Apple’s data center locations help power the company’s growth in services, including iCloud, App Store, Apple Maps, Apple Music, Apple Pay, Apple TV+, iMessage, and Siri. As Apple expands its offerings further into services, the company will need more data center capacity located in close proximity to end users, whether that be owned infrastructure, colocation facilities, or an increased use of cloud service providers.
In total, Apple has 8 of its own data centers operating in the United States, Europe, and China, with a further 2 under development. At the same time, Apple utilizes colocation facilities and cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud to meet its demanding requirements.
Dgtl Infra provides an in-depth overview of each of Apple’s data center locations, including the investment Apple is making, size of the multi-building campuses, future development plans, and energy consumption for operational facilities. Additionally, we detail Apple’s use of colocation facilities and cloud service providers which help support its own services, such as iCloud.
Does Apple Have its Own Data Centers?
Apple has its own data centers, dedicated to meeting the company’s varying performance, privacy, regulatory, and security requirements. In addition, Apple utilizes third-party colocation services, whereby it is often one of several customers utilizing a single data center.
Overall, Apple’s commitment to data centers is robust, with past spending and future locations placing the company’s total investment in data centers at over $12 billion in the United States and Europe.
How Many Data Centers Does Apple Have?
Apple operates 8 data centers located in the United States, Denmark, and China. Additionally, 2 more data centers are under development by Apple, in the United States and Europe, which would bring the company’s total portfolio to 10 data centers upon completion.
Where are Apple’s Data Centers Located?
In the United States and Europe, Apple operates 6 data centers and has a further 2 facilities at differing stages of development. At full build-out, these 8 data centers will collectively comprise around 10 million square feet.
Additionally, Apple has a data center presence in China, via a local partner, and supplements its owned data center capacity with colocation facilities in the United States and international markets.
United States – Apple Data Centers
In the United States, Apple operates 5 data centers in the markets of Reno, Nevada; Maiden, North Carolina; Mesa, Arizona; Prineville, Oregon; and Newark, California. While the company is also constructing one new data center just outside of Des Moines, Iowa.
Reno, Nevada (Sparks, Washoe County)
Apple opened its data center located just outside of Reno, in the city of Sparks, Washoe County, Nevada, in December 2012. Specifically, Apple’s Reno data center is located at 21505 Reno Technology Parkway West in Sparks, Nevada and is situated on 345 acres of land within the Reno Technology Park.
Initially, Apple constructed a 372,893 square foot data center with 8 clusters, as well as a supporting administration building, garage, and generator yard. Through various projects, codenamed Mills, Diablo, Huckleberry, and Isabel, Apple has expanded its Reno data center campus to three similarly-sized buildings. Collectively, Apple’s operational data centers in Reno are expected to support 100 permanent jobs.
Overall, Apple has committed $2 billion to building its Reno data center campus. To this end, Apple owns additional adjacent land parcels, totaling more than 1,250 acres, next to its existing data centers at the following addresses:
- 21675 Reno Technology Pkwy East: 470 acres of land
- 21755 Reno Technology Pkwy East: 298 acres of land
- 21100 Interstate 80 East: 147 acres of land
- 0 Reno Technology Pkwy E: 77 acres of land
- 0 Interstate 80 E: multiple parcels, including 120 acres of land and 181 acres of land
In fiscal year 2021, Apple’s Reno data center was supported by projects that generated 395 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy, which is equivalent to the energy used by nearly 34,000 homes in Nevada for a year. Use of renewable energy allowed Apple to avoid more than 106,000 metric tons of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) during the year.
Maiden, Catawba County, North Carolina
Apple opened its Maiden, Catawba County, North Carolina data center in June 2010, with its primary address being 5977 Startown Road in Maiden, North Carolina.
Initially, Apple constructed a 505,000 square foot data center and a much smaller, 21,030 square foot “tactical” data center. Subsequently, Apple has built two additional data centers at the site, each spanning approximately 240,000 square feet. As such, the Maiden, North Carolina data center campus comprises four buildings across ~1 million square feet.
