Project

About this project

Blu‑H holds a multi-terabyte on-prem VIIRS archive with no cloud serving layer. This project moves it to Azure with a managed STAC serving stack — so the on-prem repository can be switched off.

What we’re building

Azure Blob (ADLS Gen2) → Planetary Computer Pro GeoCatalog → STAC API + dynamic tiling + OGC WMTS, Entra auth throughout, Terraform IaC, no Kubernetes. First product is the VIIRS-ABI Blended Flood (GLB011) — already on a global grid, the cleanest candidate for cloud-optimised ingest.

Why Azure-native

• Microsoft has donated substantial Azure credits.
• End-to-end Azure keeps storage, compute, catalog, tiles, identity and secrets on one bill and one identity plane (Entra ID).
• With no existing cloud footprint, a clean Azure-native build beats a multi-cloud one.

Why Planetary Computer Pro

PC Pro is Microsoft’s managed geospatial catalog — STAC catalog, tile server, OGC WMTS and Explorer UI as a single Azure resource (Microsoft.Orbital/geoCatalogs), with cloud-optimisation on ingest. It replaces what would otherwise be a self-hosted pgSTAC + TiTiler stack, which stays the documented fallback — switching later is mainly a DNS + auth change.

Access

PC Pro is Entra-authenticated everywhere — no anonymous mode. Every read needs a role assignment at the GeoCatalog scope. See Access the Data.

Status

Pre-implementation; code lands as MVP issues are picked up. Live milestones — Specification, Architecture, MVP — on the repo milestones page.