Texas has become the epicenter of the nation’s data center growth with the conspicuous buildings popping up next to neighborhoods and on farmland throughout the state.
Though the sight of them has drawn considerable public backlash, few people can say they’ve physically walked through the doors of a data center and into the cloud.
Only a handful of staff work there. The gates are locked to all but construction crews and those with security clearances. The doors to the massive, windowless warehouse-style structures with their own power grids are tightly guarded.
Media requests for a look behind the curtain had gone unfulfilled — until now.
In the Texas Research Park on the far Northwest Side of San Antonio, several large industrial buildings in various stages of completion have been built along what’s become a data center corridor.
On Omicron Drive, a high-security palisade fence, its sharp black teeth curved outward, wraps around 22 acres of land acquired by data center developer CyrusOne.
Through a swing gate with crossing arms on either side, the San Antonio Report and other members of the press entered the premises recently for a first-ever media tour of the facility.
Invited to the site by the company and its political affairs representatives, the tour began in the lobby of a gray and white building that houses the data center and offices.
Uniformed security officers sitting behind glass checked IDs and handed out red visitor badges only after electronic confidentiality forms were signed.
During introductions, a spokeswoman told reporters and a podcaster that all conversations during the media tour should be considered “off the record” and only exterior photos of the center were permitted.
Data centers are critical infrastructure — storing and processing a growing amount of digital data on behalf of clients, from government entities, financial services firms and health care systems to streaming services and social media.
So as the media tour made its way down long stretches of brightly lit corridors, empty of most anything but the galvanized steel duct work and fiber overhead, the secured double doors to actual data halls were opened only enough for a quick peek.
No one was allowed in. No pictures. To protect client confidentiality and the company’s proprietary information, a spokeswoman declined to identify the customers using the data halls.
‘Do it responsibly’
Asked why CyrusOne, the nation’s seventh-largest data center company by capacity, is pulling back the curtain now, Katy Hancock said it is a reflection of their pride in the facilities and how it operates, and to dispel myths and misinformation.
“We build digital infrastructure, and we do it responsibly, and we want to let people know about it,” Hancock said.
Founded in 2000, the Dallas-based CyrusOne operates enterprise-class, carrier-neutral data center properties, according to its website, providing data storage and processing for more than 925 customers. It owns or has planned more than 100 data centers throughout Europe, the Far East and the United States, including 15 in Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio.
In addition to its Omicron sites, another is under construction far west of San Antonio, just past Castroville in Medina County. That facility sprawls across 250 acres of former ranch and farmland along Highway 90 West, adjacent to a Microsoft data center also under construction. It is expected to be completed in June.
Welcome mat
Recently, in addition to inviting the small group of handpicked journalists, CyrusOne has led tours for elected officials like council members Ric Galvan (D6) and Phyllis Viagran (D3), plus local leaders and industry folks.
The spokeswoman said the company has previously laid out the welcome mat at another San Antonio facility for its residential neighbors, arranging it through the homeowners association.
Such site visits are intended to make data centers seem less mysterious, she said, and perhaps less onerous given the questions about how they operate.
A wave of litigation challenging the secrecy behind development and the use of water and power in recent years has followed the unprecedented growth of data centers. Bowing to public pressure, state and local governments have called for audits, investigations and moratoriums.
Community acceptance has become the industry’s greatest challenge, according to a report by the commercial real estate firm, JLL.
“Transparency and early engagement with communities around electricity, water and noise, as well as benefits, including jobs, investment and tax revenue are essential,” the report states.
Chillers and generators
After breakfast tacos and a presentation, CyrusOne’s senior director of operations, Robert Orms, led a tour of the SAT 5 data center facility at the Omicron site.
The campus includes two operating facilities and two under construction. Another three are planned for a nearby parcel of land on Omicron Drive.
The company’s first data centers in San Antonio, SATs 1-4, are located in Westover Hills off State Highway 151.
Opening secure doors with his badge, Orms explained the 87,500-square-foot data center’s power requirements and the closed-loop cooling system it uses, and how the fire suppression system works, one using water and the other air.
Though well-lit for the tour, the center’s spaces are generally kept dark for energy efficiency, he said. The only noise during the tour came in the form of a loud whirr from the data halls only when the doorways were opened.
Up a set of stairs, Orms led us to a second-level control room where several staff members keep track of the power and cooling systems by watching a wall of monitors.
We met one member of the staff who was a U.S. Navy veteran and another who started in the data center after working as an HVAC technician, both common career paths in the data center industry.
Outside the building, the tour continued through a row of 2.25-watt generators the size of small trailers installed adjacent the building. Each one has 4-inch-thick sound attenuation built into the walls of the enclosure. Only a few operate at any given time, for brief periods during the daytime hours, Orms said.
Rows of chillers are also positioned on the roof of the facility, with sound walls installed to also decrease noise. The company regularly conducts testing for noise at the fence line of its properties, Orms said.
From the CyrusOne data center, there’s a clear view of the electrical substation that the company built, then transferred to CPS Energy, to serve its facilities and the surrounding neighborhoods.
The master-planned Texas Research Park was zoned for heavy industrial use, and the ready availability of power and fiber made it appealing for data center development, said Erica Estrada, community affairs manager and former site selector for CyrusOne.
The Denver-based Vantage also has a data center campus on over 50 acres in the area and earlier this year filed with the state plans for a new 96-megawatt data center with an estimated cost of close to half-a-billion dollars.
The hour-long data center tour concluded, Hancock said the company is uniquely transparent in the data center industry and the media tour was its first of likely more to come.
“We’re proud of what we do. We don’t have anything to hide. This kind of shrouded-in-secrecy [approach] only creates a greater air of speculation and skepticism and concern,” she said. “The less we let people in, the more that festers.”
