Executive Insights: Sean Farney of Kohler Power Systems

SEAN FARNEY,
Kohler Power Systems

Sean Farney is Director, Marketing & Business Development – Data Center at Kohler Power Systems. He leads segment growth supporting Kohler’s data center power systems strategy, including channel programs, brand awareness, product performance, and solutions differentiation, and partnering with the sales team to prioritize, develop, and execute a global customer acquisition strategy. He was previously a data center executive for Microsoft, and has held leadership positions at  The Boston Consulting Group, Intercontinental Exchange, Rockwell Automation and Ubiquity Critical Environments.

Here’s the full text of Sean Farney’s insights from our Executive Roundtable: 

Data Center Frontier:  How is edge computing evolving, and what use cases and applications are gaining the most traction with customers?

Sean Farney: Ten years ago, the edge data centers I was building with Schneider Electric were 100-300kW modular facilities in Tier 3 MSAs, for use almost exclusively by MSOs, telcos, and other wireline content providers; little more than outpost IDFs. Today’s edge data center has a much more nebulous Basis of Design: multi-megawatt in size, fully redundant power lineups, popping up in core Tier 1 cities to serve both wireline and wireless traffic.

I credit the prevalence of high-bandwidth connectivity, be it ubiquitous WiFi or 5G wireless, with this changing definition of Edge. Staggering growth in the number of connected devices and always-on access has exponentially accelerated the creation of content and, consequently, the need to replicate and distribute it. With the growth in data also comes a growing reliance on and expectation for guaranteed access to this data. Therefore, Edge facilities have taken on more elements of traditional uptime-driven design.

With the addition of true mission critical applications and services like medical wearables and autonomous vehicles, we will see continued emphasis on infrastructure resilience and continued re-definition of what “the Edge” really means. This is why providers must be very attuned to industry trends and have broad product lines to address ephemeral needs. Kohler’s long-standing relationships with both telecom and data center clients help to keep us on the leading Edge of industry needs.

Data Center Frontier: Last year’s major service outages at Facebook and Amazon Web Services sharpened the focus on data center reliability. As companies embrace the benefits of cloud and hybrid IT architectures, what are the key strategies for ensuring uptime?

Sean Farney: I recall a fascinating dinner conversation with Ray Ozzie years ago while at Microsoft. In it, he shared that the original design tenet for Azure was to move redundancy and resilience way up the stack from the physical layer to the application layer so that software would obviate outages. So if utility power failed in one facility, the data center manager would simply roll bits over to a different facility, removing the cost and complexity of redundant power systems, for example. It’s a noble idea and is working to a great extent with many CDN services in production today.

However, with the increasing complexity of interdependent applications and the rapidity of data set growth, there are stateful information services that must be homed in a single location. For this reason, the best way to ensure uptime in the cloud – which is just another data center – is to design, build and properly maintain multiple levels of redundancy across all key points of failure in a system. N+1, 2N, Concurrent Maintainability, etc. are table stakes for operators beholden to Service Level Agreements.

Equipment like the venerable but ever-reliable diesel generator will continue to be in high demand for many years to come because we can trust them to provide backup power, flawlessly. And amid a data center building boom, Kohler is seeing just this – unparalleled demand for proven and reliable power products.

Data Center Frontier: How would you assess the state of the data center supply chain? Are the global supply chain challenges impacting the delivery of data center capacity?

Sean Farney: Supply chains everywhere are feeling pressure right now. Everything from basic materials like lumber, steel, and copper to microchips are in short supply, with doubling of delivery times in last year. Some equipment providers are even selling manufacturing production slots on their assembly lines!

In the meantime, data centers have been facing a tidal wave of demand. This has impacted the priority of what we can do today. Companies are needing to closely evaluate their processes to ensure they are operating existing facilities in the most efficient way possible. For example, sustainability is a priority to all of us in the data center space; we all have goals to be net-zero within a few years. With the constraints we’re facing, many are having to double down on efforts to make efficiency upgrades and revisit operating procedures. Even in challenging circumstances, data center operators are finding ways to meet capacity demands, bring power usage down, and turn it all into a model that they can effectively sell.

“Even in challenging circumstances, data center operators are finding ways to meet capacity demands, bring power usage down, and turn it all into a model that they can effectively sell.”
– Sean Farney, Kohler Power Systems

Data Center Frontier: Several data center observers, including The Uptime Institute, have highlighted nuclear power as an option for data center operators to create a low-carbon energy future. Is turning to nuclear power – either through power purchase agreements or modular reactors – a viable option for the data center industry? Should it be?

Sean Farney: Absolutely! I ran a 120MW data center in Illinois (the US state that produces the most nuclear energy) and had unsurpassed reliability and rock-bottom costs. Look at what Cumulus is doing today. Carbon-free power at $.03/kWh – it’s unbeatably green, massively scalable, and ultimately reliable. The problem? Marketing. Nuclear is perceived as dangerous and dirty when it’s one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy.

If the data center industry can defeat this perception, there’s potential for massive sustainability advances. China and France have solved for the perception issue and are benefitting from self-reliance, particularly in an unstable global energy market. To take this idea a little further, I only half-jokingly believe that private nuclear is not far off. If grid instability continues and ESG-pressure grows, the hyperscalers – who have the necessary brainpower, deep pockets, and financial incentives – could push private nuclear forward.

Data centers already hire all the ex-Navy nukes, so there’s not a massive skills gap. A microgrid design with private nuclear as primary and the utility grid as secondary power would be groundbreaking.