Hyperscale Data Centres: Scale, Speed & Strategy

PowerHouse announces a strategic development site

PowerHouse Data Centers (PowerHouse) has recently begun demolition on a 43 acre plot with a significant history in the digital space. The site will soon become home to its new hyperscale-sized powered shell campus. When complete, the new campus, known as PowerHouse Pacific, will include three high performance buildings totalling approximately 1.2 million square feet and a new power substation. A subsidiary of American Real Estate Partners (AREP), PowerHouse offers turnkey site selection, powered shell, and build-to-suit data centre solutions for hyperscalers, data centre operators, and multinational companies. PowerHouse Pacific's demolition process finishes in early 2024, enabling the construction of a new power substation through summer 2024 in partnership with Dominion Energy. Construction of the first of three new buildings begins in the fall of 2024 and delivers in mid-2026. The demolition of the existing structures on the site includes two multi-story parking structures, three office buildings, one mail hub, and a long-defunct pedestrian bridge stretching across Pacific Boulevard. PowerHouse Pacific's general contractor, E.E. Reed Construction, mobilised early last month, and demolition started with the parking structures. In preparation for the demolition, the team pulled literally tons of materials from each building. This meant all ceilings, floors, and walls were stripped for any wires, pipe, and other elements that could be recycled. All recyclable building materials and metal were sent for processing, and the concrete will be processed for reuse onsite, reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills and the impact of trucking this material off-site. Usable furniture and office components were donated, as was the case with the property's kitchen equipment, which PowerHouse donated to the Dulles South Soup Kitchen in Loudoun County. Each building's final preparation step is the removal of any non-load-bearing walls and flooring.

Rise of AI to drive growth for Nordic data centre market

The data centre market in the Nordics is primed for exponential growth as a result of the acceleration of AI, according to CBRE. AI and machine learning (ML) technologies have experienced unprecedented adoption levels in 2023 and these wide-scale, digital business transformations are fuelling demand for data centre infrastructure as a result. New research from CBRE suggests that much of this demand can be satisfied in the Nordics, primarily due to the low-cost power availability and leading sustainability credentials in the region. There is an abundance of low-cost hydropower available and with the inherently cold climate, there is minimal need to use additional power to cool equipment. CBRE predicts that the Nordics will account for 8% of all colocation data centre supply in Europe by the end of 2023, a sharp year-on-year increase from 5% in 2022, with many locations in the region set to benefit from increased hyperscaler demand. According to the research, Norway’s data centre capacity is expected to more than double by the end of 2026 to 500MW, compared to the projected 210MW at the end of 2023. Furthermore, CBRE predicts that Stockholm’s data centre capacity will almost double by the end of 2026 to 136MW. Stockholm, alongside Oslo and Copenhagen, already forms part of Europe’s 20 largest data centre markets, with further growth expected as customers with large scale requirements look to the Nordics to fulfil demand. Much of the new capacity will be absorbed by the hyperscale operators, but significant opportunities exist for colocation vendors to develop new purpose-build facilities, according to the research.

Start Campus drives momentum in Portugal

Start Campus has announced that it has welcomed its first hyperscaler clients for the initial setup phase at its NEST building, the company’s first phase data hall. Highlights of this event were showcased during a visit from Portuguese Minister of Infrastructure, João Galamba, who toured the 100% sustainable campus powered by 24x7 renewable energy on September 29, 2023. In advance of the upcoming operational launch of its data centre, the onboarding process for the new hyperscalers is underway, including access to unique and diverse global network connectivity solutions. The NEST is scheduled to be fully operational by March 2024 and will deliver an initial 15MW of power, setting the stage for a capacity of 495MW across six buildings. "This moment represents a very important milestone for Start Campus and the SINES Project,” says Afonso Salema, CEO of Start Campus. “We are developing a dynamic sustainability driven ecosystem that will place Portugal at the centre of the rapidly growing international data market. We’re challenging what’s deemed possible in our industry, so we are particularly pleased with the entry of the first clients who resonate with our values, decisively reducing the carbon footprint of this industry.”

