Equinix sees Rio datacenter construction completed by year-end

US datacenter and interconnection company Equinix sees its RJ3 datacenter in Rio de Janeiro completed before the end of the year, according to Peter Flores Catta Preta, senior design & construction director at Equinix in Latin America.

Catta Preta is one of the main people responsible for designing projects and managing the construction of the group's datacenters throughout Latin America. The executive spoke to BNamericas during a visit to RJ3, which is located in São João do Meriti municipality, part of Rio’s metropolitan region.

“Works are progressing super well, and we believe we can deliver everything by December 30. We’re working towards that goal,” Catta Preta said.

Most of the mission-critical part is complete and the facility’s go-live is estimated for the first half of 2025.

RJ3 was powered up on October 18, with the connection of the substation built on site to the high-voltage grid of power concessionaire Light, via two 138,000V lines.

Civil construction works on RJ3 are being carried out by Zopone Engenharia, and overseen by LZA Engenharia. Zopone had previously worked on the expansion of other Equinix sites, namely in São Paulo. But RJ3 is the first datacenter built from the ground up by the contractor.

It is also Zopone's first large-scale retail datacenter project, as its portfolio includes datacenters developed for operators such as TIM, Oi and Telefônica.

Works on RJ3 began in July 2023 and the expectation is that it will take 18 months to complete the project.

First announced in May last year and built on land covering 15,000m2, the project is expected to go into operation with 560 racks and 1,467m2 of colocation space in the first phase, comprising two data halls with 280 racks partly leased to clients. 

The initial budget is US$94mn. Overall, Equinix has announced US$262mn in investments for Brazil through 2026.

Equinix has two datacenters in Rio de Janeiro: RJ1 in the Botafogo district and RJ2 in Del Castilho, approximately 17km from the new site.

Adjacent to RJ3, Equinix plans to build RJ4, whose profile, size and design is yet to be defined. Catta Preta believes that RJ4 could be a vertical, storied building, rather than a horizontal one like RJ3.

RJ3 is also next door to GIG, the campus being erected by CloudHQ, with construction by LZA. GIG is projected to have 36MW capacity and expected to enter operation in September 2025.

São João do Meriti, for its part, is home to datacenters by Odata and Scala, among others. 

Besides available land, the region, which is close to the Via Dutra highway, has good access to transportation, energy, and fiber optic networks.

Suppliers

The main supplier of RJ3's electrical equipment is Schneider Electric. The French multinational is a traditional partner for Equinix's projects, globally.

RJ3 also relies on power and mission-critical equipment from Vertiv and Cummins, among others.

The datacenter already has four carriers connected to it. RJ3 is interconnected to Equinix’s other datacenters in Rio de Janeiro via Ufinet. 

It will rely on a new technology of chillers and a new thermal wall concept for the cooling of servers and racks.

The chiller technology comes from Brazilian thermal engineering firm Mecalor. This was the first time that Mecalor won a contract to supply Equinix’s datacenters.