In total, Apple has assembled more than 465 acres of land in Maiden, North Carolina, ensuring that the company can continue expanding its data center campus in the future. More specifically, Apple owns sizable adjacent land parcels at addresses including 2358 Blackburn Bridge Road and 2235 Elbow Road in Maiden, North Carolina.
Overall, Apple has invested about $3 billion into its Maiden, North Carolina data center campus, which employs around 400 people. Furthermore, in April 2021, Apple committed an incremental $448 million for construction, improvements, and equipment at its Maiden data center, over the next 10 years.
In fiscal year 2021, Apple’s Maiden data center was supported by projects that generated 392 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy, which is equivalent to the energy used by over 31,000 homes in North Carolina for a year. Use of renewable energy allowed Apple to avoid over 106,000 metric tons of CO2e during the year.
Mesa, Maricopa County, Arizona
In October 2015, Apple took operational control of a former factory of one of its suppliers, GT Advanced Technologies, who had filed for bankruptcy, and began the process of converting the building into a data center. By March 2017, Apple had opened and began servicing customers out of its Mesa, Maricopa County, Arizona data center, which is now home to Apple’s “global data command center”.
Apple’s Mesa data center is located at 3740 S Signal Butte Road in Mesa, Arizona and is situated on 83 acres of land. Following $2 billion of investment by Apple, this 1.3 million square foot data center serves as a key logistics and operations hub, supporting all of Apple’s data centers around the world. The facility is powered by its own solar farm on-site and houses around 150 full-time Apple employees.
In fiscal year 2021, Apple’s Mesa data center was supported by 332 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy, which is equivalent to the energy used by over 25,000 Arizona homes. Use of renewable energy allowed Apple to avoid more than 144,000 metric tons of CO2e during the year.
Prineville, Crook County, Oregon
Apple opened its Prineville, Crook County, Oregon data center in May 2012, after constructing a 338,000 square foot facility. Particularly, Apple’s Prineville data center is located at 1600 SW Baldwin Road in Prineville, Oregon and is situated on 154 acres of land.
In 2016, Apple completed its second 338,000 square foot data center at its Prineville, Oregon campus. Subsequently, Apple has begun preparation works to construct a third similarly-sized data center, which would bring the collective size of its Prineville, Oregon data centers to over 1 million square feet. Also, Apple notes that the data centers employ 100 people.
Additionally, Apple owns a further 211 acres of adjacent land, directly to the east of its existing Prineville, Oregon campus. Therefore, in total, Apple has amassed over 365 acres of land in this high-desert city in Central Oregon.
Notably, Apple’s Prineville, Oregon site is located only half-a-mile away from a $2 billion data center campus being developed by Facebook (Meta Platforms).
READ MORE: Facebook’s 18 Data Centers and $20bn Investment
In fiscal year 2021, Apple’s Prineville data center was supported by projects that generated 279 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy, which is equivalent to the energy used by over 25,000 homes in Oregon for a year. Use of renewable energy allowed Apple to avoid over 196,000 metric tons of CO2e during the year.
Newark, Alameda County, California
Apple originally acquired its data center located at 39800 Eureka Drive in Newark, Alameda County, California in February 2006, which at the time spanned 107,000 square feet. Subsequently, in October 2020, Apple sold off its ownership in the facility to T5 Data Centers, but remained as a tenant of the facility.
As of October 2020, Apple’s Newark, California data center comprised 17 megawatts of critical power across 128,000 square feet. Also, T5 Data Centers stated that it would develop an additional 32.1-megawatt, 180,000 square foot building on the site, bringing the total available power capacity at the campus to 49.1 megawatts.
In fiscal year 2021, Apple’s Newark data center was supported by projects that generated 71 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy, which is equivalent to the energy used by nearly 10,000 homes in California for a year. Use of renewable energy allowed Apple to avoid more than 5,000 metric tons of CO2e during the year.
Des Moines, Iowa (Waukee, Dallas County)
During 2022, Apple began construction on the first phase, comprising 398,473 square feet, of a new data center campus situated 18 miles west of Des Moines, Iowa. The data center development is located at 2995 W Hickman Road in the northwest section of the city of Waukee, Iowa.
