Unlike skyscrapers or shopping malls, most people pass by data centres and not realize that they are there. There’s rarely a sign denoting their identity. Sometimes there are clues, like the lack of windows in my favorite data center at 45 Parliament Street (shown above). But mainly they are inconspicuous.

If you were to check out the data centres here, Toronto Data Centers, there’s a good chance you’ve passed these buildings and haven’t even noticed them. Same is true for these buildings listed by CDML Consulting Ltd. Data centres are special on the inside, but on the outside they tend to look like many other buildings.

As for what they look like inside, I wrote a piece in 2013 about that. Even though that piece is 12 years old, I suspect they haven’t changed much on the inside, other than for the type of IT housed there.

I started working for IBM in this data centre at 245 Consumers Road in 1983 (seen below). I suspect it is still housing IT.

Data centres are something people are worried about lately. It’s understandable. But if they were more familiar with them, I would hope that worry would subside somewhat. Perhaps this post can help with that.