Alibaba Cloud has added
three more hyperscale data centres to its portfolio in China, bringing its
total number of facilities in the region to five, with plans to add another 10
more in the coming years.
The new data centres are
located in Hangzhou, Nantong and Ulanqab (in Inner Mongolia).
The three new facilities
have also deployed Alibaba Cloud’s self-developed technologies such as the X-Dragon
architecture, the Hanguang 800 AI inference chip, and the Apsara Distributed
Operating System. These technologies will deliver “hyperscale computing as well
as robust and scalable application and intelligent services”.
Research analyst IDC
defines a hyperscale data centre, used by many broadcasters and streaming
companies to store data and to host their applications, as one that
covers at least 5,000 servers and 10,000 sq ft of space. Hyperscale data centres are increasingly
used for high-volume traffic or computing-intensive applications in the cloud,
such as 3D rendering, virtual reality workloads and big data analytics.
Alibaba Cloud says the
Hangzhou data centre is now “one of the world’s largest server clusters that
are submerged in liquid coolant”. The coolant keeps IT hardware chilled and
reduces energy consumption by more than 70%.
Moreover, the data centre’s
power usage effectiveness (PUE) is almost equal to 1.0, which means that almost
all energy is used for computing.
In the Nantong data centre,
Alibaba Cloud uses intelligent robots to automate monitoring and maintenance
tasks. The Ulanqab data centre, on the other hand, will leverage the free-air
cooling system – particularly in winter when temperatures can drop to -22°
Celsius. This means there is no requirement for additional machine-powered
cooling for about 10 months during an entire year.
Alibaba Cloud will invest
200 billion yuan (US$28 billion) in the next three years to continue developing
a next-generation cloud infrastructure to support its global clients with their
digital transformation needs.