Monsantos global data center was built as a typical data center and it was over forty years old. Some aspects of the facility were beginning to show its age, also the data center was getting way too crowded for comfort, and that was when a project was evolved where it was decided to look at building a new data center.

As a result of Monsantos green culture and the companys commitment to environmental conservation, justification for the project was not a difficult task for the companys CIO.

At the onset, it was decided to see if we could build a data center for the future, which meant that the data center would lower operational costs and decrease power consumed, and would also enable growth for the company by using innovative techniques in terms of spacing out the data center.

When we began designing a new $21 mn data center about five years ago, it was a decidedly green effort from the word go.

The 40,000-sq-ft facility, which was completed last July, was designed with a 17-ft floor-to-ceiling span to promote airflow and eliminate the need for power or cooling units on the data centers floor. And the glass screen that covers the front of the building isnt just aesthetically pleasing: it can withstand the wind force of an F3 tornado and screens 60% of the suns rays, thus, lowering the demands on the buildings cooling systems. The data center has also been built to withstand category 4 earthquakes as well.

The carefully planned facility initiatives would result in savings of around 27% energy consumed as compared to a conventional data center. Apart for this, there was a large-scale focus around infrastructure rationalization/consolidation with the increasing use of virtualization. Over the past three years, Monsanto has eliminated 334 servers, and it is running just 16 Windows- and Linux-based machines today. Around ten global data centers were consolidated into one single hub and this has helped us realize energy efficiency savings as well.

Monsanto has also committed to purchase 10% of the total energy consumption at its headquarters from renewable sources such as wind power, and has a concerted effort to work in an efficient and effective telecommuting model.

The data center was completed in the second half of 2007 and saves more than 25% of building energy, compared to a conventionally designed data center. We also anticipate receiving Leadership in Energy Efficiency and Design (LEED) certification this spring, making it the first LEED registered data center in the state of Missouri, and the third LEED certified data center in the country.

Migration of most servers and services has been completed from the old data center to the new data center and the teams in India were part of the global data center upgrade project.

Some Takeaways
Green data centers result in a win-win situation where the environment issue is addressed and the costs of operations are also brought down.

By making simple investments in terms of the type of glass procured, the height of the ceilings, the physical location of servers, etc, you can derive significant costs savings in terms of energy consumed and reducing operational costs.

By strategically looking at areas like physical data center consolidation through virtualization, significant savings can be realized for the company as well as for the environment.

Anand Kumar
The author is regional lead, IT at Monsanto
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

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