US State of Virginia Has More Datacenter Capacity Than Europe or China
The state of Virginia has over a third of America's hyperscale datacenter capacity, and this amounts to more than the entire capacity of China or the whole of Europe, highlighting just how much infrastructure is concentrated along the so-called Datacenter Alley. The Register reports: These figures come from 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. "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." 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. 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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