Connect and manage satellites with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Viasat Real-Time Earth

According to the UCS Satellite Database, as of 2022, the number of satellites orbiting Earth has doubled in less than three years, the number of satellite owners is increasing, and the commercialization of space is expanding exponentially. Earth observation data is a key component of space growth and is now accessible to any size organization or government in more locations than ever.

With the increasing number of satellite operators and size of satellite constellations, more data is being acquired from the space domain. Customers require data processing, storage, analytics, and the ability to move data between locations. With Viasat’s Real-Time Earth (RTE) service, satellite operators can command, download, and rapidly disseminate valuable earth observation and remote sensing data in a timely and secure manner by utilizing their world-class ground antenna systems, unparalleled satellite technology, and global network coverage.

Viasat partnered with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) for a high-performance, low-cost, and increased security solution to process satellite data with greater speed and a more timely finished product. This blog highlights key features of the Viasat RTE service, OCI’s Compute, Storage, and Networking services, and a network performance use case of connecting OCI’s Sweden Central region to Viasat’s ground station in Pite?, Sweden, which is close to 12 ms ICMP RTT.

Solution overview

Viasat’s RTE provides ground-station-as-a-service (GSaaS) capabilities supporting environmental, insurance, shipping, energy, and government operations. The fully managed, cost-effective ground network enables satellite operators with geosynchronous orbit (GEO), medium earth orbit (MEO), and low earth orbit (LEO) satellites using the S-, X- and Ka-bands, the ability to meet current and future data requirements.

The RTE solution includes the following key features:

• Global: Antenna systems are strategically located worldwide to reduce latency, high-capacity continuous global coverage through space LEO-to-Viasat GEO satellite links soon. They’re built on the same Viasat technology that the United States government and countries throughout the world rely on to meet the most rigorous standards for reliability and security.
• Resilient: With thoughtful geographic site diversity in low-risk environments, backup power as required, and spares on site, the RTE network is built for resilience. Viasat’s IP-based architecture, remotely updated soft-defined modems, and extensive installed base of Viasat antenna systems assures easy expansion of the RTE network with new Viasat ground stations and existing partner ground stations.
• Secure: Employs NIST 800-171 network security standards at a minimum to protect sensitive mission data.
• Fast: Larger aperture antennas with state-of-the-art modems mean the highest data rates commercially available. More range, more data, less time.

OCI is the next-generation cloud designed to run any application, faster and more securely, for less. OCI provides many key services which helps Viasat customers store, and process collected satellite information and data.

This solution uses the following OCI services:

• Compute: OCI provides fast, flexible, and affordable compute capacity to fit any workload need from high-performance bare metal servers and virtual machines (VMs) to lightweight containers. OCI Compute provides uniquely flexible VM and bare metal instances for optimal price-performance and enhanced network performance and bandwidth.
• Oracle has partnered with AMD and Intel to offer its customers the latest generation of compute capacity, which includes a wide range of VM and bare metal shapes. To help accelerate visualization and run complex data models for HPC and AI workloads, Oracle has partnered with NVIDIA and is offering Tesla P100, V100, and A100 GPUs. Hear more from our EVP Clay Magouyrk about Oracle’s strategic partnerships with Intel, NVIDIA, and AMD. Learn more about OCI’s Compute offering.
• Storage: OCI provides customers with high-performance computing and low-cost cloud storage options. Through on-demand local, object, file, block, and archive storage, OCI addresses key storage workload requirements and use cases. Customers can use the storage gateway and data transfer service to move their data safely and securely to the cloud.
• OCI Block Storage is 57 percent less expensive than the competition, and it delivers performance that meets or exceeds their offerings. Learn more about OCI’s Storage services.
• Networking: OCI networking and connectivity products and services enable customers to manage and scale their networks. Customers can connect securely to a customizable, isolated virtual cloud network (VCN) and take advantage of inexpensive data egress charges. Granular access control of networking technologies provides connectivity solutions across physical and virtual networks.
• Oracle offers low-latency, high-throughput networks to successfully run compute-heavy uses cases in the cloud. OCI network is a non-oversubscribed, highly scalable network with approximately 1 million network ports in each availability domain, with high-speed interconnections and latency less than 100μs between the hosts in an availability domain. A key performance benefit to processing satellite data can require multiple steps and algorithms between raw and final product. For HPC workloads, Oracle offers a high-bandwidth, ultra-low latency RDMA network with latency as low as 1.5 microseconds.
• OCI offers low networking prices that enable enterprises to move significant volumes of data at low costs, inbound data transfer is free, and OCI offers 10 TB of outbound data transfer at no cost. Learn more about OCI Networking services.

