Top 10 Largest Data Centers (And What They Mean for Your Hosting Strategy)

Data traffic is exploding, and suddenly even “normal” apps need serious infrastructure. Video, AI, and real-time analytics are pushing the data center industry to build huge campuses that deliver more power, more stability, and lower latency.
In this guide, we’ll walk through the 10 biggest data centers in the world and translate what their scale means for your own data center hosting and colocation choices.
By the end, you’ll have a clearer view of how to get faster deployments, wider coverage, and more controllable costs—without spending billions on concrete and cooling.

Why Mega Data Centers Are Taking Over

We’re generating more data than ever. According to recent estimates, around 147 zettabytes of data will be created in 2024, rising to 181 zettabytes in 2025. A big chunk of that is video, which already accounts for more than half of internet traffic.

On top of that, AI workloads are hungry. Training and running large models means more GPUs, more power, and more cooling. Put all of this together and the data center industry has to:

• Handle huge spikes in demand without falling over

• Keep latency low for users spread around the world

• Improve energy efficiency to keep emissions and power bills under control

Most companies will never build a 10-million-square-foot facility, and that’s fine. What you actually need is smart access to those kinds of environments—through colocation, cloud, or bare metal hosting.

This is where infrastructure providers step in. Instead of owning the building, you rent capacity in well-connected data centers and focus on your applications. If you want that kind of power without the hyperscale price tag, it helps to use a host that already sits inside top-tier facilities.

👉 Spin up GTHost dedicated servers in major data centers worldwide and skip the heavy lifting

Keep that in mind as you read through this list. These mega sites set the standard—and good hosting lets you plug into that standard in a few clicks.

The 10 Largest Data Centers in the World

10. Portugal Telecom Complex (Covilhã, Portugal)

• Size: 800,000 sq ft

• Type: Tier III, sustainable colocation facility

• Highlight: Built in one of Portugal’s coldest regions to reduce cooling needs

The Portugal Telecom data center sits in Covilhã, a mountain city picked for its naturally cooler climate. Colder air means less strain on cooling systems, which helps with energy efficiency and emissions.

The facility first went live in 2013 and was expanded in 2018. It offers around 129,000 square feet of colocation space across 24 data halls and can host more than 50,000 servers. It’s Tier III certified, so you get strong uptime and redundancy without going full “mission-critical military bunker.”

For customers, this kind of site is about balance: modern IT, sustainable design, and solid availability, all wrapped into a single campus.

9. CoreSite Reston VA3 (Virginia, United States)

• Size: 940,000 sq ft

• Type: Interconnected data center campus

• Highlight: Dark-fiber links to nearby facilities for low-latency hybrid IT

Reston VA3 is part of a three-site cluster operated by CoreSite (under American Tower). Think of it as one big neighborhood of data centers, wired together with dark fiber.

VA3 connects directly to VA1 and VA2, which lets customers:

• Build low-latency links between workloads

• Scale out quickly without changing providers

• Mix colocation, cloud, and network services in the same ecosystem

If you’re planning a hybrid IT strategy—some workloads in colocation, some in cloud—this kind of interconnected campus keeps everything talking quickly and reliably.

8. QTS Atlanta-Metro (Georgia, United States)

• Size: 970,000 sq ft

• Campus: Over 95 acres with multiple buildings

• Highlight: On-site power substations and rich fiber options

The QTS Atlanta-Metro campus is one of the largest data centers in the world by area. It has its own Georgia Power substations on-site, which is a big deal when you’re pulling serious megawatts.

There’s also a dedicated fiber conduit system running across the campus, so data can jump between buildings with minimal delay. For customers, that means:

• Flexible space and power as you grow

• Multiple carriers and routes for network resilience

• Room to expand without switching facilities

It’s the kind of place where you can start small and scale up without having to change your core infrastructure plan.

7. Utah Data Center (Utah, United States)

• Size: 1,000,000 sq ft

• Type: Intelligence Community cyber-security facility

• Highlight: Built for national security and large-scale data processing

The Utah Data Center, code-named “Bumblehive,” is part of the US government’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative. Operated by the National Security Agency, it’s designed for one main thing: handling massive amounts of sensitive data.

Completed around 2014 at a cost of roughly US$1.5 billion, the site is recognized as a Tier III data center. The focus here is:

• Long-term data storage at scale

• High security and resilience

• Support for national-level cyber defense work

You and I are never going to rent a rack there, but it shows how governments think about data center design when security is the main priority.

6. Lakeside Technology Center (Chicago, United States)

• Size: 1,100,000+ sq ft

• Type: Carrier hotel and colocation hub

• Highlight: More than 100 MW of power and a dense mix of network providers

Lakeside Technology Center started life as a printing plant in the 1990s. Today, after a major retrofit, it’s one of the largest carrier hotels in the United States and is owned by Digital Realty.

Digital Realty runs its ORD10 data center inside the building, and the site also hosts companies like Equinix, Centersquare, Colocation America, and ColoHouse. Eight stories of infrastructure, over a million square feet, and around 100 MW of power make it a serious hub.

For network-heavy workloads—content delivery, financial trading, SaaS with global users—a carrier hotel like this gives you:

• Direct access to many carriers and internet exchanges

• Shorter network paths to users and partners

• More options for redundancy and peering

If low-latency networking is your main stress, places like Lakeside are where a lot of the magic happens.

5. Apple’s Mesa Data Center (Arizona, United States)

• Size: 1,300,000 sq ft

• Role: Apple’s global data command center

• Highlight: Powered in part by an on-site solar farm

Apple’s Mesa data center is a core piece of the company’s global infrastructure. The facility started serving customers in 2017 after Apple invested about US$2 billion into the site.

