Twitter announced plans in September to nearly double its Atlanta data center capacity in order to keep up with East Coast and European demand.
Twitter leases approximately 100,000 square feet of space in Atlanta Metro, a server farm the size of almost 17 football fields located near downtown Atlanta. The social networking company plans to lease an additional 800,000 square feet in the nearly 1 million square foot Georgia data center operated by Quality Technology Services.
The facility features a Georgia Power substation on-site that is designed to deliver 120 MVA in a highly reliable configuration. The Atlanta data center also has 36 generators supporting 16 independent uninterruptible power supply systems and is fed by two diverse substations and two electrical grids. The building’s chiller, pumps and cooling towers feature an N+1 configuration to ensure continuous uptime.
The Georgia data center offers fiber connectivity with QTS’s Atlanta-Suwanee data center to ensure business continuity, as well as connections with the company’s Marietta carrier hotel. Office and conference space are also available on-site in the massive facility.
In recent years, the metro-Atlanta area has become an increasingly desirable location for companies to build their data centers as it offers a sophisticated fiber optic infrastructure, low-cost energy and access to a reliable power grid. Providers are beginning to shift their facilities from the East Coast to Georgia as Atlanta operating costs are at least half the cost of those in New York.
In the second quarter of 2014, Twitter reported more than 270 million active monthly users, and the number is expected to grow. As the social media network continues to increase usership, it will need to scale up its data center infrastructure to handle the influx of daily traffic.
