To house its servers, the Interior Ministry of Russia has not yet located a colocation data center. Not a single submission was submitted for the department’s themed auction, according to this article at CNews.ru. The Central Federal District or the Northwestern Federal District must have at least 100 rack spaces, according to the Ministry. The industry has been discussing the lack of capacity in Russian data centers since April 2022.
The Ministry was ready to pay 698.7 million rubles (nearly $11M) for rent, but there were no colocation providers willing to deliver their services to the Russian government.
The data center colocation services requested included 4.2 thousand server blades (one hundred 42-unit racks), according to the tender papers, for a period of 24 months. The Interior Ministry was looking for a data center within the Central or Northwestern Federal Districts, excluding the Kaliningrad region. According to CNews.ru, the Russian Ministry further stated that ‘equipment rental to ensure the conditions of operation’ for data center purposes would also be an option.
Information about the tender was published on the public procurement portal. The tender was published on September 3, 2022, in the format of an electronic auction. At the end of it, not a single bid was submitted.
Linxdatacenter, IXcellerate, DataPro
In Russia, there are several data center colocation providers able to offer colocation capacities like these, including for example Linxdatacenter, IXcellerate, and DataPro. Apparently, none of them saw the tender or were interested in making an offer.
According to CNews.ru, one explanation for it, among other things, might be the fact that, amid sanctions, many data center refreshment projects are postponed indefinitely. Also, foreign vendors have stopped supplying engineering and server equipment to Russian data centers.
The tender published by the Interior Ministry of Russia was meant as a temporary solution to span the time until the Ministry could complete the building of its own data center. According to the plan, it should be completed in 2024, the data center will be based in Moscow. It would now take longer to complete the construction of the Federal Data Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, according to the CNews.ru article.
