I still remember my first tour of a data center back in 2018. It was a modest facility outside Chicago—maybe 50,000 square feet with a handful of server racks humming away. Fast forward to last month, when I visited one of Google’s newest hyperscale facilities in Nevada. The difference was staggering: a sprawling 1.2 million square foot complex with its own power substation, advanced liquid cooling systems, and enough computing power to make my 2018 self’s jaw drop.
Server locations aren’t just getting more numerous—they’re getting absolutely massive. And this trend is reshaping everything from how websites load to where businesses choose to set up shop.
The explosive growth of server locations
The numbers tell a pretty wild story. According to Data Center Frontier’s latest industry report, the average size of new data center facilities has increased by 63% in just the last three years.
A graph showing the average data center size growth from 2018 to 2025, with a sharp upward trajectory particularly after 2022, labeled with square footage increasing from around 100,000 sq ft to over 250,000 sq ft on average.
This isn’t just a few tech giants supersizing their operations—it’s happening across the entire industry. Even mid-tier hosting providers are building facilities 2-3 times larger than what was considered “enterprise-grade” just five years ago.
When I talked to James Hoffman, infrastructure director at a major European cloud provider, he put it bluntly: “The facilities we considered massive in 2020 would barely qualify as medium-sized today. We’re not just adding more servers—we’re completely rethinking the scale of what’s possible.”
Why server locations are ballooning in size
There’s no single reason behind this dramatic upsizing, but rather a perfect storm of factors:
Exploding data demands
The sheer volume of data we’re creating, storing, and processing is mind-boggling. By the end of 2024, humans were generating roughly 328.77 million terabytes of data each day—that’s up 35% from just two years prior.
I recently helped a mid-sized e-commerce client analyze their storage needs, and was shocked to discover they’d accumulated more customer data in the last 12 months than in their previous five years combined. This pattern is playing out across virtually every industry.
AI’s insatiable appetite
If there’s one technology driving the need for bigger server farms, it’s artificial intelligence. Training and running large language models requires massive computing resources.
When I toured that Nevada facility, our guide mentioned that just their AI-dedicated section consumed more power than their entire previous-generation data center. The numbers back this up: AI workloads require 8-10 times more computing power than traditional applications for the same number of users.
Economies of scale
Building bigger simply makes financial sense. The cost per square foot drops significantly as facilities grow, with hyperscale data centers (over 1 million square feet) achieving up to 45% better power efficiency than smaller operations.
A table showing economies of scale in data centers, with columns for size category, cost per sq ft, and power efficiency metrics. The data clearly shows decreasing costs and improving efficiency as size increases.
Geographical concentration
Interestingly, while server locations are getting physically larger, they’re becoming geographically concentrated in fewer prime locations. Data center “hubs” have emerged in places like Northern Virginia, Singapore, Frankfurt, and the outskirts of major tech centers.
Last year, I helped a client select server locations for their European expansion. Five years ago, we would have looked at 15-20 potential cities. In 2025, we focused on just four mega-hub regions that offered the infrastructure, connectivity, and scale they needed.
How bigger server locations affect performance
The supersizing of server infrastructure isn’t just about impressive numbers—it has real-world impacts on website performance, application responsiveness, and global connectivity.
Better interconnection options
Larger server hubs attract more connectivity providers. The Frankfurt KleyerStrasse campus I visited earlier this year houses facilities from 11 different providers, all interconnected through a massive meet-me room. This density creates competition that drives down bandwidth costs while improving reliability.
A diagram showing network connections between multiple providers within a single large server campus, with arrows representing different interconnection points and bandwidth options.
One particularly interesting case: a gaming company I consulted for moved from three smaller, distributed server locations to a single massive hub. Counter to what you might expect, their average global latency actually improved by 12ms because the new location had better direct connections to global backbone providers.
Concentrated computing power
Having more servers under one roof enables advanced computing techniques that weren’t previously possible. Resource pooling, workload balancing, and rapid scaling all become more efficient.
I witnessed this firsthand when a streaming media client migrated to a larger facility. During unexpected traffic spikes, their platform could instantly tap into vast resources that simply weren’t available in their previous setup. The result was 99.998% uptime during their biggest launch event, compared to frequent outages they’d experienced before.
Energy efficiency at scale
Perhaps surprisingly, these mega facilities are actually greener than their smaller predecessors. Modern hyperscale data centers achieve power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratings as low as 1.07, compared to typical ratings of 1.5-2.0 in smaller facilities.
Why? Because at sufficient scale, advanced cooling techniques become economically viable. Direct liquid cooling—where server components are in direct contact with coolant—is expensive to implement but incredibly efficient when deployed across thousands of servers.
During a recent data center evaluation, I found that the largest facility on our list used 41% less electricity per computing unit than a comparable smaller center, despite being located in a warmer climate.
The global footprint: Where these mega-servers are popping up
The map of server location growth tells an interesting story. While established markets are seeing the biggest facilities, emerging regions are catching up at an astonishing pace.
| Region | Avg. New Build Size (2023) | Avg. New Build Size (2025) | Growth |
| North America | 185,000 sq ft | 310,000 sq ft | 67% |
| Europe | 142,000 sq ft | 233,000 sq ft | 64% |
| Asia-Pacific | 128,000 sq ft | 275,000 sq ft | 115% |
| Middle East | 97,000 sq ft | 187,000 sq ft | 93% |
| Latin America | 72,000 sq ft | 128,000 sq ft | 78% |
What jumps out to me is the Asia-Pacific growth rate. When I toured facilities in Singapore and Tokyo last summer, I was amazed by the scale of new construction. Singapore alone added more data center capacity in 2024 than all of Australia had in total back in 2020.
