work in my role, but this place is another level. Thanks for letting us under the hood!!
Everytime I go for a run outside in Amsterdam, I run past a massive 15+ floor datacenter owned by Equinix. I always wondered what it was like inside.
I have helped design datacenter IT infrastructure but I've never been in one oddly enough. Recently I switched projects and I got to visit the very datacenter I run by twice a week, and it was so cool!!
one of the reasons I follow this and other channels: there's just SO much happening behind those walls which a "normal mortal" won't ever see...
Been working for a really big telecommunications company, and had access to those rooms .. it's still mind blowing today!
So, from the deepest of my heart: thanks for this chance!!
Imagine in 20 years where this kind of power would be dwarfed by something that goes on your table.
No. The infrastructure is here to plunk severs in and replace at will. Lots of server systems use the facility and they'll be upgraded regularly. The cooling capacity and energy requirements are at a scale that a handheld device could never attain.
@killax7 pretty sure he meant the fact that according to Moores law (which yes, is admittedly dead) in about 20 years we will likely have similar compute power in our own homes to the compute power held in any of these servers. Probably not the whole building, but that would genuinely only take another 10 or 15 years at the rate compute power USED to grow
Yeah but in the same time then whatever is supposed to be in the DC's are also as strong if not stronger really
A tour of a fiber cable factory might be cool, I used to work at one. And the machine they use to make sea cables are huge, and awesome 🤩
Datacenter: Spends ton of time and resources to increase efficiency
Linux: Hippity hoppity my idea is your property
i loved the fibre room as thats what i do. Those nodes where massive. just wondering how many trays they would hold and how many splitters where coming out
Pull a Nintendo: patent water cooling, and sue them
These are my favorites types of videos by far.
24 seconds ago is diabolical
Thank you to all the data center engineers and technicians in the trenches everyday, without you none of this would be possible!
26 likes in 31 seconds bro fell off
@@thelightbringer75 4 mins 410 likes, bros still falling
5 mins 1.1k likes bro is back
I’ve literally been checking the channel multiple times a day for this video since it was mentioned on WAN show haha
Linus is the new Elon!
Absolutely loving the facility tour videos, hope there's plenty more to come in future
Bruh they never saw your video. They just had the same idea
@@mmm0513literally…. This has been done for years now.
Obviously. Good Lord.... -LS
Lmao
It is a bit of a simplification of how the mechanical side of the building works, but I know this video is made for the general public. They did a good job at explaining most of it.
This video was AWESOME!
I work in the industry and seen a lot of cool data halls, but, it’s really cool to see it in a channel you love! Man I wish we had natural cold water in every major connectivity hub, that would increase efficiency by a substantial margin
Massive thanks to this company. Super super cool to see engineering and technology like this. Much respect.
What an awesome facility. I love it when the LTT crew goes to these places and covers it.
I did a tour of a local datacenter for an internship i did. They also had 2 of those v12 diesel generators. so much cooler to see in person.
I also had the privilege to work in Equinix data centers as an engineer in London 10 years ago. From London to Canada you can see so many similarities.
Work in a major farmers business IT departement and basically they told me if you're ever in the server room and you hear the fire alarm "RUN". Because the server room's door auto closes in a certain amount of time and then the fire suppression system goes off to either kill fire or prevent any from getting near the server. But basically if you were in there you'd be dead .
Fascinating stuff. I'm happy companies are able and willing to share even glimpses of how our world works and those things we take for granted.
Fun fact for 19:38. Today oxygen levels are typically kept above 12% in data centres (you'll pass out, but you'll survive), and Halon is no longer commonly used. I learned just how dangerous Halon was around 15 years ago when I went to work with my father, back when that was a thing. We started at Glasgow Pentagon (bold name I know), then went to a more secure place later in the day that had the servers on the first floor, with 6 MASSIVE Halon tanks sitting at either side of the self sealing doors. He told me that if the alarm goes off, get out immediately.
Oddly enough the coolest thing to me at that age was how they ran the cables, not to mention Halon sounding cool. I don't remember much as I was 8-10, but I still remember the exact path to get to both servers, calling a technician in that couldn't fix the first one, examining the rats nest of cables underneath the tiles, having to get my small hands under to manually reboot a server, then asking him what the padding was for inside the server since in my head I was like "but wouldn't that stop air getting in?"
