Amazon Creates a 'Deploy Anywhere' Modular Data Center for the US Military
Amazon Web Services is set to offer a new type of data center that can be used to gain a military advantage anywhere in the world.
It's called the AWS Modular Data Center (MDC)(Opens in a new window), and it's basically a shipping container with the ability to access many of Amazon's cloud-based services as well as being easy to expand upon with more (shipping container) modules.
Each MDC houses a self-contained data center with internal networking, cooling, and power distribution equipment inside. It allows Amazon's defense customers to "securely store, analyze, and interpret petabytes worth of data in real-time to gain military advantage in the most isolated environments."
The MDC can be dropped in the most remote locations of the world, and as long as it has access to power, offers a range of data center services. It's also possible to expand the available services by adding more MDC modules, as well as using both AWS Outposts(Opens in a new window) (run AWS services locally) and AWS Snowball(Opens in a new window) (petabyte-scale data migration) to achieve the desired data center configuration. If typical communications solutions are a problem, the MDC can be connected via a satellite network instead.
“With AWS Modular Data Center, we are converting data centers from fixed infrastructure that is difficult to build and manage in remote environments, to a comprehensive service that is simple to use, secure, cost-effective, and can respond to large-scale compute and storage needs wherever the mission demands,” said Liz Martin, director of the Defense business at AWS.
As you'd expect, Amazon is limiting the available os AWS MDC to US government customers who are eligible for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability
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