Alibaba Cloud contributed and paid for the launch of three hyperscale data centers in China and plans to build more in the next few years. This Chinese tech giant aims to invest USD 28 billion for modernizing cloud infrastructure while serving digital transformation needs, simultaneously.
The three new sites, namely, Hangzhou, Jiangsu Province’s Nantong, and Inner Mongolia’s Ulanqab run on Alibaba’s technologies, which include Hanguang 800 AI chip, X-dragon architecture, and Apsara Distributed OS. The invested amount of approximately USD 28 billion will contribute to building cloud infrastructure. Moreover, the launch of data centers also tapped various green technologies such as liquid cooling and wind energy. And this, as per the company, helped slash power consumption by at least 70%. The power usage effectiveness was on track as all of its energy was used for computing.
The Ulanqab made use of natural air as a cooling system as the temperature in the Inner Mongolia city is already low. So, this site does not require any machine-powered cooling system for ten months in a year. And lastly, Nantong tapped intelligent robots to conduct maintenance tasks and automated monitoring.
Before the launch of these three, there were two hyperscale data centers in existing Heyuan and Zhangbei and both of which had supported workload spikes during Alibaba’s shopping festival held on November 11, 2019.
As mentioned above, Alibaba is working on its plans to build at least ten hyperscale data centers in the “coming years” intending to help enterprises moving toward the digital dream in the post-pandemic era.
The growth of hyperscale data centers is continuing at a fast pace in 2020. According to Synergy Research Group (SRG), as of now, there are 541 hyperscale data centers across the world with another 176 in the pipeline.