Switch to build world’s largest data centre in Nevada

US managed data services provider Switch communications has unveiled its plans to build a massive $1-billion data centre in Reno in Nevada.

The Switch SUPERNAP 7 is a 400,000-sq.-ft. data center in Las Vegas, which now competes with Phoenix and Salt Lake City for some of the largest data center projects in North America. Photo: Switch Communications

The 3-million square foot (sq.ft) Supernap data centre, the world's biggest, will be constructed over 1,000 acres of land, the Las Vegas-based company said in a statement.

Privately owned Switch provides a complete range of voice and data services using fixed and mobile technologies.

Supernap is a project of Switch, which claims to be the most energy efficient, high-density data centre in the world. The company provides, security, energy and cooling for thousands of servers owned by industry heavyweights such as eBay, Xerox, Zappos, Amazon, Google, Cisco, Microsoft's Xbox One, Dreamworks, Shutterfly and the US government.

The Reno project was announced over the weekend by Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval.

''This will make Nevada the most digitally connected state in the United States,'' Sandoval said in his annual State address.

The first phase of the Reno project consists of an 800,000-sq.ft data centre which is scheduled to open in early 2016. E-commerce giant eBay Inc will be the anchor tenant of the new data center.

The project will be designed to meet the Uptime Institute's Tier IV Gold rating, the industry's highest standard, currently met only by the Switch Supernap 8 facilities in Las Vegas.

Switch's cloud computing hub in Las Vegas includes two Supernap data centres with the third nearing completion. It has a cumulative capacity of approximately 1.4 million sq.ft and the company plans to further expand the facilities by over 1 million sq.ft.

Supernap Reno will be connected to the main Supernap campus in Las Vegas 500 miles (800 km) away through Superloop, a new optical fiber network, which will also extend to Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to the statement.

Switch said the fibre loop will place 50 million people within 14 milliseconds of data hosted at Supernaps. Sending data within the state would take only half of that time.

The Superloop is estimated to take five to 10 years for completion.

Switch CEO and founder Rob Roy said, ''Offering our clients the ability to locate their infrastructure safely in two cities, over 500 miles apart and yet only 7 milliseconds away is critical for both redundancy and scalability.''

''The construction of Supernap Reno will create the need for Switch to expand its Las Vegas footprint and Nevada will remain Switch's global anchor location,'' he added.

The data centres designed by Rob Roy incorporates innovations including advanced cooling and heat containment systems, additional heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and a boudle-roof system for protection from wind speeds of up to 200 miles per hour.

The Reno project is a boon for the state of Nevada, as the state is diversifying its economy beyond traditional tourism and casinos. Switch's announcement follows the decision by electric car maker Tesla Motors to open its Gigafactory-the world's biggest and most advanced battery plant- in Reno.

The state has offered incentives such as reduction in sales tax and individual house taxes similar to those offered to bring Apple's data centre to the area, but the exact worth of the benefits is not yet known.

''The incentive package still has to go via the county and our board. We will be applying the same statute we made use of in the Apple project, which was essentially narrowed by the legislature throughout the 2013 session,'' Steve Hill, director of the governor's workplace of financial improvement, said.

Adam Kramer, vice president of the company for government and public affairs expects much more customers in the Reno plant than in Las Vegas, although he has not specified the number of new jobs to be created. 

''We expect very a handful of our extra than 1,000 consumers in Las Vegas to join us here. With Switch coming to Reno and the technology infrastructure we're bringing, we also anticipate bringing new customers and more technology firms who want to company in Nevada,'' Kramer said.