Applying DevOps Principles on Lean Infrastructure. Lessons From Scaling to 102K Users.

Hi Azure Community,

I'm a Microsoft Certified DevOps Engineer, and I want to share an unusual journey. I have been applying DevOps principles on traditional VPS infrastructure to scale to 102,000 users with 99.2% uptime.

Why am I posting this in an Azure community? Because I'm planning migration to Azure in 2026, and I want to understand: What mistakes am I already making that will bite me during migration?

THE CURRENT SETUP

Platform: Social commerce (West Africa)
Users: 102,000 active
Monthly events: 2 million
Uptime: 99.2%
Infrastructure: Single VPS
Stack: PHP/Laravel, MySQL, Redis

Yes - one VPS. No cloud. No Kubernetes. No microservices.

WHY I HAVEN'T USED AZURE YET

Honest answer: Budget constraints in emerging market startup ecosystem.

At our current scale, fully managed Azure services would significantly increase monthly burn before product-market expansion. The funding we raised needs to last through growth milestones.

The trade: I manually optimize what Azure would auto-scale. I debug what Application Insights would catch. I do by hand what Azure Functions would automate.

DEVOPS PRACTICES THAT KEPT US RUNNING

Even on single-server infrastructure, core DevOps principles still apply:

CI/CD Pipeline (GitHub Actions)
• 3-5 deployments weekly
• Zero-downtime deploys
• Automated rollback on health check failures
• Feature flags for gradual rollouts

Monitoring & Observability
• Custom monitoring (would love Application Insights)
• Real-time alerting
• Performance tracking and slow query detection
• Resource usage monitoring

Automation
• Automated backups
• Automated database optimization
• Automated image compression
• Automated security updates

Infrastructure as Code
• Configs in Git
• Deployment scripts
• Environment variables
• Documented procedures

Testing & Quality
• Automated test suite
• Pre-deployment health checks
• Staging environment
• Post-deployment verification

KEY OPTIMIZATIONS

Async Job Processing
• Upload endpoint: 8 seconds → 340ms
• 4x capacity increase

Database Optimization
• Feed loading: 6.4 seconds → 280ms
• Strategic caching
• Batch processing

Image Compression
• 3-8MB → 180KB (94% reduction)
• Critical for mobile users

Caching Strategy
• Redis for hot data
• Query result caching
• Smart invalidation

Progressive Enhancement
• Server-rendered pages
• 2-3 second loads on 4G

WHAT I'M WORRIED ABOUT FOR AZURE MIGRATION

This is where I need your help:

Architecture Decisions
• App Service vs Functions + managed services?
• MySQL vs Azure SQL?
• When does cost/benefit flip for managed services?

Cost Management
• How do startups manage Azure costs during growth?
• Reserved instances vs pay-as-you-go?
• Which Azure services are worth the premium?

Migration Strategy
• Lift-and-shift first, or re-architect immediately?
• Zero-downtime migration with 102K active users?
• Validation approach before full cutover?

Monitoring & DevOps
• Application Insights - worth it from day one?
• Azure DevOps vs GitHub Actions for Azure deployments?
• Operational burden reduction with managed services?

Development Workflow
• Local development against Azure services?
• Cost-effective staging environments?
• Testing Azure features without constant bills?

MY PLANNED MIGRATION PATH

Phase 1: Hybrid (Q1 2026)
• Azure CDN for static assets
• Azure Blob Storage for images
• Application Insights trial
• Keep compute on VPS

Phase 2: Compute Migration (Q2 2026)
• App Service for API
• Azure Database for MySQL
• Azure Cache for Redis
• VPS for background jobs

Phase 3: Full Azure (Q3 2026)
• Azure Functions for processing
• Full managed services
• Retire VPS

QUESTIONS FOR THIS COMMUNITY

Question 1: Am I making migration harder by waiting?
Should I have started with Azure at higher cost to avoid technical debt?

Question 2: What will break when I migrate?
What works on VPS but fails in cloud? What assumptions won't hold?

Question 3: How do I validate before cutting over?
Parallel infrastructure? Gradual traffic shift? Safe patterns?

Question 4: Cost optimization from day one?
What to optimize immediately vs later? Common cost mistakes?

Question 5: DevOps practices that transfer?
What stays the same? What needs rethinking for cloud-native?

THE BIGGER QUESTION

Have you migrated from self-hosted to Azure? What surprised you?

I know my setup isn't best practice by Azure standards. But it's working, and I've learned optimization, monitoring, and DevOps fundamentals in practice.

Will those lessons transfer? Or am I building habits that cloud will expose as problematic?

Looking forward to insights from folks who've made similar migrations.

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About the Author:
Microsoft Certified DevOps Engineer and Azure Developer. CTO at social commerce platform scaling in West Africa. Preparing for phased Azure migration in 2026.

P.S. I got the Azure certifications to prepare for this migration. Now I need real-world wisdom from people who've actually done it!