Obviously, this pales in comparison to equinox security, but with the 2 data centres combined it's shockingly similar, from the 4 security doors we had to pass through just to get to the caged area in the first data centre, to the servers being on the first floor (although they were racks and not in cages) in the second data centre. I'm pretty sure I even remember some water cooling pipes sitting in the second one too.
Honestly they've not changed that much in the past decade or so, they've just got more safety points and a little smarter with handling water leaks.
I work in datacenters all the time, but this was so way cool. Insane how far tech has come for just cooling. Great topic and great video
As somebody studying mechanical engineering right now, natural cooling/heating is cool af. Heat pumps, geothermal, etc. All of it.
This has to be the best factory tour on LTT
A month ago I finished work on building a Microsoft data center near Amsterdam, even larger than the one shown with even newer and more advanced technologies.
Honestly, this is freaking awesome! After it was mentioned on the WAN show, I was really excited for the upload, it did NOT disappoint!
These types of videos are inspiring the next gen of system engineers, thanks ltt💜
i hope to see more tours in the future for other cool tech buildings!
This is cool to see; I've done work in one of their datacenters (in Slough, near London), but of course due to security I only saw specific areas with specific cages so had no idea about a lot of this stuff...
This is the first ltt video that ive liked in a loooong time. Finally back on track and im happy to see it.
I got to see a lot of those cooling rooms at my previous job. We made chemical blends to treat the water in these systems to prevent corrosion, scaling, and growth.
@1:54 hand scanners bob lazar talked about at S4
Glad to see Linus arrived there safely. There's a lot of maniacs on the road driving super cars 100 miles an hour (160 km/h) these days.
It's fascinating to me that customers handle a lot more of their hardware use than I was expecting. I mean, I wasn't expecting the customer to even want to do any of that work, but I guess, in instances of really high sensitivity, that makes sense! Cool!
This was so awesome! Probably my favorite video to date. I work as a Critical Operations Technician at a US based Data Center. Mine is a Hyper Scaler for Machine Learning. If you ever get to tour a AI specific DC like mine. You’ll find it is surprising how much smaller they are but they still use the same amount of power as standard centers 4-6 times the size, if not even more power. It’s is one of the coolest jobs I’ve aver had and I use to work building and repairing sonar systems in submarines for the US Navy.
Waiting for this video since the WAN show! The fiber optic spools were a lot LOT smaller than I imagined lol
Right?? I thought that it would be some BIIIIIG spools
This is one of the most incredible videos I have seen in a while. It really brings home just what a marvel the internet is. It's so easy to forget how intricate it is. I would love to see more like this!
This is the coolest, scariest buildings I've seen. Just looking at the amount of security makes me feel like I'll be jailed from so much as entering the first door by accident
I used to see this building on my commute to college and always thought “wow this is an artsy building. I wonder why I don’t see anyone walk into it?”
This... this was great! The dream of young nerds born in the late 80s and 90s... I'm glad you put the intro into this video, because, at least for me, is the why I watch LTT.
I have gear in >4 Equinix datacenters in multiple countries, and I've had ZERO downtime at ANY of them in ten years. They are *super competent*.
Not to mention EVERY one of them looks like this. Their consistency is top notch.
I had the opportunity to tour a place that used an oxygen replacement fire suppression system. And even though we were only going to be in the room that had the replacement system for about half an hour, we were required to be fitted with and to cary rescue oxygen supplies for the entire trip.
The safety briefing and usage training took longer than the tour did. I'm not surprised these people are using a dry stand pipe system. It's cheaper, it's safer, and it can be more targeted.
Twenty or so years ago, I got a tour of my school's computer center, and it was even for that time very old-school. Application source code kept printed in binders, actual mainframes (which had to be like a decade or more out of date even twenty years ago), and an oxygen replacement fire suppression system. They're illegal here now, but weren't at the time. They didn't give us any special briefing (other than, if the alarm goes off, get out of the room as quickly as possible), but did point out the oxygen masks hanging everywhere in case of emergency.