Data Center Telemetry in the AI Era

A decade ago, a typical enterprise rack drew five to ten kilowatts and was cooled by air. Today, reference designs for liquid-cooled AI racks run up to 132 kW per rack, and a large training cluster can swing a facility’s power draw by megawatts in a few seconds. More than half of operators in Uptime Institute’s 2026 survey built or upgraded high-density space in the past year, and 70% plan to in the next year as well.