The Data Center Frontier Show

Rehlko CEO Brian Melka on Powering the AI Data Center Era

As AI workloads reshape the data center landscape, speed to power has overtaken sustainability as the top customer demand. On this episode of the Data Center Frontier Show, Editor-in-Chief Matt Vincent talks with Brian Melka, CEO of Rehlko (formerly Kohler Energy), about how the century-old power company is helping operators scale fast, stay reliable, and meet evolving energy challenges.
Melka shares how Rehlko is quadrupling production, expanding its in-house EPC capabilities, and rolling out modular power blocks through its Wilmott/Wiltech acquisition to accelerate deployments and system integration. The discussion also covers the balance between diesel reliability and greener alternatives like HVO fuel, hybrid power systems that combine batteries and engines, and strategies for managing noise, emissions, and footprint in urban sites.
From rooftop generator farms in Paris to 100MW hyperscale builds, Rehlko positions itself as a technology-agnostic partner for the AI era. Listen now to learn how the company is helping the data center industry move faster, smarter, and more sustainably.

Podcast: Traka VP Craig Newell Discusses the Critical Role of Key and Asset Management in Data Center Operations

Smarter Security Starts with Key & Equipment ManagementIn data centers, physical access control is just as critical as cybersecurity. Intelligent key and equipment management solutions help safeguard infrastructure, reduce risk, and improve efficiency — all while supporting compliance.
Key Benefits:
Enhanced Security – Restrict access to authorized personnel only
Audit Trails – Track every access event for full accountability
Operational Efficiency – Eliminate manual tracking and delays
Risk Reduction – Prevent loss, misuse, or unauthorized access
System Integration – Connect with access, video, and visitor tools
Regulatory Support – Comply with ISO 27001, SOC 2, HIPAA & more
A smart solution for a high-stakes environment — because in the data center world, every detail matters.

Uptime Institute’s Jay Dietrich on Why Net Zero Isn’t Enough for Sustainable Data Centers

New DCF Podcast Episode Breaks Down the Real Work Behind Energy and Emissions Metrics
In the latest episode of the Data Center Frontier Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Matt Vincent sits down with Jay Dietrich, Research Director of Sustainability at Uptime Institute, to examine what real sustainability looks like inside the data center — and why popular narratives around net zero, offsets, and carbon neutrality often obscure more than they reveal.
Over the course of a 36-minute conversation, Dietrich walks listeners through Uptime’s expanding role in guiding data center operators toward measurable sustainability outcomes — not just certifications, but operational performance improvements at the facility level.

LiquidStack CEO Joe Capes on GigaModular, Direct-to-Chip Cooling, and AI’s Thermal Future

In this episode of the Data Center Frontier Show, Editor-in-Chief Matt Vincent speaks with LiquidStack CEO Joe Capes about the company’s breakthrough GigaModular platform — the industry’s first scalable, modular Coolant Distribution Unit (CDU) purpose-built for direct-to-chip liquid cooling.
With rack densities accelerating beyond 120 kW and headed toward 600 kW, LiquidStack is targeting the real-world requirements of AI data centers while streamlining complexity and future-proofing thermal design.
“AI will keep pushing thermal output to new extremes,” Capes tells DCF. “Data centers need cooling systems that can be easily deployed, managed, and scaled to match heat rejection demands as they rise.”
LiquidStack's new GigaModular CDU, unveiled at the 2025 Datacloud Global Congress in Cannes, delivers up to 10 MW of scalable cooling capacity. It's designed to support single-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling — a shift from the company’s earlier two-phase immersion roots — via a skidded modular design with a pay-as-you-grow approach. The platform’s flexibility enables deployments at N, N+1, or N+2 resiliency.
“We designed it to be the only CDU our customers will ever need,” Capes says.
Tune in to listen to the whole discussion, which goes on to explore why edge infrastructure and EV adoption will drive the next wave of sector innovation. 

