Chennai 2A went live on 29 June 2023 with 17.4 MW of critical IT load across 2,500 racks in a nine-storey tower at Ambattur. That is 6.96 kilowatts of IT per cabinet and about 278 cabinets per floor. Three published numbers — capacity, racks, floors — make this one of the most legible buildings in the registry, and one of only four NTT facilities in India where density can be calculated rather than assumed. It is also the half of the campus that exists: Building B, the second 17.4 MW tower, has no published stage. Six point ninety-six kilowatts is a sound 2023 number for enterprise and cloud. It is not a 2026 number for AI, and the difference between those two statements is the whole of the Indian market’s capacity problem.
1At a glance
26.96 kW per cabinet, and the ceiling it sets
This is the number to hold against every AI capacity claim in India, because it comes from a building opened in 2023 by the country’s largest operator.
| Measure | Chennai 2A | MSE at Chandivali, Jul 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Critical IT per cabinet | 6.96 kW | 17.2 kW |
| Ratio | baseline | 2.47x |
| Cabinets for 17.4 MW | 2,500 | about 1,012 |
| Floor needed for 17.4 MW | 231,400 sq ft, est. | about 94,000 sq ft, est. |
| Building type | nine-storey tower | same campus family |
Two and a half times the density does not mean two and a half times the capacity. It means the same 17.4 MW fits in fewer than half the cabinets and less than half the floor — which is a building cost saving, not an energy saving.
And it means Chennai 2A, as built, cannot serve an AI tenant at 2026 density without rework. Cooling has to change, floor loading has to change, and the distribution downstream of the UPS on each of nine floors has to change. A nine-storey tower makes that harder than a shed, because every floor is a separate problem.
Not megawatts, and not floor space. Kilowatts per cabinet, and whether the cooling can be upgraded.
Chennai 2A publishes the first. Nobody in this registry publishes the second.
3278 cabinets per floor
The floor count is the part almost nobody publishes, and it turns a building into an operational picture rather than a brochure claim.
| Measure | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Storeys | 9 | operator-stated |
| Racks per building | 2,500 | operator-stated |
| Racks per floor | about 278 | 2,500 divided by 9 |
| IT load per floor | about 1.93 MW | 17.4 divided by 9 |
| Floor plate at 13,300 sq ft/MW | about 25,700 sq ft | an estimate |
| Floor per cabinet | about 93 sq ft | an estimate |
| Racks per row at 20 per row | about 14 rows | a typical hall layout |
Two hundred and seventy-eight cabinets and just under two megawatts per floor is a manageable hall. It also means a single floor is a natural unit of sale — a tenant taking one floor takes about 2 MW and 278 cabinets, which is exactly the block size that Indian enterprise and cloud customers actually buy.
Compare NAV1A, which puts 5,000 racks into eight storeys plus a basement — about 556 cabinets and 3.3 MW per floor. Chennai 2A is a smaller-floored building. Neither operator says so; both publish the two numbers that let you work it out.
This is the argument for the registry in one paragraph: two facilities, two operators, and a comparable operational picture assembled entirely from published figures that nobody has put side by side.
4What the launch came with
The June 2023 announcement was as much about a cable as a building, and the details set the context for everything the campus claims.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| First building | 17.4 MW IT, 2,500 racks, 9 storeys, live same day |
| Campus | 34.8 MW across two buildings, 6 acres, Ambattur |
| Cable | MIST — Myanmar, Malaysia, India, Singapore — nearly 200 Tbps |
| NTT India at the time | 16 facilities, over 3.1 million sq ft, 205 MW of IT power |
| NTT India in 2026 | More than 18 facilities, more than 265 MW, per company statements |
| Investor context | MIST capacity sold to hyperscalers is the commercial reason the campus was built |
The jump from 205 MW to 265 MW across three years, against this registry’s 181 MW of additive NTT building records, is the same gap as everywhere else in this file: portfolio statements grow faster than buildings do.
Chennai 2A is one of the buildings. It is 17.4 MW, dated, rack-counted and live — which makes it more verifiable than most of the capacity announced in India in any given year, including some announced after it.
5Procurement
6Limits and open questions
- 6.96 kW per cabinet is a building average computed from 17.4 MW over 2,500 racks. Individual halls may be configured differently.
- 26.1 MW of facility load is derived at the 1.5 house ratio and is not published for this building.
- The floor plate and per-cabinet floor figures are estimates from the 13,300 sq ft per MW constant.
- No PUE, no occupancy, no tenant list.
- The 2027 expansion date in some directories is not an operator statement and is not carried here.
- What would close it. A published hall density and an occupancy figure. Both would make this the most comparable building in India.
7Sources
Sources: NTT newsroom release of 29 June 2023, NTT Global Data Centers Chennai 2 facility page which states 34.8 MW in two buildings at 17.4 MW and 2,500 racks each, Data Center Dynamics launch coverage, Economic Times and Times of India launch coverage, and Datacentermap listing for GDC Chennai 2.