Anna Stewart gets a tour of an Equinix data center, which powers financial and technology industries.

London

A rare tour inside a major UK data center operated by Equinix demonstrates the high level of security and operational resilience required to protect sensitive data for banks, streaming services, supermarkets, and even governments. Access is tightly controlled, with multiple layers of security including biometric checks and man traps, ensuring only authorized personnel can approach the hardware that underpins much of the global economy.

The facility is designed for uninterrupted service, with systems in place to reroute connections and provide backup power in the event of disruptions. As demand for digital services and artificial intelligence grows, so does the energy consumption of data centers, prompting the adoption of new cooling technologies and efforts to repurpose waste heat. Despite these innovations, the report notes that the physical impact of our increasing reliance on digital infrastructure remains significant.

What happens inside a Data Center?

I'll let you in first. I'm entering one of the most secure places in the country. Behind each cage we pass lies the data of a major company. They could be banks, streamers or supermarkets. Not only will Equinix not tell me who they are, but Bruce doesn't even know himself. Their data location is on a need-to-know basis. Essentially, we are now in the heart of the internet. Each of these cables represents hundreds of thousands of interactions online. So everything we do, every kind of connection, transaction, everything we make happens somewhere like here? Yes. With just a load of cables? Yes. Are we allowed to walk around? We can walk around. Yeah. We just can't touch. We can't touch. What happens if I were to pull out a cable? What would the ramifications be? Well, I would lose my job. There's probably six layers of security to get to this point. So the likelihood of it happening is, is no. We use places like this every day, but getting to see what goes on inside is rare. Fingerprint. Pass. Fingerprint. Pass. Access granted. Well, this feels like Mission Impossible-style security. This is the so-called man trap. This door has to close before the next one will open. Now, if somehow you made it in here without the right security credentials, which includes a fingerprint, well, you're not going to be able to get through the next door. You could be here for some time. The security is necessary. Around the world, data centres like this are responsible for keeping financial centres running, like here in London. Even governments' most treasured assets are housed within data centres. And so we take great pride in being the fortress of ensuring that there's this physical security and resilience built into the network so that you can't get access to the equipment that is underpinning all of these workloads that are essentially keeping the economy going. If something gets cut, the connection is rerouted elsewhere. And if power goes out, well, backup generators kick in. Energy consumption is critical. Sam Altman says our addiction to software is melting chat GPT servers. They don't really melt. It's just this idea that they do consume a lot of electricity, and so we should be very conscious about how we consume that technology. The latest AI innovations mean there's a now worldwide challenge to provide more energy. But the chips themselves, their ability to process and the amount of data that available is evolving. And so you see the industry moving to have these new cooling technologies like liquid cooling. You will see them within our facilities. That energy can be used to heat homes, even the pool at the Paris Olympics. But there's still a lot of waste. As more of our world moves online, remember that each connection also has a physical impact. There was a cable hanging out, but I didn't touch it. Anna Stewart, CNN, Slough, UK.

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