Azure Space

[Asteroza]

So I might be pressing my luck here but...


Microsoft announced their Azure Space platform, using Microsoft Azure cloud services (particularly their modular datacenter concept) combined with SpaceX supplied Starlink satellite backhaul.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/10/20/azure-space-cloud-powered-innovation-on-and-off-the-planet/

https://news.microsoft.com/azurespace/


This starts bringing up the combined megaconstellation/cloud service fight to a new level, in an attempt to challenge the approaching AWS/AWS Project Kuiper/Blue Origin dreadnaught.


One wonders how Google and their GCP cloud platform feels about this, considering their investment in SpaceX (and by extension Starlink) up to this point. They have cloud and Android ecosystems, but no rocket or satellites. There's also the looming shadow of Apple and their iPhone ecosystem.



The concept of rural edge datacenters in a single container pod supported by a satellite backhaul network is quite interesting, as the whole IoT/Edge Cloud platform concepts continue to mature.


The throwaway comment about the modular datacenter container being based on on Microsoft Azure's Project Natick underwater sealed datacenter research made me think though. Could this potentially re-enable the offshore datacenter concept, the most obvious being the country of Sealand? Or one could imagine in some shallow spot of the ocean outside an EEZ, a small fleet of Project Natick containers, powered by ocean current turbines or other green power generators, so only a pole or buoy sticks out from the ocean surface, holding a Starlink antenna?

[Lar]

I read the press release and I didn't think this was an exclusive tie-up... google can also do this if they want.... (might have misinterpreted what I read)

I think that while it's just a press release at present rather than a real thing (container ready to deliver to you next week) it's a very hopeful sign that people are taking Starlink seriously.

[edzieba]

While deployment as a service may require waiting for fuller constellation coverage. Microsoft has been running datacentres-in-a-can for many years now, to the extend they've been branching out into weird applications like sealing that can and sticking it underwater. They have a lot of experience in how to design and build them, and they've been iterating that design for quite some time to perfect it for different applications (e.g. ISO container for solitary remote deployments vs. custom form-factor for high density deployments, etc).
The groundwork for producing containerised modular datacentres is in place, once Microsoft decide they want to deploy these the only thing delaying it would be component supply time. They may even be able to beat that 'few weeks' if you really wanted one soon.