AirTrunk to build new data center in Malaysia
19 Jan 2023
The Malaysian data center market continues to see increased investments with AirTrunk, a hyperscale data center specialist, announcing its entry into the country with a planned 150+ megawatt( MW) data center. Malaysia recently witnessed several large companies including Equinix and Google announcing plans to build more hyperscale data centers as well.
In fact, Mahadhir Aziz, CEO of Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation recently stated that data centers recorded the most investments in Malaysia in 2022. The Malaysian data center market is also expected to be worth US$2 billion by 2026.
Named AirTrunk JHB1 (JHB1), the facility will be the company’s first in Malaysia and ninth in APJ, taking its data center platform to over 1.35 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. The JHB1 campus will span 10.3 hectares of land in Johor Bahru, a strategic location at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. Servicing a major cloud availability zone for AirTrunk’s customers, the facility will also offer strong domestic and international connections to regional technology hubs including Singapore, with an end-to-end cross-border connection strategy.
Driven by rapidly increasing cloud adoption in Southeast Asia, JHB1 will be anchored by one of the world’s biggest technology companies.
The state of Johor is becoming an increasingly popular location to build data centers. Apart from its proximity to Singapore, the infrastructure in the state is able to support the demands of modern data centers. Last year, Bridge Data Centers opened its data center in the state with ByteDance. YTL Data Center Holdings and Sea Ltd are also developing the Sea Data Centre, the first phase of the 500MW YTL Green Data Center Park.
(Source – AirTrunk)
AirTrunk Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Robin Khuda commented, “It is an exciting time for our business as we announce a new data center in a new country with a large anchor tenant. AirTrunk continues to develop critical digital infrastructure to support accelerating digitalization in the region.”
JHB1 will be funded under AirTrunk’s sustainability-linked loan framework and will include a number of innovations to make sure AirTrunk continues to deliver the most sustainable data centers in the region.
Sustainable innovations include a landmark cooling solution that utilizes a combination of indirect evaporative cooling (IEC) and direct-to-chip liquid cooling technology. The liquid cooling technology will enable AirTrunk customers to deploy high-density racks, reducing energy consumption by up to 20%.
Additionally, the data center will feature a solar-ready roof, equipped to add 5MW of solar panels. AirTrunk has an industry-low power usage effectiveness of 1.15, and renewable energy supply options will be available to customers.
AirTrunk Chief Technology Officer, Damien Spillane added, “With its flexible designs and innovations driving energy and water efficiencies in tropic climates, JHB1 will be the most sustainable data center in Malaysia. In line with our Net Zero by 2030 target, we are working with our customers to source renewable energy to match electricity consumption at the data center.”
The initial phase of JHB1 will provide 50MW of capacity, with construction beginning soon, due for completion in 2024. The data center is ready to expand to a total capacity of more than 150MW, with further expansion based on customer demand.
Source: Techwire Asia