READ MORE: Apple Progresses $1.3 billion Iowa Data Center Campus
Apple’s plan for the first phase of its Waukee, Iowa data center location involves the construction of a number of buildings, including a data center facility, as well as office & administration, maintenance, and network distribution buildings. Of these buildings, the first data center will represent 315,773 square feet.
In total, Apple plans to build 6 data centers, spanning nearly 2 million square feet, at this location. Previously, Apple has stated that the entire development would involve a total investment of $1.375 billion.
MidAmerican Energy will construct a substation to supply the future data center campus with utility power. Furthermore, Apple notes that this data center will run entirely on renewable energy from “day one”.
Europe – Apple Data Centers
In Europe, Apple operates one data center in Denmark and is in the pre-development phase for another facility in Ireland.
Viborg, Jutland, Denmark
Apple opened its Viborg, Denmark data center in 2020, after constructing a 484,376 square foot (45,000 square meter) facility. Specifically, Apple’s Viborg data center is located at Hobro Landevej 8, 8830 in the municipality of Tjele, Jutland, Denmark.
During 2022 and early 2023, Apple is expanding the Viborg data center’s operations and is building new infrastructure to capture excess heat energy. In particular, Apple will connect its Viborg data center to a district heating scheme as a way to utilize this excess heat energy.
Ultimately, Apple plans to invest a total of €850 million ($1 billion) into its Viborg data centers, scaling the campus up to 1.8 million square feet (166,000 square meters).
In fiscal year 2021, Apple’s Viborg, Denmark data center sourced 15 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy, avoiding more than 6,000 metric tons of CO2e.
Athenry, County Galway, Ireland
Since 2014, Apple has had plans to build an €850 million ($1 billion) data center in Ireland, spanning a total of 1.8 million square feet (166,000 square meters). Apple’s 500-acre (202-hectare) site is located on recovered lands, at Toberroe and Palmerstown, Derrydonnell, Athenry, County Galway, Ireland, which were previously used for commercial lumber.
Initially, Apple plans to construct only 324,403 square feet (30,138 square meters) of gross floor space, comprised of the following:
- 263,770 square feet (24,505 square meters) single-story data center building
- 56,317 square feet (5,232 square meters) single-story logistics and administration building
- 3,111 square feet (289 square meters) single-story maintenance building
- 1,205 square feet (112 square meters) security and fiber huts
In terms of power capacity, the Apple development intends to use an initial 6 megawatts and, once fully operational, could scale up to 30 megawatts of power, supplied by the EirGrid network. Ultimately, if the development progressed further and permission was granted for an additional development, the power demand generated by the site could reach up to 240 megawatts.
Previously, Apple has stated that 150 people would be employed on-site at its data center location in Ireland.
Aabenraa, Denmark
In June 2019, Apple decided to not proceed with the construction of a $920 million (DKK 6.3 billion) data center in Aabenraa, Denmark. Previously, in the summer of 2017, Apple had purchased 705 acres (285 hectares) of land at Kassø, outside Aabenraa, near Denmark’s border with Germany, to construct a data center. However, Apple ultimately decided to sell the land instead.
China – Apple Data Centers
Under Chinese law, Apple is required to host data of its Chinese users in local data centers. As such, Apple has two operational data centers in China which are run in-partnership with Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry Development Co., Ltd. (GCBD), a state-supervised service provider in mainland China.
Geographically, Apple has one data center in the city of Guiyang, capital of the province of Guizhou and one in the city of Ulanqab, part of the region of Inner Mongolia.
In fiscal year 2021, Apple’s China data centers were supported by 58 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy, avoiding more than 36,000 metric tons of CO2e during the year.
Colocation Facilities – Apple Data Centers
Colocation is the provision of turn-key data center space to multiple customers, within the same data halls, for the purposes of hosting IT infrastructure.