To learn more, see the OCI platform overview.

High-level overview

Cloud service providers have emerged as a key enabler for satellite operators, who are witnessing a transition both in space and on the ground towards virtualized ground stations, software-defined networks, and data intensive applications. OCI’s global footprint, connectivity options, compute flexibility, data storage, and analytics services complement the expansion of space networks and acquisition and processing space data.

Figure 1: Cloud service provider and satellite operators

Deployment architecture

The main component in connectivity from Viasat to OCI involves setting up IPSec VPN connectivity through a dynamic routing gateway (DRG) in OCI. Choose the nearest OCI region to the Viasat ground location and set up network connectivity. For our deployment, we’re using OCI Sweden Central and Viasat Sweden ground station locations.

This architecture results in the following outcomes:

• Viasat exchanges routes with the OCI DRG using IPSec VPN and learn the VCN routes. Similarly, the DRG learns the Viasat ground station location routes.
• The local VCN uses the DRG attachment to reach the networks advertised by Viasat’s ground station location.

Figure 2: Deployment architecture

Configuration

The OCI site-to-site VPN service provides a site-to-site IPSec connection between the Viasat ground station and your OCI virtual cloud network (VCN). The IPSec protocol suite encrypts IP traffic before the packets are transferred from the source to the destination and decrypts the traffic when it arrives.

OCI VPN connect performance can reach 250 Mbps, depending on customer-premises equipment (CPE).

Follow this document to set up IPSec connectivity for a Juniper SRX running software version JunOS 11.0 or newer. When the IPSec connectivity is configured to Viasat, ensure that the tunnel is up.

Figure 3: IPSec Connectivity: First tunnel up

In a production environment, we recommend setting up dual tunnels to provide high availability. Ensure that correct routes are advertised to reflect connectivity from OCI to on-premises using a DRG.

Figure 4: Routes learned from Viasat Ground Station over IPSec VPN

Follow this Quick Start to set up an IPSec VPN connectivity according to the shared topology.

Validation

Now that the connectivity is set up, validate the connection. Use SSH to connect to the VM in each environment and validate the connectivity by doing a basic PING test. Locate the private IP address of each VM in your environment.

• The private IP address of the OCI Sweden Central VM (linux-vm) is 10.20.0.139.
• The private IP address of the Viasat Sweden (Gateway IP) is 10.14.0.1.

Connect to OCI VM over SSH and initiate a ping. You can use ping micro-second intervals to validate ICMP RTT.

Figure 5: ICMP RTT connectivity test

The ping results show the latency between the Viasat Sweden ground station and the OCI Sweden Central region, which is about 12 ms. After connectivity is established, the full complement of OCI services is available to store, process, and analyze the Real-Time Earth data acquired from the satellite network.

Conclusion

This post provides an overview of Viasat’s Real-Time Earth service in combination with OCI key services to enable satellite information processing from a ground location to an OCI region. You can set up a dedicated connection over IPSec and achieve better network performance to process data in your cloud environment. To learn more about the benefits and use cases, check out Viasat and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services!

Originally appeared on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Blog.

Authors: Arun Poonia, Principal Solutions Architect and James Ronneberg Principal Product Manager, OCI/Azure Interconnect