Last week, I got a text message that we were going to get in. We dropped everything (hence no video last week) and jumped on planes. We were heading to the San Francisco Bay Area, specifically Santa Clara, California. After around 2.5 years of asking, we were getting to tour not just Levi’s Stadium, but the secret data center tucked into the steel and concrete structure.
As a quick note, the 49ers gave STH this access, and Intel helped get us in, so we are going to say this is sponsored by Intel. Again, this was my idea, but sometimes to go from idea to video takes some help.
Of course, we have a video of this one and are going to tell folks that is probably a better medium for a tour like this. It is a bit shorter than our average video, so check this one out. As always, we suggest opening this in its own window, tab, or app for the best viewing experience.
Inside the Secret Data Center at the Heart of the San Francisco 49ers Levis Stadium
To get to the data center, the first step was getting in. George and I showed up at the 49ers corporate offices which were inside Levi’s Stadium.
The data center itself was located behind locked doors through the corporate offices. We were walking through an office with folks talking about storylines and graphics for the Green Bay Packers at 49ers divisional round last weekend. Then, we stepped inside.
Inside there was a large hallway with active infrastructure projects paused for our arrival.
On the left side, we had the Emerson CRAC air handlers. This data center was nestled between the stands and the corporate offices, so heat from servers had to be expelled elsewhere.
On the right side, we have racks of equipment. Inside the data center, there was surprising diversity. Instead of standardizing on one type of server, there were many different brands, sizes, and shapes represented.
Some of the applications that we saw hosted were the business/ enterprise applications for the 49ers, we saw remote desktop/ VDI deployments, stadium-specific applications, network management boxes, and more.
Of course, there were lots of Intel Xeon servers for hosting applications and workstations for VDI/ remote desktop here but it felt a bit more like the STH labs where there was a lot of different gear.
Something stark in the stadium was just how much of the data center was dedicated to networking. There was an entire aisle of single-mode fiber patch panels.
There was another aisle for switching just next to it.
Inside the data center, aside from fiber conduit drops, we also spotted the panels for the phone network inside the stadium.
That data center’s focus on networking perhaps makes sense. The stadium can have 70,000 fans, workers, and so forth enter and hammer the in-stadium WiFi before eventually departing. Santa Clara is known for having its own power company and has been forward-thinking laying dark fiber as it brings buildings online. At the heart of Silicon Valley, connectivity to the stadium and the stands is a big deal.
Walking around the stadium, there were a huge number of cameras as well as access points everywhere we looked.
We walked next to the Executive Huddle where a lot of the game-day analytics happen.
Crazy stuff
Awesome inside look, especially in the video. But isn’t Intel a little embarassed that one could do all that with one Threadripper system? 🙂