What this site is
Data Center Strategies is an authoritative source for data center operations and management consulting, built on first-hand operator experience. It publishes plain-language guidance on running data centers, the procedures, the handover, the shifts, the drills, and the first year, for the people who have to keep the power in, the heat out, and nothing down.
The site's position is simple: a data center does three jobs, take power in, turn it into computation and heat, and get the heat out, and it must never stop doing any of them. Everything here is written to help the people responsible for that, in language they can use on a night shift.
Who it is for
- Operators and operations managers running critical facilities.
- Owners, developers, and investors bringing a new data center into operation.
- Managers and engineers who need to understand operations as well as design.
- Readers of Where AI Lives who want the operational grounding behind the book.
Who runs it
Scott Stillings, Ph.D. Business, M.B.A., B.S. Nuclear Engineering Technology, has spent 20+ years in critical infrastructure operations: U.S. Navy submarine reactor operator and senior nuclear maintenance technician (2002–2008), commercial nuclear operator, reactor operator, senior-reactor-operator-certified instructor, and nuclear operations training manager, and now a critical operations manager for a large hyperscale data center campus. He is the author of Where AI Lives: Inside the Hyperscale Data Centers Powering the AI Boom and the founder of Data Center Strategies.
Two threads run through all of it: high-reliability operations, things that must not fail, and the discipline that keeps them from failing, and teaching. Scott has built training programs from scratch and spent years as an instructor. He thinks in systems, procedures, and root causes.
The credentials stated here are publicly verifiable.
Scope
Scope: advisory help from an operator. Design, commissioning, and operations remain with the engineer of record, the CxA, and the site team.
How content is produced
Content is written from operator experience, checked against the cited standards and public sources, and human-reviewed before publication. Where an industry figure, survey result, or standard is stated, the source is named and linked, and the figure carries its label in the same sentence or footnote. Where a figure rests on the author's experience rather than a published source, it is labeled ESTIMATE, with the basis shown. Where no public standard exists, and for operational readiness, in several places none does, the site says so out loud, and any framework offered is labeled as the author's own method, not as a standard.
Every industry figure on this site carries a label: VERIFIED (checked against a named source, with a date and a stated base), FORECAST (a named forecaster's projection about the future), ESTIMATE (arithmetic on verified inputs, or the author's own method, with the inputs and formula shown), REPORTED (a figure from a single reputable named secondary source whose primary was not inspected; the label travels with the figure, and a REPORTED figure is never the sole basis for a recommendation), or UNVERIFIED (named as unverified, and never presented as fact). No industry figure is intended to go out unlabeled. Career length, manuscript word counts, and typical design ranges stated as ranges are described in words on the page and are not presented as labeled survey figures.
The factual foundation for the systems content is a shared base understanding of how data centers work, electrical, cooling, controls, fiber, fire protection, and physical infrastructure. Its governing principle: there is no one unifying design. The power, cooling, and fiber paths described here are common patterns and teaching archetypes, not a universal template. Real facilities deviate by operator, workload, age, climate, site, and generation, and a deviation is not automatically a defect.
The book
Scott is the author of Where AI Lives: Inside the Hyperscale Data Centers Powering the AI Boom, part of the Inside Hyperscale series, published by Data Center Strategies. The book has its own dedicated page. About the book →
Contact
Contact Data Center Strategies →, Email: info@datacenterstrategies.com.