AWS to invest at least $11B in new Georgia data centers – News

Amazon Web Services Inc. will spend at least $11 billion to grow its data center capacity in Georgia.

The cloud giant detailed the plan on Tuesday. It’s the latest in a series of multibillion-dollar data centers investments announced by AWS over the past few quarters. It also mirrors a recent data center building boom, mostly spurred by the need to train and run artificial intelligence models, by other companies such as Microsoft Corp., Google LLC and others.

AWS’ Georgia investment is the latest in a series of 10-figure data center expansion initiatives the company has announced over the past two years. Last April, it detailed a $11 billion plan to build new data centers in Illinois. It’s also investing $35 billion to expand its cloud infrastructure footprint in Virginia. 

The Amazon.com Inc. unit didn’t specify the number of cloud facilities it plans to build in Georgia. When AWS announced a similarly sized investment in Mississippi a year ago, it detailed plans to build two new data center complexes.

AWS’ platform is powered by 35 cloud regions, data center clusters that comprise multiple facilities in the same geographic area. Those facilities, or Availability Zones, have separate power, cooling and network infrastructure. This arrangement means that a  localized technical issue at one site is unlikely to affect other data centers in the same cloud region.

The company does not yet operate a cloud region in Georgia. It does, however, maintain several smaller infrastructure clusters, primarily in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Last year, AWS launched an AWS Local Zone in the city. A Local Zone is a kind of miniature data center that is located closer to users than the Amazon unit’s main facilities. This proximity reduces network latency for customer applications. 

AWS also maintains multiple AWS Direct Connect hubs in Georgia. Direct Connect allows companies to send their network traffic directly to the cloud platform without routing the data through the public web, which boosts performance. This arrangement also has cybersecurity benefits. 

Alongside its Direct Connect and Local Zone sites in Georgia, AWS maintains local Amazon CloudFront servers. CloudFront is the company’s content delivery network. It hosts content such as webpages near users to reduce latency and thereby speed up download speeds.

According to AWS, its investment in Georgia will create at least 550 new jobs. Additionally, the company expects the initiative to support thousands of positions in the local construction sector and the upstream data center supply chain.

AWS said its new Georgia data centers will “support AI and cloud technologies.” That suggests the facilities might incorporate some of the new AI-optimized data center components the cloud giant detailed last month. 

The company has developed a so-called multimodal cooling system to dissipate the heat generated by its AI servers. According to the company, the system combines air and liquid cooling methods. It works with both Nvidia Corp. silicon and AWS’ internally developed AI processors. 

In its data center building designs, the Amazon unit is adopting more environmentally friendly steel and concrete varieties. The company expects the move to provide a 35% reduction in embodied carbon compared with the industry average.

Inside its data centers, AWS is simplifying the equipment that carries electricity to its information technology equipment. The Amazon unit is bringing backup power sources closer to server racks and will reduce the number of fans it uses to remove hot air. The changes will reduce the number of potential failure points by 20%.

Photo: Tony Webster/Flickr