Brazil’s RNP picks Elea to host national datacenter

Brazilian network RNP selected Piemonte Holding’s Elea to host its datacenter infrastructure at Elea’s tier 3 facility in Brasília.

Elea operates two datacenters in the country's capital: BSB1 and BSB2, the latter of which being the sole tier 3-certified datacenter in operation in the federal district.

In a joint statement, the companies said that the initiative will expand the availability of colocation service for the academic community, as well as enable new offerings and business models, with greater storage capacity for large volumes of data with security and privacy.

RNP is linked to the science and technology ministry (MCTI) and its national datacenters system (CND) receives resources from scientific and technological development fund FNDCT.

The expectation is that RNP’s infrastructure at Elea’s BSB2 datacenter will be ready for service by the end of the first half.

“The National Datacenters are spaces for the provision of services in a distributed manner, in favor of the institutions under the RNP system. The first service made available is colocation, which enables the structuring of new offerings, such as secure large-scale data storage, community hybrid cloud, AI and high performance computing (HPC),” RNP director of services and solutions Antônio Nunes said in a statement.

BSB2 has over 4.5MW of IT capacity and connectivity with 10 telecom carriers. 

Elea's two datacenters in Brasília were acquired from Oi in 2020 as part of the telecom operator's asset sales under its first judicial recovery plan.

On the occasion, Piemonte Holding paid 425mn reais (US$70.2mn) for five of Oi's datacenters in Curitiba, Porto Alegre, São Paulo and two in Brasília. The acquisition led to the creation of Elea Data Centers and all sites were upgraded and modernized.

According to Elea, BSB2 leads the center-west region's traffic exchange and operates 100% with renewable energy. The datacenter has connections to exchange traffic with IX.br, the largest interconnection network in Brazil.

“It is extremely important to have a partnership like this with an entity focused on research and development. This exchange of information and technology will be very important for us to leverage new businesses and develop the research area, which is extremely important for our country,” said Márcia Salomão, director of government business at Elea.

Network

RNP’s National Datacenters project began in 2021, when it identified demand for data storage centers with national coverage. In 2022, the entity launched a request for information process, which helped RNP to map the main players in the market and better understand the sector.

In 2023, the project advanced as one of the pillars of MCTI's Conecta program. 

A request for proposals was launched and the first CND, located in São Paulo, went into operation last year hosted at a Scala Data Centers facility.

The infrastructure hosted at Elea's datacenter in Brasília is RNP's second to go live. 

RNP will have a third center in Fortaleza, Ceará, which is expected to go into operation in the second half.