Leveraging Heat as an Asset in Data Center Operations

Every second an AI-enabled data center operates, it produces massive amounts of heat.
Cooling needs are often thought of separately from heat, and for years, that is how systems were built. In most facilities, waste heat has to be managed, properly expelled, and is then forgotten. The heat may not be needed by the data center, but the question arises, ‘where else could this energy be put to use?’
What if energy use was viewed differently by data centers and the systems and institutions around them? Rather than focusing on a data center’s enormous power demands, let’s recognize data centers are part of a larger energy network, capable of giving back through the recovery and redistribution of thermal waste.
The pursuit of heat reuse solutions drives technological advancements in data center cooling and energy management systems. Recovering waste heat isn’t just a matter of technology and hardware. Systems need to run smoothly, and uptime is critical. This can lead to the development of more efficient and sustainable technologies that benefit not only data centers but the communities they operate within, creating a symbiotic relationship.
Join Trane® expert Esti Tierney as she explores critical considerations for enabling heat reuse as part of the circular economy. Esti will discuss high computing’s growing impact on heat production, the importance of a holistic view of thermal management, and why the need to collaborate and plan a heat redistribution strategy early with community stakeholders matters.  
Heat reuse in data centers is a crucial aspect of modern energy management and sustainability practices, offering benefits that extend beyond the immediate operational efficiencies.
Designing for optimized energy efficiency and recovering waste heat isn’t just about saving money. The ability to reduce energy demand on the grid will be critical for all today and into the future. As server densities increase and next-generation chips push power demands ever higher, waste heat is no longer a byproduct to manage — it's power waiting to be harnessed.

Powering AI Data Centers: Eaton on Infrastructure, Cooling, and What’s Next

As AI reshapes the digital infrastructure landscape, data center design is evolving at every level. In this episode of the Data Center Frontier Show, we sit down with JP Buzzell, Eaton’s VP and Data Center Chief Architect, and Doug Kilgariff, Strategic Accounts Manager, to explore the key shifts driving the next generation of compute environments.
Topics include:
Purpose-built vs. retrofit approaches to AI infrastructure.
Liquid cooling requirements for GPU clusters.
Modular power design and construction.
Behind-the-meter energy strategies.
Data center workforce shortages.
Eaton’s evolving role and insights from its Data Center Vision event.
From rethinking site selection to solving for stranded assets and building talent pipelines, Buzzell and Kilgariff provide a practical, forward-looking view on the forces shaping AI-era data centers.
Listen now to get the inside track on powering the future of AI infrastructure.

EdgeCore CEO Lee Kestler on Designing for Density, Energy Discipline, and the Future of AI Infrastructure

In this wide-ranging conversation, EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure CEO Lee Kestler joins the Data Center Frontier Show to discuss how the company is navigating the AI-fueled demand wave with a focused, disciplined strategy.
From designing water-free campuses in the Arizona desert to long-term utility partnerships and a sober view on nuclear and behind-the-meter power, Kestler lays out EdgeCore’s pragmatic path through today’s high-pressure data center environment.
He also shares insights on the misunderstood public perception of data centers, and why EdgeCore is investing not just in infrastructure, but in the communities where it builds.

CoreSite Expands in Denver with Strategic Acquisition of Iconic Carrier Hotel

In this episode of the Data Center Frontier Show, we explore CoreSite’s strategic acquisition of the Denver Gas and Electric Building, widely regarded as the most network-dense facility in the Rocky Mountain region.
Now the sole owner and operator of the DE1 data center housed within the historic building, CoreSite is doubling down on its interconnection strategy and reshaping the future of Denver’s cloud and network ecosystem.
Podcast guests Yvonne Ng, CoreSite’s Central Region General Manager, and Adam Post, SVP of Finance and Corporate Development, discuss how the acquisition enables CoreSite to simplify access to the Google Cloud Platform onramp and supercharge the Any2Denver peering exchange.
The deal also adds over 100 interconnection-rich customers to CoreSite’s portfolio and sets the stage for a broader Denver campus strategy including the under-construction DE3 facility built for AI-scale workloads.
The conversation explores key themes around modernizing legacy carrier hotels for high-density computing, integrating newly acquired customers, and how CoreSite, as backed by parent company American Tower, is evaluating similar interconnection-focused acquisitions in other metro markets.
This is a timely deep dive into how legacy infrastructure is being reimagined to meet AI, multicloud, and edge computing demands. Denver is now positioned as a cloud peering hotspot, and CoreSite is at the center of the story.

