Drew Furgiuele wants to put SQL Server into space. I’ve linked to the entire series thus far, which has been fun to follow. Here’s an excerpt from his latest post:
That’s from the “Hardware and Software Requirements for Installing SQL Server” product page. I’ve had people ask if I was using a Raspberry Pi, or some other Micro ATX PC. The answer is neither; the problem with a Pi is that it’s not a 64-bit processor. Pis use ARM architecture, and SQL Server doesn’t (yet) support ARM. Also, most Pi 3’s run at 1.2Ghz and only support 1GB of RAM. As for MicroATX form factor PCs, they’re closer to what we’d need, but they’re still heavy. Plus, you’d need a pretty substantial power supply that we couldn’t (safely) support that high up in the sky. Even if you stripped it down to bare components, it’d be pushing it.
There are companies that make small SoC solutions, but after evaluating them we determined that they were either pretty flaky or got so hot they risked bursting into flames even just booting into Windows. Instead, we found a really unique piece of hardware: the Intel Joule.