Microsoft announces newest sustainable data center, coming to Arizona in 2021

Microsoft has recently announced its plans to build a new data center region in Arizona, which will be called the West US 3 region. The sustainable data center is expected to open in 2021, and it will create over 100 permanent jobs across various functions in this region.

The announcement builds on Microsoft’s long term goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030. It shows the company’s new focus on water conservation and the power of its HoloLens 2 device in combination with Azure. With this new data center, the company aims to deliver enterprise-grade cloud services such as Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Microsoft Azure. It will also include “Availability Zones” to support customer needs for resiliency and high-availability in their applications. Availability Zones are basically unique physical locations of data centres that will have an independent network, power, and cooling mechanism.

“Our datacenter design and operations will contribute to the sustainability of our Arizona facilities. In Arizona, we’re pursuing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification, which will help conserve additional resources including energy and water, generate less waste and support human health. We’re also committed to zero waste-certified operations for this new region, which means a minimum of 90 percent of waste will be diverted away from landfills through reduction, reuse and recycling efforts,” the company explained.

Microsoft  has also committed to invest in solar energy generation and water conservation project in Arizona. Moreover, the software gaint has entered into a partnership with Nox Innovations to build sustainable data centers in the region. Nox Innovations will leverage the power of Microsoft HoloLens 2, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist and Microsoft mixed reality partner solution VisualLive to achieve this goal.