A reserve of 10% of the area and capacity of data centers, created in pursuance of the decree of the President of the Russian Federation dated November 2, 2026 No. 802, is supposed to be used for information systems from the “white list,” Vedomosti reported, citing a statement by the head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Maksut Shadayev, at a meeting with operators.
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The minister explained that the operator will be obliged to disconnect existing customers if the capacity is insufficient to provide the specified reserve size. Therefore, companies need to identify lower priority customers. It is proposed not to rent out the reserved capacity or to warn clients that, if necessary, they will have to release the leased capacity within 24 hours. If the contract for hosting customer resources has already been concluded, but the equipment has not yet been installed, it is recommended to terminate it.
According to sources, the Ministry of Digital Development is preparing official clarifications that the actions of operators to vacate space will be considered force majeure.
As a Vedomosti source explained with reference to Shadayev’s position stated at the meeting, the requirement to reserve capacity applies only to commercial data centers, that is, those owned by specialized operators who make money by renting out space. This does not apply to corporate data centers used by companies for their own needs, in particular banking organizations.
In the case of partial use of the data center for the provision of services, the reserve will be determined based on the volume of these resources. For example, the site of a subsidiary that provides services to the group under contracts is supposed to be considered commercial, the source says.
According to one of the meeting participants, the reserve can be calculated cumulatively for all sites: it is not necessary to allocate 10% at each site. The specific data center will be chosen by the operator himself. When calculating the reserve, it is proposed to take into account premises with rack spaces provided with electricity, and data on resources on the balance sheet. Computing power to provide cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is also subject to redundancy.
The difference between IT capacity and the power of technological connection is separately specified: they will focus on the first, and check the data on the second, taking into account the consumption of engineering infrastructure.
Experts admit that with the constant exclusion of reserves from sales, additional construction of data centers will be required to implement the previous volume of services. With a payback period for data center construction of 7–8 years, some projects without support measures may be delayed in terms of launch.
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