Equinix boasts of ‘biggest ever datacenter investment’ in Rio de Janeiro with RJ3 site

With an initial budget of US$94mn, Equinix's third datacenter in Rio de Janeiro state, RJ3, is the largest investment ever made by the sector in the Brazilian state, the company claims.

Announced in May last year, RJ3 was expected to go into operation in the first quarter of 2025, but the project is now scheduled to go live in “the first half” of next year, according to a release from Equinix Brasil.

Located in São João de Meriti municipality in the metropolitan region of the city of Rio de Janeiro, RJ3 will have 560 racks and 1,467m² of colocation space in its first phase. 

All of Equinix's core digital and interconnection services will be available to customers from the start of operations, including Equinix Fabric and Equinix Fabric Cloud Router, the company said.

Both provide direct interconnection with cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, as well as easy access to several other network and security services offered by partners, added Equinix.

“Rio de Janeiro is one of the largest consumer markets in the country and a hub for strategic sectors, such as energy and mining. So expanding our local presence was the natural path for Equinix. With our investment in RJ3 – the biggest ever made by a datacenter company in the state – we will be able to support even more companies in their digital infrastructure and innovation journey in the country and around the world,” Victor Arnaud, president of Equinix Brasil, said in the statement.

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The datacenter will be erected close to the Via Dutra highway, providing access to optical fiber that connects Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo along the highway, with redundant connections between the two state capitals.

The region is also supplied by two power substations. 

Furthermore, Equinix highlights the fact eight submarine cables connect to the state, including AMX-1, BRUSA and GlobeNet, providing direct connectivity with the US and Central America. 

Equinix has two other datacenters in the state: RJ1, in the Botafogo neighborhood of Rio, and RJ2, in Del Castilho neighborhood, the latter sitting approximately 17km away from RJ3.

According to the company, all sites will be connected to each other, including via a redundant fiber connection between RJ2 and RJ3.

'COOL ARRAY'

Equinix also states that RJ3 is one of the company's first installations in the Americas and the first in Brazil to adopt 'Cool Array' cooling technology, which consists of more efficient refrigeration systems. 

The technology is used as part of a slab cold flood/hot aisle containment scheme that helps customers support very dense, air-cooled workloads efficiently, improving power usage effectiveness (PUE), the company says.

RJ3 will be supplied with 100% renewable energy from wind and solar sources through certified suppliers, said Equinix.

The company added that the construction follows A1A guidelines from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), which are already applied globally. The company expects to operate the datacenter at around 27°C, in line with the globally accepted limits of A1A standards.