LG to open Asia’s largest data center

ANYANG, Gyeonggi Province ― Nestling in an IT business cluster in Pyeongchon-dong, Anyang, half an hour south of Seoul, LG Uplus’ new commercial data center ― dubbed the Mega Center ― displays its overwhelming structures.

The construction of what will become Asia’s largest data center is around 90 percent complete and slated to open in late August.

Housing 24 computer rooms ― on a total of 27,770 square meters ― the data center consisting of an office facility and two data center buildings is installed with 500 racks of servers, each of which car be mounted with around 50 individual servers.

In addition to its overwhelming physical scale, top-notch technologies for a stable, efficient power supply and a high level of security will make the Mega Center stand out above the rest, according to LG Uplus.

“One of the most important factors in running a data center is energy efficiency, and the Mega Center will show off the highest energy efficiency level among commercial data centers located in metropolitan cities around the world,” Choi Young-bum, general manager of LG Uplus’ New IDC task force, told a small group of reporters who visited the construction site last Thursday.

Its power usage effectiveness level, or PUE, a metric to measure energy efficiency, will stand at 1.4, the industry’s lowest level among commercial data centers located in large cities. Data centers for Google, Facebook or Microsoft, most of which are not for commercial use but for their own services, boast a PUE ratio of 1.21 to 1.22.

The LG Uplus data center utilizes renewable energy sources including solar and geothermal energy to power the servers, and received the Uptime tier III design certification, which recognizes the high performance of a data center, for the first time in Korea.

“What is also meaningful is that all equipment used at the data center to maintain a high level of energy efficiency are manufactured in Korea,” the LG Uplus general manager said.

In line with the efforts to achieve operation efficiency, the data center has adopted a unique design for cooling by having a massive wind tunnel built through the entire floors in the middle of the data center buildings. LG Uplus also placed parking lots on the first floor of the buildings.

“The wind tunnels and parking lots will also keep the data center away from some possible damage from fires and flooding,” Choi said.

Aiming to prevent ill-intended attempts of data theft, LG Uplus will not only deploy airtight security measures including surveillance cameras and iris scanners, but also completely separate its office facility, where around 500 engineers and officials from corporate customers can work, and two data center buildings with racks of servers.

Having established its first data center in Seoul in 1999, the Korean mobile carrier runs 12 data centers across the nation.

By Kim Young-won  (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)