Vietnamese telecoms firm Viettel reportedly inaugurated its new data centre in Hoa Lac Hi-tech Park in Hanoi on Wednesday, claiming it to be one of the largest such facilities in Vietnam to date.
According to the state Vietnam News Agency (VNA), the new Viettel data centre has racks “with a capacity of three times higher than the average in Vietnam”. The report also said the Hoa Lac data centre connects to five subsea fiber cable lines, and is the first data centre in Vietnam to commit to using renewable energy for 30% of its electricity consumption. The data centre also complies with TIA 942 standards, and features five layers of physical security, the report said.
While the report provided no details on capacity or power, it does say the new Viettel data centre is designed to handle the compute and capacity demands of artificial intelligence (AI) apps and services.
Viettel has been delving into AI for several years now. In July 2022 it joined Nvidia’s Partner Network via an MoU, under which Viettel is accessing Nvidia resources to accelerate research and implementation of its AI technology in robotics, computer vision, natural language process, digital twins, and other areas.
The Vietnamese government is also looking at promoting the country as a regional hotbed for AI development. On Thursday, VNA reported separately that the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) proposed that the government approve a national strategy on AI research, development and application by 2030. In February, the Vietnamese government approved a national data strategy that it says will serve as a foundation for domestic AI development.
Viettel chairman and general director Tao Duc Thang said that with the launch of the latest data centre, Viettel now owns and operates a total of 230,000 servers in 11,500 racks using 81,000 square meters of floor space and 87MW of electricity.
He also said Viettel plans to invest an additional VND10 trillion (US$400.88 million) to expand its combined data centre capacity to 17,000 racks by 2025, and another VND40 trillion to reach 34,000 racks by 2030, the report said.