From here, Apple monitors and manages services like iMessage, Siri, and iCloud. The site is powered by its own solar resources, reflecting Apple’s push toward greener, more sustainable data center operations.

Around 150 people are employed to keep everything running smoothly. It’s a good example of how a single “command center” can coordinate activity across many other data centers worldwide.

4. CWL1 Data Centre Campus (Newport, Wales, UK)

• Size: 2,000,000 sq ft

• Type: Large-scale European data center campus

• Highlight: High rack density and 100% uptime since opening

CWL1, operated by Vantage Data Centers, is considered one of Europe’s largest data center campuses. It’s designed to exceed Tier III standards and supports a wide range of rack power densities—from about 2 kW all the way up to more than 125 kW.

That flexibility matters if you’re running a mix of traditional servers and high-density gear like GPUs. Since opening in 2010, CWL1 has delivered 100% uptime, which is exactly the kind of boring reliability infrastructure teams actually want.

With strong security, fast cloud and fiber connectivity, and room to grow, it’s a solid example of a modern European colocation campus.

3. The Citadel Campus (Nevada, United States)

• Size: 7,750,015 sq ft

• Operator: Switch Inc.

• Highlight: One of the world’s largest colocation data centers, powered by renewables

Located near Reno, Nevada, the Citadel Campus is a giant in every sense. Its flagship facility, TAHOE RENO 1, alone covers about 1.4 million square feet and offers around 130 MW of power capacity.

The campus is fully powered by renewable energy, aligning with the industry’s push to cut emissions while still handling ever-growing workloads. Facilities here are rated at Tier IV, which is the top level of fault tolerance in common classifications.

If you want to picture it, think of row after row of server rooms built to keep running even when multiple things go wrong at once. For enterprises that cannot afford downtime, this is the kind of setup they look for.

2. China Mobile Data Center (Hohhot, China)

• Size: 10,763,910 sq ft

• Type: Smart computing center and AI hub

• Highlight: Massive AI capacity with tens of thousands of accelerator cards

China Mobile’s data center in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, is one of the largest intelligent computing hubs in the world. It’s built around AI and high-performance computing from the ground up.

Key details:

• Total computing power of about 6.7 EFLOPS

• Around 20,000 AI accelerator cards deployed

• Room for roughly 9,000 racks and 100,000 servers

Over the years, there have been plans and rumors about expansions that would push capacity even further. For anyone working with large-scale AI and analytics, this shows where the high end of the market is heading—bigger, denser, and more specialized for compute-heavy workloads.

1. China Telecom Data Center (Hohhot, China)

• Size: 10,763,910 sq ft

• Location: Inner Mongolia Information Park, Hohhot

• Highlight: Often described as the largest data center site in the world

Also located in Hohhot, China Telecom’s data center in the Inner Mongolia Information Park is frequently cited as the largest single data center site on the planet.

The numbers are serious:

• Roughly US$3 billion construction cost

• More than 10 million square feet of total area

• Around 150 MW of energy consumption across six data halls

The campus includes cloud computing data centers, call centers, warehouses, and office space. It serves major technology companies like Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, delivering high levels of security, reliability, and scalability.

This is what “hyperscale” looks like when you zoom all the way out: one enormous site supporting multiple huge platforms that millions—or billions—of people use every day.

What These Mega Data Centers Mean for Your Strategy

You might never set foot in any of these facilities, but they still affect your daily work. The way they’re built shapes the options you get from your hosting and cloud providers.

A few practical takeaways:

• Latency is geography. Putting servers closer to users—like Hohhot for Chinese platforms or Chicago for US carriers—cuts response times and improves experience.

• Power density matters. As AI and GPU-heavy workloads grow, you need data centers that can handle higher rack densities without melting down.

• Redundancy is non-negotiable. Tier III and Tier IV designs show how seriously the industry takes uptime. Your own hosting setup should follow the same mindset, even if on a smaller scale.

• Sustainability is now a feature. Running efficient, greener data centers is quickly becoming table stakes, not just a PR angle.

So when you pick a data center hosting or colocation provider, what you’re really choosing is: which slice of this global infrastructure do you want to plug into, and how quickly can you move if your needs change?

FAQs: Large Data Centers and Hosting Choices

Q1: Do I need a hyperscale data center for my business?
Most likely no. What you need is access to reliable, well-connected data centers—through colocation, cloud, or bare metal hosting. A good provider gives you the benefits of big facilities (power, connectivity, stability) without you owning the building.

Q2: How do big data centers affect latency for my users?
Large data centers tend to sit in network hubs or near major population centers. Hosting your workloads in those locations reduces the physical distance between servers and users, which means lower latency. For global products, spreading workloads across multiple regions is often the sweet spot.

Q3: Is bare metal hosting still useful in a cloud-first world?
Yes. Bare metal servers are great when you need predictable performance, strong isolation, or specific hardware (like GPUs or fast storage). Many teams mix cloud for flexibility and bare metal hosting for steady, performance-critical workloads.

Q4: What should I look for when choosing a data center hosting provider?
Focus on uptime history, network connectivity, latency to your main user regions, pricing transparency, and how quickly you can deploy or scale. Providers that sit in top-tier data centers and offer instant setup give you a big productivity boost.

In the end, the world’s largest data centers exist to keep up with massive data growth while staying efficient, secure, and well-connected. You don’t need to build one yourself, but you can borrow their strengths by choosing data center hosting that offers fast deployment, wide coverage, and stable performance.
That’s exactly why 👉 GTHost is so suitable for global low-latency deployments and hybrid hosting setups: it lets you tap into top-tier facilities with instant dedicated servers, so you can stay focused on building products instead of building data centers.