ProSiebenSat.1 New Campus equipped with state-of-the-art data center
On 26,444 square metres, ProSiebenSat.1’s New Campus in Unterföhring, Germany will be “home” to 1,700 employees in 2024. Its future-ready data center ensures computer services and broadcasting capacity with highest energy efficiency.
New Campus: a visionary project that stands for interconnectivity, scalability and efficiency
ProSiebenSat.1 has been cooperating with HUBER+SUHNER for over eight years. With the New Campus, we got involved in the planning of a state-of-the-art data center. In addition to the data center, there are 50 data distribution rooms to meet today’s high standards in terms of fire protection and sustainability. The aspiration of ProSiebenSat.1 is to ensure future-proof computing services and broadcasting capacity while increasing energy efficiency with green IT. In the past, most data for TV broadcasting was transmitted via coaxial cables. With today’s high-definition (HD) and ultra-high-definition (UHD) video formats, an all internet protocol (“all IP”) strategy was needed for the New Campus to produce news programmes as well as all other digital formats internally, in one of the most cutting-edge news facilities in Europe.
Designing a future-proof data center
The biggest challenge was to design the data center’s cabling and capacity for on-site and cloud solutions in the most suitable way – for example the media production center and ":newstime” studio which have to secure an option to deliver news 24/7 – while at the same time accommodating capacities which are not even known today. Additionally, the change in technology towards network engineering, servers, and storage had to be factored in at the very beginning of the project. HUBER+SUHNER accompanied the ProSiebenSat.1 team every step of the way by sharing valuable data center expertise and our thorough understanding of the customer’s expectations. Some external challenges during construction were posed by supply chain bottlenecks due to the global pandemic.
“It was crucial for us to design the data centers to be as energy- and solution-efficient as possible, as well as highly flexible, and to adapt them to the latest technologies. This also included the cable infrastructure inside and outside the data centers and its standardisation. All of this had to serve one goal: our all-IP strategy. In addition, we had to enable 24-hour operations for the employees, editorial offices, studios, and broadcasting operations in the new building from one single IT infrastructure.”
Reinhard Dietl, Vice President Network Service, ProSiebenSat.1 Tech Solutions
Space, adaptability, and efficiency as key success factors
Due to increasingly demanding broadcasting services, ProSiebenSat.1 wanted a system that would allow, beyond their data racks, highly efficient connection of as many fiber optic cables as possible. Over eight years ago, ProSiebenSat.1 chose HUBER+SUHNER and its IANOS® panel and LISA as cable systems. This solution allows the customer to avoid tedious changes by splicing the fiber optic cables in the data racks. The space-saving IANOS® panel and the LISA DA scalable sub-racks accommodate next-generation data rates and rapidly evolving network services. IANOS and LISA modules are interchangeable connectivity blocks installed in the IANOS chassis and the LISA rack, providing flexible fiber management.
Our solution met ProSiebenSat.1’s cable length and rack availability requirements, as well as its energy-efficiency needs. The ambition was to keep the indoor ambient temperature at a maximum of 27 °C without investing a lot of energy for rack cooling. The volume for cooling remained the same but is now more concentrated due to the significantly lower number of racks (from around 700 to 164) due to new technologies. To comply with high “green IT” expectations, it is key that no energy is energy lost for cooling. Any exhaust heat is reused for heating or cooling in the New Campus, which led to its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification.
“The ProSiebenSat.1 data center is a lighthouse project in the broadcasting market. It proves that we were able to bring all of our strengths and competencies to bear in order to fulfil customer requirements with our technology and development. The close cooperation with the ProSiebenSat.1 team very much contributed to the successful implementation of the project.”
Fabian Schmidli, Key Account Manager Data Center at HUBER+SUHNER AG