Data Centre LIVE 2025: Paul Greenley, Vodafone - Keynote
Closing Data Centre LIVE, Paul Greenley, Senior Principal Manager DC Infrastructure and Facilities for Group Data Centres at Vodafone, took the audience through a real-world transformation project.
Exploring the strategies for turning a legacy data centre space into AI-ready infrastructure, Paul shared practical insight into reclaiming power, cooling and capacity from ageing systems without building from scratch.
The retrofit opportunity: transforming from within
Vodafone’s journey began with a challenge: suppliers were requesting on-premise cloud services, but existing data centre rooms lacked sufficient space, cooling or power.
Instead of expanding outward, Paul and his team looked inward, repurposing a neglected storage room in their Dublin facility into a next-generation compute space.
The solution? A pioneering in-row hot oil pod system, first tested by Vodafone back in 2016.
“We were early,” Paul admitted. “We didn’t fully understand it then, but the proof of concept worked and now we’re scaling it.”
These pod-based systems allow high-density cooling within legacy data halls, with ambient room cooling remaining stable even at increased compute loads.
10 pod rooms have now been deployed across Europe, with the Dublin site acting as the flagship.
Reclaiming kilowatts and rethinking ROI
Paul explained how the team targeted overprovisioned legacy systems and decommissioned obsolete racks to free up capacity.
“We’re reclaiming kilowatts and assessing them for financial benefit,” he said, referencing the post-COVID surge in electricity prices that accelerated Vodafone’s rethink.
By removing fragmented workloads and outdated hardware, Vodafone not only created space but also unlocked stranded power and improved energy efficiency.
“We achieved a PUE of 1.2 in a brownfield site,” Paul said, calling it a major milestone.
Disposal was handled carefully through a certified process, servers were crushed, data wiped and materials sent to partners for recycling or resale credits.
“It’s not just cost-neutral, it generated credits for future disposal needs,” he noted.
Scaling quickly and staying resilient
Speed was critical. In just five months, the team built two dedicated pod rooms within the existing Dublin data centre, complete with independent cooling systems, fire suppression and in-row coolers.
“We had 50 workers on site, navigating tight space, legacy pipes and active environments,” Paul said.
Each pod room features N+1 resilience, condensed water units outside, and multiple cooling strategies. Despite the complexity, the project was delivered on time and has since been expanded across Vodafone’s European estate.
“Our future strategy is not to build out, but to build within,” Paul said.
This means optimising existing facilities, avoiding CapEx-intensive greenfield builds and continually upgrading to meet modern compute demands.
He also outlined Vodafone’s pod deployment model: each new location is assessed for footprint, power availability and cooling, with design partners engaged early for tailored implementation.
Lessons learned: space, power and fragmentation
In a Q&A, Paul shared key takeaways from the retrofit journey:
- Look at rack units, not just rack count: “De-fragment workloads to free up space and consolidate.”
- Legacy infrastructure hides opportunity: “Our data centres were full, but underused.”
- Partners matter: Engineering collaboration and construction expertise were essential to the success of rapid deployments.
By focusing on optimisation rather than expansion, Vodafone has turned a retrofit challenge into a replicable strategy, one that balances sustainability, resilience and real-world compute needs.
Paul closed with a reminder that sometimes innovation isn’t about the latest headline technology, but about doing more with what you already have.
“You don’t always need a new data centre. Sometimes, you just need to look differently at the one you’ve got,” he concluded.
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