US state of Virginia has more datacenter capacity than Europe or China
- Reference: 1662656771
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/09/08/virginia_datacenter_alley_capacity/
- Source link:
These figures come from [1]Synergy Research Group , which said that the US accounts for 53 percent of global hyperscale datacenter capacity, as measured by critical IT load, at the end of the second quarter of 2022. The remainder is relatively evenly split between China, Europe, and the rest of the world.
While few would be surprised at the US accounting for the lion's share of datacenter capacity, the fact that so much is concentrated in one state could raise a few eyebrows, especially when it is centered on a small number of counties in Northern Virginia – typically Loudoun, Prince William, and Fairfax – which make up Datacenter Alley.
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Amazon in particular locates a large amount of its datacenter infrastructure in Northern Virginia, with Microsoft, Facebook, Google, ByteDance, and others also having a major presence, according to Synergy.
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"Hyperscale operators take a lot of factors into account when deciding where to locate their datacenter infrastructure," said Synergy chief analyst John Dinsdale.
"This includes availability of suitable real estate, cost and availability of power supply options, proximity to customers, the risk of natural disasters, local incentives and approvals processes, the ease of doing business and internal business dynamics, and this has inevitably led to some hyperscale hot spots."
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Synergy's research is based on an analysis of the datacenter footprint of 19 of the world's major cloud and internet service firms, which covers the largest operators in SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, search, social networking, e-commerce, and gaming.
The big three cloud providers – Amazon, Microsoft and Google – have the broadest hyperscale bit barn footprint, with each of these having over 130 datacenters of the 800 or so around the globe.
When measured in datacenter capacity, the leading companies are Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Alibaba and Tencent, according to Synergy.
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Outside the US, the relatively isolated Chinese market boasts the majority of the datacenter infrastructure of Chinese outfits like Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu.
In Europe, the top locations for hyperscale infrastructure are Ireland and the Netherlands, two countries that have relatively small economies but have been heavily favored for locating hyperscale datacenters, often because of the incentives they offer.
[7]OVHcloud opens up Bring Your Own IP service for IPv4 failover
[8]Japan's NTT claims it's built 1.2Tbit/s optical comms that sip power
[9]SoftIron to start selling 'fully turnkey' cloud platform
[10]Underwater datacenter will open for business this year
"The Netherlands and Ireland have always punched far above their weight, beating out countries with larger economies like Germany and the UK," said Dinsdale.
"But globally, the standout region is the US state of Virginia. Virginia has far more hyperscale datacenter capacity than either China or the whole continent of Europe."
This concentration of vast bit barns in a few localities can have bad as well as good consequences.
In Virginia, new datacenter projects have started to [11]run into opposition over land use and concerns over water quality, while a report in July claimed that the region [12]did not have enough power transmission capacity for all of the planned builds.
In Ireland, South Dublin County Council put a [13]ban on any further bit barns being built within its boundaries in June. Concerns were raised that datacenters are having a major impact on the Irish electricity network and the country could face " [14]rolling blackouts " if the growing demand was not addressed.
But this situation may only be short-lived, according to Dinsdale, who said that Synergy expects bit barns to become more widely distributed.
"Our analysis of the future datacenter pipeline shows that the relative importance of these hot spots will tail off a little over the next five years, as hyperscale infrastructure permeates a broader geographic footprint," he said. ®
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[1] https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/virginia-still-has-more-hyperscale-data-center-capacity-than-either-europe-or-china
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Yxpl9QbTBDhx9Fn4djQL2wAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yxpl9QbTBDhx9Fn4djQL2wAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yxpl9QbTBDhx9Fn4djQL2wAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yxpl9QbTBDhx9Fn4djQL2wAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/07/ovhcloud_ipv4/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/07/ntt_1_2_tbits_optical_comms/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/06/softiron_unveils_ambitious_fully_turnkey/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/01/subsea_cloud_underwater_datacenter/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/03/datacenter_virginia_rules/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/29/the_us_biggest_datacenter_market/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/15/irish_datacenter_ban_reversed/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/11/ireland_data_cnetre_electricity/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Sounds familiar
I lived in Fairfax County for 17 years, pretty much centered on the 90s, and I remember AOL employees claiming that most internet traffic went through their data centers. No idea if it was true. Of course, they all retired at 16 and bought islands, so I'm no longer in touch with any of them.
Oh - the irony
A bit ironic that more than 40% of Virginians in rural areas don't have access to broadband internet access...
Re: Oh - the irony
But 40% of the world's banjos ?
Re: Oh - the irony
Ding-a-ding-ding-ding
Between
Being at the center of government - including all the government & military contractors - and fairly close to Fort Meade, MD where NSA's HQ is located, it isn't hard to guess at the reasons. It is also close to a number of major east coast population centers such as NYC, but far enough away it can serve as a redundant site for disaster recovery purposes.
It's been that way since pre-WWW times. I remember most of IBM BITNET traffic going through a hub in Virginia, back in the mid-'80s
There was also a big hub for early internet traffic there too, run by MITRE. We used to joke that's where the NSA Trawler was. If only we knew...
MAE East
I think you are thinking of MAE East which was setup by UUNET and MFS and was originally setup around 1992 in a cinderblock room in the parking garage at 1919 Gallows Road and was shut down in late 2000's. As I remember most of the connections moved to an Equinox building close by.
MAE East is a big reason Northern VA is overrun with datacenters now because all the early players (AOL, UUNET, MFS, etc) were based in N.VA and connected to MAE-East so of course that is where you want to be close to or pull fiber to, or build the first Internet datacenters which begat the second internet datacenters and repeat ad nauseum.
Who'd have thunk it
Half the worlds data storage is sited next to the HQs of the spy agencies of the world's only superpower
In other news - West Yorkshire has more Pontefract Cake production than Albania and Zimbabwe combined !