Juniper Networks announces enhanced data centre capabilities

Juniper Networks has announced new Juniper Apstra capabilities that enhance operator experiences to facilitate the deployment and operations of private data centre infrastructures. With the introduction of new experience-first data centre features, including simplified data collection and visualisation via graph databases, tighter flow data integration from multivendor switches and automated provisioning via Terraform, Juniper's customers can continue to leverage Apstra as the premier solution for intent-based networking and automated data centre assurance with even more management capabilities, that make private data centres as flexible and agile to operate as cloud-based infrastructures. Budget constraints, skills shortages and increasing complexity continue to drive the need for automated data centre operations. As the pioneer of intent-based networking, Juniper Apstra provides exceptional value by automating and validating the design, deployment and operation of multivendor data centre networks. In addition, it provides a single source of truth for predicting, analysing and troubleshooting ongoing operations. With the latest release of Apstra software, customers and partners get even more value, which includes: Simple data collection and visualisation: Building on Apstra’s powerful, unique graph database, users can now easily customise intent-based analytics probes for telemetry and visibility into network operations, then easily explore and visualise the data using the new database query interface included in Apstra 4.2.0. The easy-to-use, no-code user interface enables new users to easily query and explore the database while allowing experienced users to write customised graph queries. Complete network visibility with integrated flow data: Multivendor flow data through Apstra provides granular visibility for in-depth analysis and insights into the application traffic flows traversing the network without the complexity and cost of a separate monitoring system. When paired with Apstra’s telemetry and analytics features, these capabilities simplify and speed troubleshooting, enable better performance management, capacity planning and cost control, and improve security and compliance - regardless of vendor. Automated and streamlined network provisioning with Terraform: Companies currently using the Terraform Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) platform to automate their public cloud deployments can now use the Terraform provider for Apstra to automatically push configurations to the data centre through Apstra without any API programming. By simplifying network operations, Terraform and Apstra accelerate the delivery of new services, giving organisations a data centre solution modelled after the simplicity and agility of the cloud. When these features are coupled with Apstra’s existing intent-based networking capabilities and Juniper validated designs, organisations can simplify and standardise data centre architectures to achieve hyperscaler-like efficiencies.

Zayo launches new Bordeaux route expansion

Zayo Group Holdings has announced the launch of a new Bordeaux wavelength route connecting Paris and Marseille. The Bordeaux route leverages its extensive fibre-optic network in France and affirms its commitment to delivering infrastructure solutions to customers across Europe and around the world. Bordeaux is a strategic connection for Zayo’s global network due to its central location in the Southwest region of France, thriving technology industry and proximity to cable landing station locations. This provides the opportunities to tap into this growing market and provide critical connectivity infrastructure to support the region's digital economy. The company also provides these regions with access to Europe, the Middle East, and North America. This ensures maximum uptime and minimal disruption to customers' operations, while also providing greater network flexibility and resiliency. As part of the route expansion, it selected Equinix’s first International business exchange data centre in Bordeaux, BX1, as one of its major hubs on the new route. This will act as the connectivity hub for the new Amitié subsea cable, delivered this summer by a consortium of hyperscalers made up of Microsoft and Meta, Orange, Vodafone and Aquacomms. It will play a key role in responding to rapidly increasing bandwidth demand in the region. 

