Naver Cloud's Data Center Operations: A Decade of Uninterrupted Services

Naver Cloud hosted a technology forum on Feb. 9 to showcase its expertise in operating Naver services over the past decade and unveil its new Gak Sejong hyper-scale data center, scheduled for completion in the third quarter of 2023.

Naver Cloud operates Gak Chuncheon, the largest data center outside the metropolitan region.

Noh Sang-min, head of Naver Cloud Data Center, highlighted the critical aspects of Gak Chuncheon’s operation: “no interruptions, no accidents, and no disasters.”

Located at the foot of Mount Gubongsan, Gak Chuncheon has a gross floor area of 46,850 m2, equivalent to the size of seven soccer fields, and can house around 100,000 server units.

The data center was built focusing on energy efficiency and is considered a leader in ESG (environmental, social, and governance) management.

Naver Cloud has invested in human resources, R&D, and systems development to ensure data center operations and service continuity even during disasters.

The company has developed tools for error detection and analysis, such as WMS (Web Monitoring System) and Weave, a comprehensive tool for error analysis.

Naver Cloud has built several data centers, not only in the Seoul metropolitan area but also in other regions, to ensure decentralized deployment and network stability.

The company has also established the ‘Data Center Capacity Consultation Organization’ to improve service reliability and efficiency. Naver Cloud has received 13 data protection certifications, the most among CSPs (cloud service providers) in South Korea.

BCP (Business Continuity Plan) has become increasingly important due to the current pandemic.

Naver Cloud has set up a dedicated BCP organization to act as a control tower in the event of a disaster and has conducted over 200 simulation exercises over the past decade, including BCP simulations and public-private partnership exercises, to ensure business continuity and rapid recovery.

Gak Chuncheon has implemented environmentally friendly technologies, such as using natural breezes to cool server rooms, recycling rainwater, and installing solar panels to generate electricity.

Naver has implemented active ESG management and joined the RE100 and EV100 in October 2022. From the global ESG rating agency MSCI, Naver has received the highest rating of AAA for two consecutive years.

The new Gak Sejong data center will be six times larger than Gak Chuncheon, with a capacity of 270 MW and the ability to house over 600,000 server units.

The data center, scheduled for completion in the second quarter of 2023, will use robots and autonomous driving shuttles to increase the productivity of data center work.

Naver plans to present Gak Sejong as a data center with high IT density, increased productivity, and stability after the second office building, 1784, a tech convergence building, was completed in 2022.