Where is the World's Largest Data Center Location?

While some online articles attempt to list the largest data centers, it's not that simple. Determining which data center is the biggest or smallest is tricky because many things come into play.

Additionally, some companies keep details like the number of servers in their data centers a secret, making it even harder to know for sure. Despite the difficulties, we can categorize data centers in two different ways: square meters and power consumption.

The largest Data Center by power is located in the Citadel Campus in Reno, Nevada.

The Citadel Campus is not just a data center; it's a technological marvel. Spanning over hundreds of acres, this sprawling facility is a testament to human ingenuity and engineering excellence. While many data centers boast about their size in terms of square footage, The Citadel Campus distinguishes itself by another metric – power consumption. Comprising 1.4 million sqft and 130 megawatts of power capacity. On average, a typical American household consumes about 877 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per month. With 130 MW, you could power approximately 148,000 homes for a month.

Compliance and Certifications:

To meet the rigorous standards of the industry, The Citadel Campus holds various certifications, including ISO 27001 for information security and SOC 2 for operational controls.

Compliance with these standards ensures data security and operational reliability.

ISO 27001 is an international standard for information security management systems (ISMS).

It provides a systematic approach to managing sensitive company information, ensuring its confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

SOC 2, which stands for "System and Organization Controls 2," is a type of certification related to data security and privacy.

It's part of a series of standards developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) specifically for service organizations.

What is a Switch SHIELD ?

The Citadel Campus is located in a place where natural disasters are rare. However, strong winds are one thing to watch out for, as it's in the Nevada desert. To deal with this, they have a special roof system called Switch SHIELD.

Switch SHIELD is like having two super-strong roofs, one inside the other, with a big gap in between. Both roofs are incredibly tough and don't let in water or air. They can even handle winds as fast as 200 miles per hour. If the outer roof gets damaged, the inner one keeps everything safe, like the computer servers.

The desert gets super hot, but Switch is really good at keeping things cool. They have special systems that control the temperature inside and outside the data center. So, they can handle both the scorching desert heat and the heat from lots of computers running inside.

What is Switch Superloop?

The Citadel Campus is connected to places using a special 500-mile network of fiber optic cables called the Switch SUPERLOOP. With this, it only takes 4 milliseconds for data to travel from the Citadel Campus to San Francisco. They can also send data from their Core Campus in Las Vegas to Los Angeles in just 5 milliseconds.

This SUPERLOOP thing helps Switch's customers by giving them a super reliable and super fast network, especially close to the big markets in California. Plus, being in Nevada is good because it means lower taxes, cheaper power, and fewer natural disasters compared to California.

Switch is also getting ready for the future. They use the SUPERLOOP to support the next generation of internet apps that need to be always on and super reliable.