Facebook's new Altoona, Iowa-based data center is up and running, about 18 months after breaking ground.
Site manager Brice Towns said in a blog post that the construction was the "fastest we've ever completed a first building at one of our sites."
"As you may have heard, we like to move fast at Facebook—and we are grateful to everyone who's helped us to get to this point," Towns said. "We're proud to call you our neighbors and our friends, and to be a part of the community here in Altoona."
The social network in April 2013 confirmed plans for the massive facility—Facebook's fourth owned-and-operated data center, and its third in the U.S. The three others are located in Prineville, Ore.; Forest City, N.C.; and Lulea, Sweden.
What Towns called "one of the most advanced, efficient, and sustainable data centers on the planet," the Altoona building is powered by 100 percent renewable energy, provided in collaboration with MidAmerican Energy.
Cooled by 100 percent outside air, the 476,000-square-foot building also features hyper-efficient Open Computer Project gear and a new networking fabric that makes more future scaling more efficient as more folks log onto the site globally.
But Facebook is not done building in Altoona. A second data center of roughly the same size and layout is currently in the works, expected for a late-2015 opening.
"There's a lot more work to be done," Towns wrote. "But we are excited to have reached this milestone, and to be working side by side with this community to help make the city of Altoona and the state of Iowa great."
In April, Google also inked a deal with MidAmerican Energy to supply its Council Bluffs, Iowa data center with up to 407 megawatts of 100 percent renewable wind energy. Expected to be complete sometime next year, the expansion project will give the Warren Buffett-owned power company the capacity to generate more than 3.3 gigawatts of clean electricity via wind.