Switch company builds the largest data center in the world

SWITCH is currently implementing a very ambitious project to create a campus for the SUPERNAP Tahoe Reno Industrial Campus in Nevada, Reno. The total area of ​​the site after the completion of the construction of this object will be approximately 603 869 m ² . Several data centers will be located here, one of which will be the largest in the world. Until now, the largest of the existing data centers was the DC International Range Group, located in China. The cost of implementing the idea will be several billion US dollars (although initially it was planned to invest 1 billion).

As for the largest data center in the world, it will be "SUPERNAP Tahoe Reno 1" with a total area of ​​111,483 m ² . And this is only the first of seven data centers to be built. Interestingly, the Reno campus will not be the first for SWITCH: the Las Vegas Digital Exchange Campus is already operating in the USA, where the construction of nine data centers has already been completed, three more are planned. Upon completion, this campus will be the largest DC group in the world, with a total area of ​​about 1,746,577 m ² .

Why all this?

Interestingly, the construction of the campus, albeit such a huge one - is not an end in itself. All this is part of a grand project. As mentioned earlier, in the state of Nevada, near Las Vegas, there are already existing SWITCH data centers. The IT site SUPERNAP in Las Vegas consists of three queues, two of which are SUPERNAP 7 and SUPERNAP 8 fully functional, and the third - SUPERNAP 9 at the final stage of readiness. The total production capacity of the entire complex will be about 135,000 m ² .
')

This is how the campus of data centers in Reno will look like after its commissioning.

After the construction of the data center in Reno, these two giants will be connected by a dedicated fiber-optic line, which in turn will create a cluster on the basis of two data centers. According to the calculations provided by the company, the length of the cable connecting the two sites will be slightly less than 600 km, while the network delay between these two components of the cluster should not exceed 7 ms, which is quite enough for the combined structure to work effectively.

The top-level project is called SUPERLOOP, and it will help ensure that the delay in signal transmission in the Reno-Las-Vegas-San Francisco and Los Angeles “ring” will be reduced to just 7 milliseconds.

How big is the project?

In fact, this is the largest project of its kind in the world. Its cost was originally planned at $ 1 billion. But now it was decided to expand the project, and the cost increased three times, to 3 billion dollars. Soon, the Tesla Battery Factory will appear next to this campus of data centers.

“Switch will be able to influence society as much as Tesla, however, in a slightly different way. The two companies complement each other, ”said the CEO of EDAWN, which also participates in the creation of an industrial site in this region.

All this is so ambitious that only one of the data centers that will be based here, the SuperNAP Tahoe Reno 1, has its own 300 megawolt-ampere substation (MVA) with a total power of 150 megawatts. For comparison, a station of 100 megawatts is enough to provide energy from 40 to 80 thousand households.

The SuperNAP Tahoe Reno 1 data center will start operation in 2016, and will require about 82,000 tons (!) Of coolant for the cooling system. The data center will serve eBay services. About 1000 workers will be required for the construction of this data center, reports Switch. The total number of campus employees in Las Vegas data centers is 5,000.

By the way, the whole complex of buildings will be built on a “cushion” 12 meters high, which will avoid the danger of damage to equipment during a possible flood.



In the near future, Switch plans to transfer its data centers to energy from renewable sources. Thus, it is planned to build a solar power station with a capacity of 100 MW.

A bit of geography and economics

The infrastructure, which is now being created by Switch, will be an incentive for the development of the whole region. The project itself will allow Reno to generate income and create additional jobs for several years. As already mentioned, data between Reno, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Los Angeles will be transferred in less than 7 milliseconds. Plus, resistance to natural and man-made disasters will be enhanced, due to the repeated duplication of Superloop network resources.

Despite the fact that clients will not receive any preferences immediately after putting the infrastructure into operation, a business here will be able to receive several optional connection points at once. Switch will provide communication and local communities, including, for example, schools.

"Superloop will allow the economy of Northern and Southern Nevada to develop rapidly, plus the region will receive a reliable network infrastructure, a key factor for improving the quality of education and economic development," said a local government official. It seems that Nevada will become the most connected state in the United States.

Now among the clients of Switch are such giants as eBay, Google, Cisco, VMware, Microsoft. In the future, with increasing capacity, the company will be able to serve other companies that are already interested in the new project from Nevada.