Hunter Newby and Connected Nation: Kansas Breaks Ground on First IXP

The digital geography of America is shifting, and in Wichita, Kansas, that shift just became tangible.
In a groundbreaking ceremony this spring, Connected Nation and Wichita State University launched construction on the state’s first carrier-neutral Internet Exchange Point (IXP), a modular facility designed to serve as the heart of regional interconnection. When completed, the site will create the lowest-latency, highest-resilience internet hub in Kansas, a future-forward interconnection point positioned to drive down costs, enhance performance, and unlock critical capabilities for cloud and AI services across the Midwest.
In this episode of The Data Center Frontier Show podcast, I sat down with two of the leaders behind this transformative project: Tom Ferree, Chairman and CEO of Connected Nation (CN), and Hunter Newby, co-founder of CNIXP and a veteran pioneer of neutral interconnection infrastructure. Together, they outlined how this facility in Wichita is more than a local improvement, it’s a national proof-of-concept.
“This is a foundation,” Ferree said. “We are literally bringing the internet to Wichita, and that has profound implications for performance, equity, and future participation in the digital economy.”
A Marriage of Mission and Know-How
The Wichita IXP is being developed by Connected Nation Internet Exchange Points, LLC (CNIXP), a joint venture between the nonprofit Connected Nation and Hunter Newby’s Newby Ventures. The project is supported by a $5 million state grant from Governor Laura Kelly’s broadband infrastructure package, with Wichita State providing a 40-year ground lease adjacent to its Innovation Campus.
For Ferree, this partnership represents a synthesis of purpose.
“Connected Nation has always been about closing the digital divide in all its forms, geographic, economic, and educational,” he explained. “What Hunter brings is two decades of experience in building and owning carrier-neutral interconnection facilities, from New York to Atlanta and beyond. Together, we’ve formed something that’s not only technically rigorous, but mission-aligned.”
“This isn’t just a building,” Ferree added. “It’s a gateway to economic empowerment for communities that have historically been left behind.”
Closing the Infrastructure Gap
Newby, who’s built and acquired more than two dozen interconnection facilities over the years, including 60 Hudson Street in New York and 56 Marietta Street in Atlanta, said Wichita represents a different kind of challenge: starting from scratch in a region with no existing IXP.
“There are still 14 states in the U.S. without an in-state Internet exchange,” he said. “Kansas was one of them. And Wichita, despite being the state’s largest city, had no neutral meetpoint. All their IP traffic was backhauled out to Kansas City, Missouri. That’s an architectural flaw, and it adds cost and latency.”
Newby described how his discovery process, poring over long-haul fiber maps, researching where neutral infrastructure did not exist, ultimately led him to connect with Ferree and the Connected Nation team.
“What Connected Nation was missing was neutral real estate for networks to meet,” he said. “What I was looking for was a way to apply what I know to rural and underserved areas. That’s how we came together.”
The AI Imperative: Localizing Latency
While IXPs have long played a key role in optimizing traffic exchange, their relevance has surged in the age of AI, particularly AI inference workloads, which require sub–3 millisecond round-trip delays to operate in real time.
Newby illustrated this with a high-stakes use case: fraud detection at major banks using AI models running on Nvidia Blackwell chips.
“These systems need to validate a transaction at the keystroke. If the latency is too high, if you’re routing traffic out of state to validate it, it doesn’t work. The fraud gets through. You can’t protect people.”
“It’s not just about faster Netflix anymore,” he said. “It’s about whether or not next-gen applications even function in a given place.”
In this light, the IXP becomes not just a cost-saver, but an enabler, a prerequisite for AI, cloud, telehealth, autonomous systems, and countless other latency-sensitive services to operate effectively in smaller markets.
From Terminology to Technology: What an IXP Is
Part of Newby’s mission has been helping communities, policymakers, and enterprise leaders understand what an IXP actually is. Too often, the industry’s terminology, “data center,” “meet-me room,” “carrier hotel”, obscures more than it clarifies.
“Outside major cities, if you say ‘carrier hotel,’ people think you’re in the dating business,” Newby quipped.
He broke it down simply: An Internet Exchange (IX) is the Ethernet switch that allows IP networks to directly peer via VLANs. An Internet Exchange Point (IXP) is the physical, neutral facility that houses the IX switch, along with all the supporting power, fiber, and cooling infrastructure needed to enable interconnection.
The Wichita facility will be modular, storm-hardened, and future-proofed. It will include a secured meet-me area for fiber patching, a UPS-backed power room, hot/cold aisle containment, and a neutral conference and staging space. And at its core will sit a DE-CIX Ethernet switch, linking Wichita into the world’s largest ecosystem of neutral exchanges.
“DE-CIX is the fourth partner in this,” said Newby. “Their reputation, their technical capacity, their customer base, it’s what elevates this IXP from a regional build-out to a globally connected platform.”
Public Dollars, Private Leverage
The Wichita IXP was made possible by public investment, but Ferree is quick to note that it’s the kind of public investment that unlocks private capital and ongoing economic impact.
“This is the Eisenhower moment for digital infrastructure,” he said, referencing both the interstate highway system and the Rural Electrification Act. “Without government’s catalytic role, these markets don’t emerge. But once the neutral facility is there, it invites networks, it invites cloud, it invites jobs.”
As states begin to activate federal funds from the $42.5 billion BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment) program, Ferree believes more will follow Kansas’s lead, and they should.
“This isn’t just about broadband access,” he said. “It’s about building a digital economy in places that would otherwise be excluded from it. And that’s an existential issue for rural America.”
From Wichita to the Nation
Ferree closed the podcast with a forward-looking perspective: the Wichita IXP is just the beginning.
“We have 125 of these locations mapped across the U.S.,” he said. “And our partnerships with land-grant universities, state governments, and private operators are key to unlocking them.”
By pairing national mission with technical rigor, and public funding with local opportunity, the Wichita IXP is blazing a trail for other states and regions to follow.

