Equinix has launched its fourth data center in Osaka, Japan.
The company is also set to invest AU$240m (US$160m) in expanding its data center presence in Australia to meet artificial intelligence (AI) related demand.
Equinix opens OS4x, TY15 to follow in September
Equinix has opened its hyperscale xScale data center, OS4x, in Osaka, Japan.
The data center will expand Equinix's capacity in the city to meet the needs of cloud service providers and is a large-scale facility with high power density per rack, and high customizability.
OS4x has chillers and pipes equipped in each data hall and can support liquid cooling including direct chip methods and rear door heat exchangers.
The data center has a total of 14.4MW of IT power across 4,925 sqm (53,025 sq ft) of data center space. The facility is connected to the adjacent OS2x in Minoh City, Osaka Prefecture.
Equinix has 17 xScale data centers globally; and four in Japan including the TY12x and TY13x in Tokyo, and OS2x in Osaka. The company has seven more xScale facilities planned to open in 2024.
Kuniko Ogawa, president and CEO of Equinix Japan, said: "We are pleased to be able to provide environments and services tailored to the needs of hyperscale companies and support the creation of new innovations in the Osaka area.
"We are also confident that by providing timely support for the expansion of businesses in Japan in response to AI demand, we will underpin society's digital vision and indirectly accelerate the digital business of companies. We will continue to accelerate the expansion of xScale data centers to support the strategies of hyperscale companies."
Mimei Ito, research manager, Software & Services at IDC Japan, added: "We found that demand for hyperscale data centers in Japan as of the end of 2045 could reach approximately four times the domestic capacity in 2023.
"In addition to the growing demand for cloud services to date, the use of AI functions in cloud services is expanding, and there are increasing cases of AI servers being deployed in hyperscale data centers. As a result, demand for hyperscale data centers is increasing, and in order to meet this demand, data center operators and real estate developers are constructing buildings and facilities to increase the supply of the required capacity."
The company's TY15 data center in Tokyo, Japan, is slated to open in September 2024.
Also in Osaka is the OS3 data center, which was launched in 2021. That data center is directly connected to Equinix's OS1 facility.
Equinix to invest AU$240m in Aussie data center expansion
Elsewhere in the APAC region, Equinix is planning to spend AU$240m (US$160m) in expanding two of its data centers in Australia.
The company will use the money to add a total of 4,175 cabinets to two of its International Business Exchange data centers in Australia: SY5 in Sydney, and ME2 in Melbourne.
2,675 racks will be at SY5, and the remaining 1,500 cabinets will go to ME2, bringing the Melbourne data center's total to 3,000.
Guy Danskine, managing director of Equinix Australia, said: “The expansion of SY5 and ME2 ensures we have the capacity in place so customers can continue to take advantage of the thriving Australian digital economy with minimal friction. Since Private AI is emerging as the preferred model of adoption, access to high-performance digital infrastructure is essential.
"This provides organizations with low-latency connectivity to multiple cloud providers, as well as private infrastructure enabling them to leverage best-of-breed AI models while maintaining localization and control of their data. Sustainability and efficiency remain a core focus to ensure we deliver this increasingly energy-intensive digital infrastructure in a responsible way.”
Equinix plans to expand support in Australia for advanced liquid cooling technologies from the start of the second half of 2024.
In February of this year, Equinix signed a Power Purchasing Agreement (PPA) in Australia with TagEnergy. Through that PPA, Equinix is purchasing 151MW of renewable energy from Golden Plains Wind Farm – East in Victoria, which will be operational in 2029. This is expected to supply enough energy to the grid to cover Equinix's 17 IBX data centers across the country.
Also at the start of this year, Equinix launched a fully managed private cloud service that enables customers to acquire and manage their own Nvidia DGX AI supercomputers in some IBX data centers globally.