A map highlighting major global data center hubs with bubble sizes proportional to the average facility size in each location, showing the concentration in major metro areas.
I’ve also noticed interesting patterns in where these mega-facilities are being built within regions:
- Power-focused locations: Massive facilities in places like Oregon and Nevada that leverage cheap hydroelectric or solar power
- Connectivity hubs: Strategic locations near subsea cable landings in places like Marseille and Singapore
- Edge megacenters: Surprisingly large facilities in secondary markets that serve as regional distribution points
What this means for businesses using server infrastructure
If you’re running a business that depends on servers (and who isn’t these days?), the supersizing trend has several practical implications:
More service options at competitive prices
The concentrated competition in major server hubs has created a buyer’s market. When I helped a SaaS client negotiate their infrastructure contracts last quarter, we secured pricing that would have been unthinkable just 18 months earlier.
Larger facilities mean providers can offer more specialized tiers of service—from bare metal to fully managed options—all within the same physical location. This creates flexibility to match your exact needs rather than compromising on one-size-fits-all packages.
Rethinking geographic distribution
The old wisdom was to spread servers across many locations. Today, that approach often makes less sense given the superior performance of major hubs.
I’ve noticed a shift in deployment strategies among my clients. Rather than maintaining multiple small footprints, many are consolidating into fewer, larger locations with better connectivity, then using CDNs and edge caching to handle last-mile delivery.
Environmental considerations
The energy efficiency gains of larger facilities are substantial enough that they’ve become a legitimate factor in infrastructure planning—not just for environmental concerns, but for cost control as well.
One e-commerce client I worked with actually calculated that moving to a larger, more efficient facility would reduce their carbon footprint by the equivalent of taking 317 cars off the road annually, while simultaneously cutting their hosting costs by 22%.
The hidden challenges of bigger server locations
Despite the clear advantages, the mega-facility trend isn’t without complications:
Catastrophic failure risks
The concentration of so much computing power creates significant vulnerability points. A colleague of mine works in disaster recovery planning, and he’s increasingly concerned about “black swan” events affecting major server hubs.
In 2023, a cooling system failure at a major Singapore facility caused cascading outages that affected banking services across Southeast Asia. The facility was so large that redundant systems couldn’t handle the sudden load shift.
Businesses need comprehensive disaster recovery plans that account for hub-level failures—something many haven’t adequately prepared for.
Capacity planning headaches
The sheer scale of modern facilities has made capacity planning more complex. When you can suddenly access virtually unlimited resources, it’s easy to over-provision.
I’ve seen companies rack up enormous bills because their auto-scaling rules weren’t properly tuned for the massive headroom available in larger facilities. One client accidentally launched a test environment that scaled to 500 instances before anyone noticed—something that would have been physically impossible in their previous, smaller data center.
Geographic concentration risks
While performance benefits from hub concentration, this model creates geopolitical and regulatory challenges. When massive amounts of data are physically located in just a few regions, changes in local laws can have outsized impacts.
I’ve worked with several clients who’ve had to restructure their entire data architecture due to evolving data sovereignty requirements, particularly in Europe and parts of Asia.
What’s next: The future of server locations
The supersizing trend shows no signs of slowing down, but it is evolving in interesting ways:
The 10-million-square-foot barrier
Industry analysts predict we’ll see the first 10-million-square-foot data center campus within the next three years. These “data center cities” will have their own power stations, water treatment facilities, and even housing for staff.
I recently spoke with an architect working on one of these mega-projects in the Southwest US. The scale is hard to comprehend—the initial plans call for more concrete than was used in the Hoover Dam.
Radical cooling innovations
The next generation of mega-facilities is exploring cooling techniques that would be impractical at smaller scales. Microsoft’s underwater data center project and facilities built in the Arctic Circle for natural cooling represent just the beginning.
A new facility being constructed outside Oslo is planning to use the frigid Norwegian seawater not just for cooling but as part of a district heating system that will warm nearby residential buildings—an approach that only makes economic sense at massive scale.
Integration with renewable energy
The newest hyperscale facilities are increasingly paired directly with dedicated renewable energy sources. Amazon’s newest Virginia campus includes a 200MW solar array that covers a larger footprint than the data center itself.
When facilities reach a certain size, on-site power generation becomes not just practical but essential. During my visit to a new Texas facility last month, they were building their own natural gas power plant with carbon capture technology—an infrastructure investment that would only make sense for the largest operators.
Final thoughts
The supersizing of server locations represents a fundamental shift in how we approach digital infrastructure. We’re moving from a distributed model of many smaller facilities to concentrated hubs of massive computing power.
For businesses and users, this means better performance, more options, and potentially greener operations—but also new risks and planning challenges.
As these mega-facilities continue to grow, the companies that adapt their infrastructure strategies accordingly will gain significant advantages in cost, performance, and reliability. Those that cling to outdated deployment models may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.
The server landscape of 2025 barely resembles what we saw just five years ago. The pace of change suggests that five years from now, today’s “massive” facilities might seem quaint by comparison. One thing’s certain: in the world of server locations, bigger isn’t just better—it’s inevitable.
Have you toured or used services from one of these mega data centers? What differences have you noticed in performance or options compared to traditional facilities? Share your experiences in the comments below.