GLP announces new data centre campus in Tokyo

GLP has announced that it has broken ground on Tokyo West 1 (TKW1), its first three-building data centre campus totalling 31MW IT load in West Tokyo, Japan. Building one represents the first phase of the three-building campus and is expected to be ready for service by February 2025. It is designed to meet both hyperscale and enterprise customer requirements for physical and cyber security, safety, reliability, and sustainability. Buildings two and three representing 10MW and 11MW IT load respectively, will be developed in sequence in the vicinity of the same site. Located in an area with low natural disaster risk to promote stable business continuity, the campus is situated within a network-rich environment and is in proximity to some of the largest enterprise, IT and telecommunications and hyperscale companies. The new facility will also feature amenities including private meeting rooms, offices and common rest areas such as a lounge to provide customers with an optimal working environment. Leveraging its existing real estate portfolio and core capabilities of acquiring land for development, GLP has assembled a dedicated global team of trusted data centre industry veterans. Combined with experienced local professionals, the team is well-equipped to provide full-scale data centre technical expertise in design, delivery, and operations. TKW1 will be constructed to LEED Gold certification standards and will benefit from GLP’s renewable energy business, offering clean sources of energy to advance the sustainability objectives of its future enterprise and hyperscale customers. “This ground-breaking marks our first data centre facility in this region and represents a significant milestone as we further establish our digital infrastructure business to be a leading provider in Japan. As a rising data centre hub in Asia, Tokyo is a prime location for our entry into the market and we look forward to serving hyperscale and enterprise customers’ data capacity needs in this region,” says Yoshiyuki Chosa, President and CEO of GLP Japan. “We will leverage our expertise, scale and synergies with our renewable energy business to provide customers with sustainable digital infrastructure to power the future.” Click here for latest data centre news.

Pulsant delivers cost savings for LinkPool crypto ecosystem

LinkPool has reduced memory, CPU and disk costs by 85%, while delivering higher network performance, following its move to platformEDGE, which is Pulsant’s multiregional UK edge infrastructure. Having previously operated on hyperscale cloud infrastructure, the combination of cost inflation and performance limitations led LinkPool to seek a solution that offered lower latency and expense without sacrificing scalability. platformEDGE was chosen to compose the infrastructure it needs to support its business-critical global workload. In moving to a regional data centre network offering edge colocation, hyperscale cloud access, and distributed compute – all available in a high-performance package – LinkPool has been able to make huge cost savings while improving performance. It has done so in an infrastructure capable of scaling to match the company’s success and growth over time. Pulsant's regional network also meant that Sheffield's data centre was ideally placed to personally oversee the build, onboarding its infrastructure in a matter of days rather than weeks. Continued investment has also seen a recent upgrade to 380kW from 176kW processing power (+114%), ensuring all businesses in the region can benefit scalable, high-performance, low latency edge application delivery. As part of the edge platform, Pulsant's Milton Keynes data centre delivers resiliency via dedicated links over its high-performance, secure, national network. “As the first third-party team creating products and services specifically for the Chainlink network, we’re in a unique position to further its use cases and adoption, and Pulsant is enabling us to do that at scale,” says Jonathan Huxtable, Founder, LinkPool. “LinkPool is committed to lowering the barrier of entry to meaningfully contribute to the Chainlink Network. Pulsant is doing the same for edge computing, making sure regional businesses like us can drastically reduce costs and improve performance,” Jonathan adds. Click here for latest data centre news.

Accelevation acquires Instor Solutions

Accelevation Holdings has acquired Instor Solutions to integrate Instor’s data centre white space installation and project management expertise with its data centre containment and caging solutions business, Conatech, to form the Accelevation Data Centre Business Unit. The acquisition has established a new, vertically integrated data centre business unit comprising both brands to create a single, customer-facing entity and forming the USA’s large integrated data centre services solutions provider. Together, the Accelevation Data Centre Business Unit will solve key challenges for hyperscale, colocation and enterprise customers, including faster product design, manufacturing and supply chain capabilities, with dedicated white space integration, services and project management expertise. By combining both leading brands, it has created the only organisation within the US market capable of providing fully integrated, data centre infrastructure product manufacturing, with self-performing, fit-up solutions design and project delivery. This comprehensive services offering will propel hyperscale, colocation and enterprise data centre operators to benefit from speed and efficiency, offering enhanced value throughout the entire lifecycle and delivering data centre environments at accelerated pace and scale. Through its integrated sales, manufacturing and operations teams, for example, Conatech’s customers now have immediate access to the data centre white space design, build and integration services. In turn, Instor has secured access to the vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities used by Accelevation to produce its Conatech data centre products. Accelevation President and CEO, Michael Rubiera, says, “We are thrilled to welcome Instor to the Accelevation portfolio of innovative companies. Combining Instor’s 40+ sales and project management professionals to our Accelevation portfolio creates one of the most comprehensive and all-encompassing solution providers of data centre products and installations in the world. We couldn’t be more excited about the possibilities and growth this acquisition provides.” Click here for latest data centre news.

