We are at a crossroads with our hosting. The site is built, foundation has been laid, there are a couple more things to do like separating the LAMP server into individual servers. The task of pulling Page and Post *.csv files out of the MySql database via CLI and SSH gave a great opportunity to learn about SQL. With some help from some folks, a lot of explaining and guiding around MySql was given to me and turned out to be very advantageous. The goal is to split it all up and move it to Azure.
Azure was picked to give me more experience with the service. After getting a few free hours on it from my last school and having a goal of getting Microsoft Certified, it only benefits me to start moving away from Linux and into Microsoft products. This also means getting into IIS and SQL, but that will come later I’m sure. Having a basic HTML and CSS website hosted in Azure before, at least I’m familiar with how their web interface works and it is actually pretty user friendly.
At first there was some caution, but hitting up Microsoft Learn and playing around a bit, got me more confident. Initially there were no prices posted and nothing calculated for a projected month which made things more complicated and left me with just choosing self hosting. Now there are prices posted and estimates for the month based on services available, making it so much nicer with a reduced amount of anxiety.
Having our own servers is very advantageous though, however I’ll never build another Cluster again and just use the Self-Hosted option for building out platforms. After the platforms are built out and running smooth, everything will get migrated to the Azure Cloud. This isn’t as easy as folks think it is and I really wish it was but it turns out, even for a self hoster, migrating to the cloud is quite a task that requires a bit of planning. This planning is what has led me to splitting up the LAMP server and pushing it all to the cloud for capability to scale. If this can be done early, it would save a lot of time later which would also minimize the amount of amplified issues.
It’s exciting though to know that it isn’t that far off. Azure costing me around $15/month for this platform and more will also result in a reduction of powered servers at home and the need for so much bandwidth at the house, saving me around $100-150/month. This is very anticipated, but I’m not giving up my physical hosts/servers, I love them to much!