GOES Ground System modernization

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) N,O,P system provides a constant vigil for severe weather conditions over the United States and provides timely access to global environmental data to predict local weather events. The GOES program provides environmental data for routine meteorological analyses and forecasts, serves user agencies, and forecast severe weather events. It supports the Cospas-Sarsat system and also improves the capability for forecasting and providing real-time warning of solar disturbances. In order to increase the longevity of the GOES NOP satellite and ground system, the Office of Systems Development (OSD) Ground Systems Division (GSD) is refreshing and modernizing the GOES NOP Spacecraft Support Ground System (SSGS) through the (SSGS Refresh Support (SRS) program. A primary task on this program is to port the existing stand alone operations and engineering workstations to a virtual blade-based architecture which will improve operations efficiency and reduces long term operations and maintenance costs. This virtualization encompasses the various COTS and mission-unique components that comprise the GOES Telemetry and Command System (GTACS) Client.  It encompasses the latest virtualization technologies to simplify IT operations and streamline application deployment and migrations. It also improves reliability of mission critical applications and data processing systems used for GOES. This paper provides an in-depth discussion on implementing state-of-the-art technologies to transition mission critical components of the GOES SSGS to a modern, scalable architecture, thus enabling NOAA/NESDIS to efficiently and effectively operate the ground system for GOES N,O,P satellites.