NTT Chennai 1 on Poonamallee High Road carries 2 MW of critical IT load across 1,500 square metres of server space — about 16,145 square feet, or 8,073 square feet per megawatt. That makes it the tightest floor NTT publishes anywhere in India: 40% less space per megawatt than its own hyperscale halls at 13,300, and a fraction of the 80 square feet per cabinet at NAV1A. It is a cage-based colocation hall with 3 to 6 kVA racks, and it arrived with the 2012 Netmagic acquisition, not with a launch. The operator still describes it as ranked number one in the local market, which is the same sentence its Noida facility carries, while NTT’s own 34.8 MW Chennai 2 campus stands nine kilometres away. Chennai 1 is 0.7% of the capacity this registry counts in Tamil Nadu.
1At a glance
2The densest floor NTT publishes
For once the interesting number is not the megawatts. It is the square feet.
| Measure | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Server space | 1,500 m² | operator-stated |
| Converted | 16,145 sq ft | at 10.764 sq ft per m² |
| Critical IT load | 2 MW | operator-stated |
| Floor per MW | 8,073 sq ft | the tightest in the file |
| Cabinets at 4.5 kVA | about 444 | 2,000 kW divided by 4.5 |
| Floor per cabinet | about 36 sq ft | 16,145 divided by 444 |
| Compare NAV1A | 80 sq ft per cabinet | 400,000 sq ft over 5,000 racks |
Thirty-six square feet per cabinet against eighty. That is not an efficiency gain — it is a different product. A hyperscale hall has to leave room for plant, aisles, air handling and future density. A cage-based colocation hall in a metro building packs cabinets and sells 3 to 6 kVA each.
The consequence is real: this building carries 1.33 kW per square metre of server floor, against 0.81 at NAV1A. Tight floors are how small city colocation survives on expensive land — and why it cannot be filled with 17 kW cabinets.
Chennai 1 is a dense, small, cage-based colo hall. Chennai 2, nine kilometres away, is a shell built for 17.4 MW per building.
Both are NTT, both are in this registry, and neither number tells you anything useful about the other. That is exactly what a market report that counts only megawatts gets wrong.
3A second stale ranking claim
The operator’s page for Chennai 1 says the facility is ranked number one in the local market. So does the page for Noida 1. Both were reasonable when written; neither has been updated.
| Record | Capacity | Stage |
|---|---|---|
| CtrlS Chennai park | 72 MW across two buildings | 1 million sq ft, Ambattur |
| STT GDC Chennai | 68 MW published | eight city records |
| Nxtra Chennai | 46 MW headline | cards reconcile to 49 |
| NTT Chennai 2 campus | 34.8 MW planned, 17.4 live | two 9-storey buildings |
| CapitaLand / Clint, Ambattur | 34 MW | 13 data halls, opened October 2026 |
| Iron Mountain Chennai | 42 MW | 23.2 MW in CHN-1 |
| NTT Chennai 1 | 2 MW | live since 2012 |
Seven operators, a corridor that has become one of the four densest in India, and a 2 MW hall carrying a market-leader claim. The claim is not worth arguing with. It is worth dating.
What Chennai 1 does have is time. It has been running since 2012, it has carrier-neutral access with multiple fibre paths, and it has on-site staff doing remote hands. In a market where new capacity is sold before it is built, fourteen years of unbroken operation is a product.
4What 2 MW in a metro building is for
A small colocation hall inside a city exists for reasons that have nothing to do with capacity, and the specification makes them visible.
| Feature | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| 3 to 6 kVA per rack | Enterprise and mid-market workloads, not accelerated compute |
| N+N UPS | Redundancy bought at the rack, not at the building |
| Multiple fibre paths, carrier neutral | The commercial reason the site exists: interconnect |
| Managed and remote-hands on site | Customers who do not run their own staff in Chennai |
| 36 sq ft per cabinet | Metro land is expensive, so floor is packed |
| 2 MW total | Not a site that can serve a hyperscaler at any density |
Nine kilometres away the same operator runs a building with 17 times the capacity in a shell designed for hyperscale. Chennai 1 and Chennai 2 are not competing; they address different customers, and the gap between them is the clearest picture in this file of what changed in Indian data centres between 2012 and 2023.
For a buyer, Chennai 1 is a connectivity and proximity product with a hard ceiling. For a seller, it is a facility that will never be expanded, which makes it a stable but finite line in any portfolio.
5Procurement
6Limits and open questions
- The 1,500 m² is described as server space, and the 16,145 sq ft figure in directory listings appears to be the same number converted, not an independent building measurement. The floor intensity rests on that.
- The 36 sq ft per cabinet is derived from a 4.5 kVA average inside a 3 to 6 kVA range. It is an estimate.
- No facility load is published for Chennai 1, so no ratio can be computed.
- “Ranked number one in the local market” is an undated operator marketing line. It is quoted, not corrected.
- No PUE, no occupancy, no tenant list, no commissioning date beyond the 2012 Netmagic acquisition.
- What would close it. A facility load and a rack count. Both are single lines on a facility page.
7Sources
Sources: NTT Global Data Centers Chennai 1 facility page, NTT DATA global data center locations index, Data Center Dynamics reporting on the Chennai 2 launch which quotes Chennai 1 at 2 MW across 1,500 sq m, Datacentermap listing for GDC Chennai 1, and Datacenters.com facility listing.