At Meta, we’ve been building and operating our data center fleet for over a decade. In the last twenty-four months, we’ve broken ground on ten data centers as we continue to expand our fleet of cutting-edge, AI-optimized facilities designed to manage our AI workloads and other technologies.
We’re here to explain what data centers are and how they help you connect to your favorite digital experiences, from conversations with Meta AI and reaching new customers through an Instagram ad to navigating the world with your RayBan Meta glasses.
What Is a Data Center?
A data center is a physical building that houses technology to rapidly process digital information.
Data centers support everything in our digital lives from email and online banking to your favorite social media apps and AI assistants. Every time you tap a button on your screen, a data center processes information through cables at the speed of light to help you connect to the people and experiences you love on demand.
When you upload a picture to Instagram, that image is stored remotely on a physical piece of hardware in a secure data center. When your friend clicks to view it on their phone, they’re sending a request to that hardware through fiber-optic cables. Servers process the request and send the picture back to your friend — all in the blink of an eye. When you log into Threads, the posts you see in your feed are curated by a sophisticated machine learning algorithm that’s being run in real time — a computing process that requires large-scale data center and network infrastructure. When Meta AI answers your question about the nutritional value of a banana or helps you plan a family trip, complete with hotel recommendations, activities, and local restaurants, it uses specialized hardware to perform complex mathematical calculations in real-time to generate relevant and accurate responses. Data centers house the servers that make these calculations, and some of them also house the infrastructure that makes it possible to train these models.
Taking a Look Inside
Data centers house computing infrastructure (like servers and silicon chips), storage systems (like hard drives), and networking and connectivity equipment (like fiber cables and routers) that store, manage, and process data to power your online experiences. They also have support infrastructure and security systems to keep the data center itself functioning.
People are core to the success of data centers. Meta’s data centers support thousands of operational jobs, like electricians, HVAC specialists, fiber technicians, safety and security experts, engineers, and more, who install, maintain, and help run the components inside data centers.
To help make sense of what’s inside a data center, you can think of it like a bustling restaurant kitchen that serves thousands (or in Meta’s case, billions) of customers every day.
Servers are the computers that process data and run applications, and they’re the backbone of any data center.
In our bustling restaurant kitchen analogy, servers can be compared to the restaurant’s chef, who takes raw ingredients and turns them into finished meals, the same way servers turn raw data into the digital applications and experiences we use every day.
Silicon chips are semiconductor devices made of silicon that control the flow of electricity inside servers. Some chips, like CPUs, GPUs, and ASICS, enable computing and information processing, while others enable information storage and data transfer.
Silicon chips are like the chef’s brain and hands, dictating how fast and efficiently a chef can chop vegetables, manage pans on the stove, or remember complex recipes.
Storage systems include hard drives, solid state drives, and other devices that store vast amounts of data related to an organization’s operations so it’s ready and available whenever servers need to access it.
Storage systems are like a kitchen’s pantry and refrigerators, where all the raw ingredients, spices, and prepped foods are kept until the chef needs them.
Networking and connectivity equipment includes routers, switches, cables, and firewalls that connect the servers and storage systems, and manage the flow of information both inside the data center and to the outside world.
Networking equipment is like waitstaff at a restaurant, taking the customer’s order, getting it to the chef, and then carrying the meal out to the customer when it’s ready.
Support infrastructure can include a range of elements essential to data center operations, from HVAC equipment and cooling systems to security systems. Power systems include backup generators and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) to ensure consistent electrical supply, and cooling systems help maintain optimal operating temperatures in the data center.
Restaurant kitchens actually have much of the same support infrastructure that data centers do, like backup generators in case of blackouts and heavy-duty ventilation to keep the kitchen cool.
Security systems can be both digital and physical. Physical security might include surveillance cameras, fire suppression systems, and access controls. On the digital side, a data center would be equipped with firewalls and other cybersecurity measures that can protect against data breaches.
Just like with support infrastructure, restaurants and data centers share many of the same security systems, including security cameras and fire suppressions systems like sprinklers and alarms. A data center’s digital security systems can be compared to the quality control checks and food safety protocols that ensure no one tampers with or compromises ingredients.
Meta’s Data Centers
Meta has 32 owned and operated data centers that support our apps and technologies. In recent years, we’ve built new data centers using an AI-optimized redesign to more efficiently support our current AI workloads and future AI ambitions.
Our new data centers under construction in Richland Parish, Louisiana; Lebanon, Indiana; El Paso, Texas; and Tulsa, Oklahoma are designed to support the large amounts of compute capacity needed to handle high volumes of data, and to scale rapidly as demand grows. Compute capacity refers to the total amount of processing power available to run workloads — basically, how much work a data center’s servers and chips can perform at any given time. Our Richland Parish, El Paso, Lebanon, and New Albany, Ohio facilities will each have 1GW or more of capacity once construction is complete.
Our AI-optimized data center design centers efficiency, flexibility, and environmental stewardship to seamlessly handle large amounts of data for billions of people all over the world. Different AI configurations will require a slightly different approach to hardware and network systems designs, so the architecture of our new data centers are built to accommodate flexibility. For example, we developed cooling systems that can support traditional servers and workloads of today, along with future generations of AI-enabled hardware. AI, inference, and training needs are still evolving, so we need to balance our design around what we know today with how much we should future proof.
We’re focused on designing and building innovative, cutting-edge data centers because they play an essential role in bringing our apps and products to life. We’ll continue investing in infrastructure that meets the needs of the future and helps keep billions of people around the world connected.
