Kakao completes first in-house data center

South Korean tech giant Kakao Corp. has completed construction of its first in-house data center that can store 120,000 computer servers, with its launch slated for the first quarter of next year after preparatory work.

The company on Tuesday said it held a completion ceremony for Kakao Data Center Ansan, whose construction began in 2021, at Hanyang University's Erica campus in the southern Seoul suburb of Ansan, Gyeonggi Province.

As the first of its kind built by Kakao, this massive facility can hold 120,000 servers and 4,000 server storage racks and boasts data storage capacity of six billion gigabytes.

Kakao integrated and transferred servers from a data center with 100,000 servers that it leases from an external company to the new facility, which recycles rain and heavy water and waste heat for higher energy efficiency.

The Ansan center was also designed to withstand floods, tsunamis, typhoons and earthquakes to provide stable service even if disaster strikes. It can resist winds of up to 28 meters per second and earthquakes up to magnitude 6.5.

Systems for a four-stage response to fire and redundancy in power, cooling and communications to prepare for power outages were also installed. And uninterruptible power supply for an emergency comprises a battery room and a partition wall with four zones, enabling operation even if a fire breaks out on one side.

Before launching operations at its new center in the first quarter of next year, Kakao will install an operating system and perform stabilization work.

Industry sources say the company next year will begin construction of a second data center double the size of the first at Seoul National University's campus in Siheung, another Seoul suburb in Gyeonggi.

Write to Ju-Hyun Lee at 2juhyun@hankyung.com