CtrlS and EECO plan Thailand's hyperscale data centre

CtrlS has signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with EECO (Eastern Economic Corridor Office) to lease a 10ac land parcel for 50 years, located in Chonburi province. The land will be used to build a 150MW data centre in the Greenfield campus and mark its first international market expansion and hyperscale data centre in Thailand.   At a time when digitalisation across Thailand, deployment of 5G, and improved connectivity with highly efficient submarine cables, with countries such as USA, China, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan, is making the country an attractive hub for digital infrastructure, the data centre development in the EECO will attract both international and domestic hyperscale and enterprise customers. Speaking on the MoA, Sridhar Pinnapureddy, Chairman, CtrlS Datacenters, says, “Through this collaboration, we aim to serve customers’ needs for digital services, both domestic and international. The data centre is designed to meet hyperscalers’ needs in addition to serving high end IT/compute needs of domestic enterprises.” He adds, “We see this data centre as a unique opportunity to contribute towards development of Thailand’s eastern region and offer a robust diverse option for international customers and partners for establishing their footprint in the country and region. Thailand is strategically well positioned at the centre of Southeast Asia and we strive to bring investments and international customers to the country through our data centre.”        The site also offers proximity to submarine cable landing stations for AAG (Asia America Gateway) and ADC (Asia Direct Cable) systems, making this data centre a point of connection equipped with submarine and terrestrial cable networks to connect to other data centres and industrial estates. It is also close to the EECO startup incubator and is elevated relative to flood prone areas, with mean sea level > 40m. The EECO is geographically diverse from Bangkok and is at the intersection of multiple fibre paths north and south.

NTT launches hyperscale data centre campus in Chennai

NTT has announced the launch of its latest hyperscale data centre campus, Chennai 2, and the arrival of its subsea cable system, MIST, in the city. The campus, located in Ambattur and spread across 6 acres, is a project with a total planned capacity of 34.8MW critical IT load from two data centre buildings. The first facility has a 17.4MW IT load capacity. MIST subsea cable, constructed by consortium members including NTT Communications India Network Service and Orient Link, is the first cable system for the company to directly provide connectivity to and from India. It spans an impressive 8,100km and will connect Malaysia, India, Singapore and Thailand, offering cutting-edge connectivity capabilities. The system also represents India's first cable landing of a 12 fibre pair capacity, capable of carrying more than 200TBPS of data.Chennai’s location has opened three distinct opportunities for these projects. The first is addressing the demand for high quality data centre infrastructure driven by its digital ecosystem that includes traditional and new economy businesses; the second is positioning the state as a disaster recovery (DR) site for enterprises with primary IT infrastructure in other cities; and third is leveraging global connectivity to offer data centre capacity to markets in South East Asia, where capacity is in short supply. These capabilities will transform it into the digital gateway connecting the country to the world.Adding further, Shekhar Sharma, CEO and Managing Director, NTT Global Data Centres & Cloud Infrastructure and NTT Communications, says, “The launch of the state-of-the-art data centre campus along with the MIST cable system in Chennai mark major milestones in our journey in India. These projects are perfect examples of Japanese design quality and global expertise, tailored to the Indian market. They have reinforced our position as the leader for data centre services in India and helped transform Chennai into the new destination for data centres in South East Asia. We’re glad to be able to play a part in making Chennai the gateway connecting digital businesses across India, South East Asia, and the world. With our capabilities, we’re eager to help our clients unlock greater value from their digital transformation efforts.”