WholeAustin · Austin metro · Data Centers
The complete Austin guide to data centers — the local businesses and the firms that shape the market, each read for how findable it is online, alongside the concepts, the news and the questions that define the field. Own one? See where you stand and exactly what to improve.
The firms, funds and institutions that set the terms in data centers — context, not local listings; never scored.
How sites are actually chosen now: available and deliverable utility capacity first, then land, fibre routes, water, tax treatment, seismic and flood risk, and workforce. Power availability has displaced every other criterion, and content that walks a buyer through interconnection reality outranks generic 'why our market' pages.
The large-load interconnection process, transmission constraints, the West Texas and Panhandle generation belt, curtailment and interruptibility, and why an ERCOT-connected project can move faster than one in a traditional RTO — plus the new scrutiny that speed has attracted.
The four ways capacity is bought, what each costs, who each suits, and the honest crossover math between a retail cabinet, a wholesale megawatt block, a build-to-suit campus and a hyperscaler's own build.
Utility service and substation, medium-voltage distribution, switchgear, UPS topologies, static transfer switches, generators and fuel, PDUs and busway, and how N+1, 2N and block redundancy actually appear in a one-line diagram.
Air cooling, CRAC and CRAH units, containment, chilled water plants, dry coolers and economization, and the shift to direct-to-chip and immersion liquid cooling as rack densities pass what air can carry.
WUE and carbon usage effectiveness, evaporative versus closed-loop and air-cooled designs, reclaimed and non-potable water, PPAs and VPPAs, 24/7 carbon-free energy versus annual matching, and the disclosure buyers and communities now demand.
Uptime Institute Tier I-IV, concurrent maintainability versus fault tolerance, the difference between design certification and constructed-facility certification, availability math, and how SLA credits actually work when a facility fails.
What changes above roughly 30 kW per rack: liquid-ready halls, CDUs and manifolds, structural loading, power density per square foot, GPU cluster networking, and why many legacy colocation halls physically cannot host modern AI racks.
Meet-me rooms, cross-connects, carrier neutrality, IX participation, dark fibre and wavelengths, direct cloud on-ramps, and why interconnection revenue rather than space is the economic engine of retail colocation.
The real schedule from land control to energization, transformer and switchgear lead times measured in years, generator and chiller queues, modular and prefabricated approaches, and how procurement sequencing now drives the critical path.
Commissioning Levels 1 through 5, integrated systems testing, change management and MOPs, capacity and asset management, DCIM and monitoring, thermal analytics, and the operating discipline that separates a certified design from a reliable facility.
Cost per kW of critical capacity, retail cabinet and wholesale megawatt pricing, power pass-through versus bundled, escalators, cross-connect fees, remote hands, and honest total cost of ownership against cloud and on-premise alternatives.
The Texas data center sales and use tax exemption and its qualification thresholds, Chapter 380 and 381 local abatement agreements, school district arrangements, zoning and special use permits, noise and setback conditions, and the public debate over whether the incentives pay for themselves.
Noise, water draw, viewshed, traffic, ratepayer cost allocation and jobs-per-megawatt arguments; the moratoria and rejected rezonings that now appear routinely; and how developers structure community benefit and transparency to get projects approved.
Latency-driven deployments, edge and micro data centers, regional versus metro versus far edge, content and CDN caching, private 5G and industrial edge, and where edge is a genuine architecture rather than a marketing label.
Austin, Round Rock, Pflugerville, Taylor, Temple, Georgetown, San Marcos and San Antonio submarkets alongside the mature Dallas-Fort Worth cluster: who is operating, what has been announced, which utilities serve which corridor, and where power is actually available.
colocation sells space, power and cooling for hardware you own; cloud sells compute you rent — explain that most enterprises now run both and the choice is per workload
distinguish IT load from total facility load and explain why a facility described in megawatts is describing what it can deliver to racks, not what it draws
define the ratio and explain that climate, load factor and measurement boundary make cross-site comparison unreliable; cite Uptime Institute survey data for any benchmark rather than asserting one
explain concurrent maintainability and fault tolerance, and the difference between a certified facility and a marketing claim of 'Tier III design'
spare component versus mirrored system; tie it to what maintenance can be done without dropping load
explain carrier neutrality, why the MMR is where the network value sits, and that cross connects are a recurring revenue line for the operator
explain that AI hardware concentrates load per cabinet, so a hall's total megawatts matter less than what a single rack position can take
cold plates and CDUs retrofit into existing halls; immersion is more efficient with harder operational trade-offs — explain the facility water loop as the real change
explain WUE and that consumption depends on cooling design and climate — closed-loop and air-cooled designs use little; never quote a gallons figure for an unnamed facility
describe the study stages and the transmission operator's role, and that queue position and study results decide viability more than any site attribute
a building with power and utilities delivered but no data center fit-out; explain who finishes it and why the term is used loosely in marketing
by cabinet, by hall or by building — explain how contract length, capital responsibility and operating control differ at each step
private connectivity into a hyperscaler from inside the facility; explain the latency and egress-cost argument in plain terms
on-site generation serving load without full reliance on the grid connection; explain it as a bridge to interconnection and note the regulatory questions it raises
the answer is set by the interconnection study, network upgrades and equipment delivery for the specific point of interconnection; give the stages and refuse to state a lead time
teach the ladder — land controlled, power contracted, permits issued, steel erected, megawatts energized — and treat any headline figure as the first rung, not the last
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