First announced in late 2022, Equinix’s new data centre in Johor is finally open for business. Called the JH1 International Business Exchange (IBX), the new facility officially begins operation today.
Who is Equinix?
For those unfamiliar with the name, Equinix is one of the largest data centre operators in the world. Founded in 1998 in Silicon Valley, the company currently has 260 data centres globally.
The company claimed it handles more than 10,000 customers globally including more than half of the Fortune 500 companies. Among the top companies that are part of Equinix’s clients, partners, and providers are Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Cisco, Oracle, Salesforce, Netflix, and Zoom.
In addition to that, more than 35,900 Gbps of IP traffic globally have peered through Equinix Internet Exchange. Aside from Malaysia, other Equinix data centres in the Asia Pacific region are in Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, India, Hong Kong, China, and Australia.
Why establish a global data centre in Johor?
One of Equinix’s main pitches to JH1’s potential customers is the data centre’s proximity to Singapore. The Managing Director of Equinix Malaysia, Cheam Tat Inn said that Malaysia especially Johor has started to become the next hub of choice due to the limited data centre capacity in Singapore.
In fact, JH1 is just 15km away from the border in Tuas and is connected directly to the Equinix data centres in Singapore. Hence, Equinix is confident that JH1 is in the prime location to take advantage of the excess demand from the city-state.
What’s inside Equinix JH1 IBX data centre?
(Note: We were not allowed to capture photos and videos of Equinix JH1’s data halls and equipment. All of these images were provided by Equinix.)
Located at Nusajaya Tech Park (NTP) in Iskandar Johor, the JH1 was built through an initial investment of around USD40 million (~RM188.3 million). It is the first of two Equinix data centres in Malaysia with the second one being the KL1 IBX in Cyberjaya although the latter has been running since January.
The 1,800 square meters two-storey facility has a maximum capacity of 500 cabinets. Services available at JH1 include the company’s main interconnect service, the Equinix Fabric as well as Cross Connect, Equinix Internet Access, Equinix Internet Exchange, and Metro Connect.
Equinix claimed that its data centres have a 99.999% uptime record. From what we saw during our brief tour of the facility with Jeremy Deutsch, the company’s President of APAC, the company is making a lot of effort to have JH1 retain that standard.
For one, the JH1 has been fitted with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system that allows the data centre to run for up to 15 minutes if there is any power interruption. There are also four power generators available onsite to support the data centre during a prolonged interruption.
Jeremy also pointed out that JB1 and KL1 data centres run on 100% renewable energy right from day one. In keeping with Equinix’s commitment to sustainability, the cooling system in JH1 has been designed to convert the hot air emitted by the servers back into cool air that will be recirculated by the system.
Customers have already begun deploying servers in JH1
Even though the official launch ceremony only took place today, there are already several servers running inside JH1. During our tour today, we were shown a group of servers that are being set up to run artificial intelligence (AI) workloads while there is also another group of servers already operational for unknown purposes.
However, Jeremy did not reveal their owners although he said that several content providers, fintech players, gaming companies and AI outfits are already onboard JH1 and KL1. He also added that Time and Maxis are some of the local tech giants that are already in the Equinix ecosystem.
