The heart of business: How data centres are growing bigger and better

Infrastructure needed to power companies is expanding around India and upgrading technology that's environment-friendly

A decade ago, a data centre (DC) was a bleak building on the outskirts of a city and visiting it was a humdrum task. Things have changed: the centres now spread over acres of land; they are buzzing with people, and their technology is minding the environment.

Japan’s NTT, one of the largest sector firms, has built a DC campus on a 14- acre plot in Chandivali in North Central Mumbai. The campus has four buildings running operations and three more are under construction there. The total load of the campus is around 220 megawatts (Mw), out of which 50 per cent is active. The eleven-storeyed 'Mumbai 9' on the campus is the tallest data centre building in the country. The company, which has a total investment commitment of $4.5 billion in India, has another DC of 14 buildings in Airoli in Navi Mumbai and it is constructing new campuses in Chennai and Noida.

Shekhar Sharma, chief executive officer and managing director of NTT Global Data Centers & Cloud infrastructure India & NTT Comm­unications India Network Services, said customers wanted 

DC infrastructure that supported their demand.

Computer power

“The computing power required and the data flow is of completely different dimensions. A few years ago the compute power per rack would be abysmally low. At present we are talking about a minimum of 10 to 20 kilowatts (Kw) per rack. And this goes up as according to customer dem­and and requirements,” said Sharma.

India’s CtrlS Datacenters is building DC campuses, too. It is working on 21 new DCs with a combined capacity of 1,000 Mw. Mumbai hosts its largest campus with a capacity of 300 Mw, followed by Hyderabad (250 Mw), Chennai (100 Mw) and Kolkata (100 Mw). 

“The explosion of growth of data can only be met by large-scale data centre campuses. These campuses are connected to the power grid with in-house substations for reliable and high quality power. They also help in bringing in green energy from solar/hydro plants,” said Sridhar Pinnapureddy, chairman of CtrlS.

Companies said Indian data centres had to make the best use of small land parcels, so buildings there were multi-storeyed and require rigorous structural engineering. Centres use green power for their needs and have set up standards to meet with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) norms.

NTT said in India it was the pioneer in using the liquid immersion cooling (LIC) and direct contact liquid cooling (DCLC) technologies for managing the heat generated in DCs. The company’s other DC in Mhape, Navi Mumbai, improved its energy efficiency by almost 30 per cent by using the two technologies.

The other aspect of DCs is the focus on renewable energy (RE). “At present we have invested in RE projects and produce more green energy. We hope to reach 60-70 per cent of our usage within the next few years powered by green energy. While at present we are investing in solar and wind energy, in future we are also looking at technologies that allow us to store more energy in batteries etc,” said Sharma.

Conserving resources

NTT’s India data centres consume 40 per cent of their power from captive green power and the company plans to increase such usage to 60 per cent over the years.

CtrlS is investing in 153 Mwp (Megawatt peak) solar projects in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh to generate 250,000-Mwh (Megawatt hour) energy annually – an amount enough to power 50,000 Indian homes each year. The investment includes a 100 Mw solar project in Maharashtra that will be owned by the company.

CtrlS plans to invest in additional 250 Mw projects by 2025 as part of its net zero strategy.