Engineering a Cool Revolution: Shumate’s HDAC Design Tackles AI-Era Density

As artificial intelligence surges across the digital infrastructure landscape, its impacts are increasingly physical. Higher densities, hotter chips, and exponentially rising energy demands are pressuring data center operators to rethink the fundamentals, and especially cooling.
That’s where Shumate Engineering steps in, with a patent-pending system called Hybrid Dry Adiabatic Cooling (HDAC) that reimagines how chilled water loops are deployed in high-density environments.
In this episode of The Data Center Frontier Show, Shumate founder Daren Shumate and Director of Mission Critical Services Stephen Spinazzola detailed the journey behind HDAC, from conceptual spark to real-world validation, and laid out why this system could become a cornerstone for sustainable AI infrastructure.
“Shumate Engineering is really my project to design the kind of firm I always wanted to work for: where engineers take responsibility early and are empowered to innovate,” said Shumate. “HDAC was born from that mindset.”
Two Temperatures, One Loop: Rethinking the Cooling Stack
The challenge HDAC aims to solve is deceptively simple: how do you cool legacy air-cooled equipment and next-gen liquid-cooled racks, simultaneously and efficiently?
Shumate’s answer is a closed-loop system with two distinct temperature taps:
68°F water for traditional air-cooled systems.
90°F water for direct-to-chip liquid cooling.
Both flows draw from a single loop fed by a hybrid adiabatic cooler, a dry cooler with “trim” evaporative functionality when conditions demand it. During cooler months or off-peak hours, the system economizes fully; during warmer conditions, it modulates to maintain optimal output.
“This isn’t magic; it’s just applying known products in a smarter sequence,” said Spinazzola. “One loop, two outputs, no waste.”
The system is fully modular, relies on conventional chillers and pumps, and is compatible with heat exchangers for immersion or CDU-style deployment. And according to Spinazzola, “we can make 90°F water just about anywhere” as long as the local wet bulb temperature stays below 83°F, a threshold met in most of North America.