Facebook to build data center in Denmark: report

BERLIN: Facebook is to build its third data center outside the United States in Denmark to store and manage the social media giant’s growing data, such as photos and videos, a Danish news website reported.

The 184,000 square meter facility will be built in Odense, the birthplace of writer Hans Christian Andersen, and will generate around 1,200 jobs to build it, Fyens.dk said.

The California-based company opened a similar data center in Sweden in 2013 and is currently constructing a center in Ireland.

Excerpts from Denmark website Fyens: the gigantic construction is already being prepared. Towards the end of last week a fence was raised and the area is now being guarded by security. The builders, the international construction company Mace, has moved in.

On the Internet, one can also find the official VVM-assesment (an environmental document) of the construction, which is developed by the consultancy company Cowi. The VVM assesment shows that the intention is to build three server rooms, an administration building, a substation and emergency power generators. The server rooms represent 92,000 square meters (1 million square feet).

At this time, we do not know how much it will cost to build the new data center, but Facebooks investment in Odense is thought to be significent. In the town of Luleå in northern Sweden, where a similar data center was opened in 2013, the investment was approximately 3.8 billion SEK (US$450 million) of which 1.5 billion SEK (US$ 175 million) were spent in Sweden on construction work, supplies, mechanical and technical assistance and logistics services.