In many data centers in the US heat density is becoming a problem. Surely that's not an issue for you?

You would think that at the South Pole cooling wouldn't be a problem but with the amount of heat we generate [in the data center] getting rid of it actually can be quite an issue. We try to pipe some that heat to other parts of the building to recover it. The data center in the old station just had a hole cut in the wall with a fan [to the outside] to cool the systems. Sometimes you'd be sitting there in a parka trying to get something done.

How do you address disaster recovery?

That's a big deal. Fire is a huge danger in the Antarctic because it is so dry and because liquid water is such a hot commodity. We try to make sure that all of our data is backed up independently and we run as many systems as possible in parallel in the two locations.

What happens if there is a fire?

We have a wet sprinkler system. That's pretty pioneering for the South Pole. The building is design to be modular and is broken into sections. If the main station ever goes out there's a survival pod with emergency communications, an emergency generator and an emergency kitchen that we can retreat to if necessary. And we do have a backup data center about a kilometer away from the station that allows the data to survive.

In the summer, the plan is if there is a fire we'll get people out of here. In the winter, we have to survive for four or five months, depending on how long it takes to get a plane in.

Do you work with any promising new technologies?

This is not the place to deploy emerging technologies. When you're on the cutting edge you require a lot of support and down here support is hard to get. It's just not the place to do it.

What have you learned from your time at South Pole Station that might help you in future endeavors?

If nothing else I would say diplomacy. Trying to work with a customer base that's everything from PhD scientists to a guy that could be an iron worker who has never been here before and just wants to know how to turned on a computer and e-mail his family. It's such an interesting experience to learn how to educate different kinds of people.

What's the most outrageous experience you had?

We have this tradition called the 300 Club. When the temperature drops below -100 we hike the sauna up to 200 degrees and stay in there as long as we can stand it. Then we run outside, naked, around the geographic pole and back inside so we get that total 300-degree change in temperature. That happens every year and it's absolutely amazing. Just the feel of that cold on your skin is like nothing else. People always wonder if you can feel the difference between 60 below and 100 below and the answer is absolutely.

Doesn't your skin freeze in those temperatures?

That's why you spend as much time as possible in the sauna. The trick is to pace yourself. You can't run because if you do you're going to get frost bite in your lungs. But you don't want to walk too slowly or you will lose all of your body heat and get frost bite in various sensitive spots. There's definitely a happy medium of a fast walk.

But even at that when everyone comes back inside, with all of the hacking and coughing going on the place sounds like a tuberculosis ward for the next couple of days.