READ MORE: Colocation – Definition, Meaning, Data Center, Services
In this scenario, Apple’s colocation facilities are hosted by third-party data center operators, such as Digital Realty, where Apple utilizes only a portion of the facility’s total capacity. For example, as of June 30, 2022, Apple was a tenant in 26 of Digital Realty’s data center locations around the world.
Apple states that the majority of its online services are provided by its own data centers. However, the company also uses third-party colocation facilities for additional data center capacity.
Apple Data Centers – Servers, Electricity, Backup, Design
Apple’s data center disclosures provide insight into the company’s use of servers, electricity consumption, backup generators, and energy-efficient design.
Servers
Apple has developed a specification requiring its servers to be powered by high-efficiency power supplies, exceeding the efficiency requirements for ENERGY STAR certification. In 2021, Apple deployed these high-performance power supplies to hundreds of thousands of servers, resulting in over 4 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year in energy savings.
Electricity Consumption
In fiscal year 2021, Apple used over 1.9 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity to power its data centers and colocation facilities around the world. As shown below, 77% of this electricity consumption was used to power its data centers in the United States and Europe, while 20% of this electricity consumption was expended to power its colocation facilities:
| Data Centers | Electricity (million kWh) | % of Total |
| Reno, Nevada | 395 | 20% |
| Maiden, North Carolina | 392 | 20% |
| Mesa, Arizona | 332 | 17% |
| Prineville, Oregon | 279 | 14% |
| Newark, California | 71 | 4% |
| Viborg, Denmark | 15 | 1% |
| U.S. Colocation | 291 | 15% |
| International Colocation | 94 | 5% |
| China | 58 | 3% |
| Total | 1,927 | 100% |
Importantly, 100% of Apple’s electricity consumption came from renewable energy sources including solar, wind, biogas fuel cells, and hydro power. To this end, Apple builds its own renewable power projects and partners with utilities to purchase clean energy from locally-obtained resources, to meet its energy needs.
Since 2014, all of Apple’s data centers have been powered by 100% renewable energy, even as the company’s data center portfolio has continued to grow.
READ MORE: How Data Centers Impact the Environment
Backup Generators
At its data center locations in Reno, Nevada; Maiden, North Carolina; and Prineville, Oregon, Apple has added a second electrical transmission line, which increases the reliability of each facility’s power supply. In turn, this higher reliability minimizes the need for the operation of diesel-powered emergency generators, which data centers often rely on to provide a backup source of power in case of electrical outages.
READ MORE: Data Center Tiers – Differences Between 1, 2, 3, and 4
Energy-Efficient Design
Apple’s data centers perform about 60% better than the ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) 90.4 baseline specific to data centers. Particularly, this standard addresses mechanical and electrical system efficiencies within a data center, and uses two metrics: mechanical load component (MLC) and electrical load component (ELC).
Does Apple Use the Cloud Service Providers?
Beyond the use of its own data centers and colocation facilities, Apple has also utilized cloud computing services from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud to support its own on-demand cloud computing and storage services.
READ MORE: Top 10 Cloud Service Providers Globally in 2023
Does Apple Use Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
Apple is one of the largest customers of Amazon Web Services (AWS). To this end, in 2019, Apple signed an agreement that included a commitment to spend at least $1.5 billion on Amazon Web Services (AWS) over a 5-year period. As an example, Apple uses AWS’ Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service) to support its own iCloud storage service.
READ MORE: Amazon Web Services (AWS) Data Center Locations
Does Apple Use Microsoft Azure?
Historically, Apple used Microsoft Azure to store some encrypted portions of certain iOS (Apple’s mobile operating system) files. However, press reports indicate that Apple switched from using Microsoft Azure to Google Cloud to support a subset of its storage needs.
READ MORE: Microsoft Azure’s Data Center Locations
Does Apple Use Google Cloud?
Apple is reportedly Google Cloud’s largest customer in terms of storage, spending an estimated $300 million on Google Cloud storage in 2021. Since 2016, Apple has relied on Google Cloud to support its own iCloud storage service.
READ MORE: Google Cloud’s Data Center Locations
