Microsoft Is Expanding Its Virginia Data Center Footprint, But Not in Ashburn

Microsoft is once again expanding its already enormous data center campus in Boydton, a town in southern Virginia. The office of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced the company’s plans Thursday, saying it will “inject significant capital investment” in what will be its sixth expansion at the site, which has been operational since 2010. Cloud giants including Microsoft have been spending billions of dollars each quarter in recent years on expanding data center infrastructure for their platforms. In Virginia, most of this construction activity has taken place in and around Ashburn – some 230 miles north of Boydton.Northern Virginia is the world’s largest and fastest-growing data center market, and Microsoft has substantial presence there. But big cloud providers usually have multiple data center locations serving every major geographic area, spread apart to provide backup for each other. Microsoft’s Azure cloud has three availability regions in Virginia, two for the private sector and one that exclusively serves government clients.