Hoa Lac IDC data center（Photo: Viettel）
Data centers in Vietnam have been booming in the past year (2023), with the cumulative total reaching nearly 30. However, energy consumption and carbon emissions remained high. State-owned telecommunications giant Viettel pledged to address this issue by implementing energy efficient systems and equipment at its Hoa Lac IDC data center, aiming to reduce energy consumption by over 2% per year, to achieve carbon reduction goals.
The data center, which has been in operation for 12 years, located within the Viettel Building in Hanoi City, covers an area of approximately 53,800 sq ft and can accommodate 1,000 racks.
Nguyen Dinh Tuan, Head of Technical Department at Viettel IDC, stated that to improve energy efficiency, they have established an Energy Management Committee responsible for guiding and coordinating energy usage across departments and setting electricity consumption benchmarks.
To achieve its goals, the Energy Management Committee has respectively developed short- and medium-term plans for one year and five years. These plans involve investments in equipment upgrades, technological innovation, and dispatch of engineers to participate in training courses organized by the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade.
In addition to adopting DCIM systems (Data Center Infrastructure Management), the Hoa Lac Data Center combines sensors and the Internet of Things (IoT) function for energy consumption measurement and monitoring. It also modified its air conditioning system and fully replaced traditional fluorescent lights with LED, which can reduce energy consumption by 30%.
Besides Viettel, there are other major local enterprises in Vietnam, such as Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) and FPT Corporation, a leading provider of Information and communication technology (ICT) and software services, that have also entered the operation of data centers.
Among these, VNPT operates the largest number of data centers, with 8 facilities across Vietnam, offering over 1,000 physical servers. The biggest one is the VNPT IDC Hoa Lac, located within the Hoa Lac High-Tech Park, covering an area of nearly 250,000 sq ft with a scale of up to 2,000 racks, recognized as the largest data center in Vietnam today.
Viettel IDC also operates 5 data centers in Vietnam, Hoa Lac 3 is the sixth, scheduled to commence operations in Mar 2024. Upon its completion, the total number of racks of Viettel IDC is expected to exceed 8,500. On the other hand, FPT Corporation, which currently operates 4 data centers, plans to officially launch its latest facility in June in Danang City, an evolving city in central Vietnam.
