Top 10: Biggest Data Centres

The data landscape is changing, causing data centres to expand in order to meet global data and technology demands.

According to Exploding Topics, around 147 zettabytes of data will be generated in 2024, which will rise to 181 zettabytes in 2025. Currently, videos account for more than half of internet traffic. With these facts in mind, it is essential for the data centre industry to find new ways to innovate to meet rising customer demand for data, whilst keeping emissions down.

In considering this, Data Centre Magazine showcases some of the largest data centres, ranked by square footage.

10. Portugal Telecom Complex

Size: 800,000 square feet

Location: Covilhã, Portugal

The Portugal Telecom data centre in Covilhã, Portugal is a sustainable facility that combines the latest IT technology with progressive architecture. The location of Covilhã was chosen for the location because it’s the coldest place in Portugal.

First completed in 2013, the facility was constructed by Portugal Telecom and offers 129,000 square feet of colocation space across 24 data halls and has capacity enough for more than 50,000 servers. Opened in 2013 and expanded in 2018, it is a certified Tier III facility.

9. CoreSite Reston VA3

Size: 940,000 square feet

Location: Northern Virginia

Built by CoreSite, a subsidiary of leading US telecommunications company, American Tower, the Reston VA3 site is one of three of the company’s interconnected data centres. It provides infrastructure for high-density compute-intensive requirements and offers access to an ecosystem of cloud, network and IT providers. 

VA3 is tethered via dark fibre to CoreSite VA1 and VA2 which allows customers to easily establish interconnections and effectively deploy workloads to maximise the value of a hybrid IT strategy. It provides low latency, rapid scalability and flexibility to meet changing application and data requirements.

8. QTS: Atlanta Metro

Size: 970,000 square feet

Location: Atlanta, United States

​​​​​​​Built by QTS Data Centers, the Atlanta-Metro data centre is one of the largest data centres in the world. Its campus features its own on-site Georgia Power substations and direct fibre access to a wide variety of carrier alternatives.

QTS Atlanta also offers flexible space and power to meet current customer needs, in addition to accommodating future growth plans. Across its more than 95 acres, it has three dedicated on-site expandable power substations and a fibre conduit system enabling express fibre to go between each building.

7. Utah Data Center

Size: 1,000,000 square feet

Location: Utah, United States

The Utah Data Center, code-named Bumblehive, is the first Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative (IC CNCI) data centre. It is designed to support the Intelligence Community's efforts to monitor, strengthen and protect the US.

Located in the west of the country, it is a recognised Tier III data centre. As part of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, the National Security Agency (NSA) leads operations at the facility as the executive agent for the Director of National Intelligence and it was completed in 2014 at a cost of US$1.5bn.

6. Lakeside Technology Center

Size: 1,100,000 square feet

Location: Chicago, United States

Originally built to house a printing company, the Lakeside Technology Center was retrofitted in the 1990s and is now owned by Digital Realty as a carrier hotel. Digital Realty operates its ORD10 data centre within the building, which also houses the likes of Equinix, Centersquare, Colocation America and ColoHouse.

Known as the largest carrier hotels in the US, the Lakeside Technology Center is an eight-story building that totals more than one million square feel and offers 100 megawatts (MW) of power.

5. Apple’s Mesa Data Center

Size: 1,300,000 square feet

Location: Arizona, United States

Owned and operated by tech giant Apple, the Mesa Data Center is located in Arizona and first began servicing customers in 2017. Known as Apple’s global data command centre, the company invested US$2bn into the site to ensure it serves as a key logistics and operations hub. It supports all of Apple’s data centres around the world and is powered by its own on-site solar farm.

Data that is monitored by Apple at this facility includes its applications such as iMessage, Siri and iCloud, with the site employing around 150 people to keep operations running.

4. CWL1 Data Centre

Size: 2,000,000 square feet

Location: Newport, Wales (UK)

The CWL1 data centre campus is considered to be one of Europe’s largest data centre campuses. It is designed and built to exceed Tier III standards and has a density per rack ranging from 2 kW to more than 125 kW, in order to meet customer demands from all over the world.

Operated by Vantage Data Centers, the campus is ultra-secure with fast cloud and fibre connectivity services. It has delivered 100% uptime since it first opened in 2010.

3. The Citadel Campus

Size: 7,750,015 square feet

Location: Nevada, United States

As one of the largest server rooms in the world, the Citadel is located in Reno, Nevada and is one of the world’s most extensive data centre sites. Run by Switch Inc, its largest-build facility is known as TAHOE RENO 1 and comprises 1.4 million square feet and 130 megawatts (MW) of power capacity.

The Citadel highlights the overwhelming advances in data centre technology to support the global surge in data usage. The data centre campus has secured its place as the world’s largest colocation data centre and is fully powered by renewable energy. Its facilities have also been rated Tier IV.

2. China Mobile 

Size: 10,763,910 square feet

Location: Hohhot, China (in the Inner Mongolia Information Park)

China Mobile’s smart computing centre in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, boasts one of the largest computing capacities of any single intelligent computing hub in the world. 

The company’s Hohhot Data Center has a total computing power of 6.7 EFLOPS, or 6.7 billion floating-point operations per second and deploys around 20,000 artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator cards.

When it was first completed, China Mobile stated the data centre has space for 9,000 racks with 100,000 servers. There have been rumoured plans over the years over possible expansion projects which would add even more servers and rack space.

1. China Telecom Data Center

Size: 10,763,910 square feet

Location: Hohhot, China (in the Inner Mongolia Information Park)

Often described as the largest data centre site in the world, China Telecom’s data centre in the China Telecom-Inner Mongolia Information Park provides services for major world-leading companies like Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu. 

The site cost roughly US$3bn to construct and covers more than 10 million square feet, consuming 150 MW of energy across six data halls. It includes a range of facilities such as a cloud computing data centre, call centres, warehouses and offices to offer a seamless experience for its users.

Other notable features of the site include its use of cutting-edge technology and its ability to provide unparalleled security and reliability.

******

Make sure you check out the latest edition of Data Centre Magazine and also sign up to our global conference series - Tech & AI LIVE 2024

******

Data Centre Magazine is a BizClik brand