After two years of negotiations and a further six months of anticipation after the official announcement, Microsoft has finally broken ground on the construction of its latest data center. According to Michael Manos, senior director of data centers at Microsoft, the San Antonio facility will be just under 500,000 square feet and contain tens of thousands of servers.
Microsoft's Debra Chrapaty said that the build was motivated by the company's software plus services and Windows Live initiatives which will support online services such as hotmail or video sharing applications.
The first phase of the facility will be operational in July next year.
Although the San Antonio facility will be one-third the size of the data center Microsoft is currently building in Quincy, Washington, both sites will benefit from the integration of green technologies.
In San Antonio, the company intends to use gray water, recycled water, in its cooling systems, to alleviate the demand for fresh water. This option also overcomes the need for consuming the large amounts of energy required to purify water at waste water treatment sites.
Reducing energy is a prime consideration for the San Antonio site, which will use more energy than Toyota's manufacturing plant, and could power a town of 10,000 residents.