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. --- 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!Can I connect a DELL Wyse 3040 Thin Client to an Azure Virtual Desktop WITHOUT WMS?
The organisation I work for has moved away from WYSE 3040s with an on-premise RDS farm. We now use laptops, docks and Microsoft 365/SharePoint the whole thing. Intune management too. This is working fine but I have had "an idea". I now have a box of some 30 old thin clients. WYSE 3040 Thin OS 9.1.4234 Can I use a WYSE 3040 to connect straight to an Azure Virtual Desktop? Reason: We have some volunteer staff who come in to the office for just 2-3 hours one day a week. They do basic processing of physical paper forms, updating spreadsheets, entering invoice details etc etc, boring but essential tasks. They dont need anything fancy. BUT ... We (a charity) cant afford to buy them a laptop for 2-3 hours a week. So I have set up an AVD successfully, hoorah for me. I can access the AVD no problem using the Windows App on a Windows laptop or on a Mac device. Can I point a WYSE device straight at the AVD WITHOUT using Wyse Management Suite? The old WMS is on the local server which will be decommissioned. I dont want to use that. When I do a factory reset on a WYSE and go to configure Windows Virtual Desktop it does not seem to do anything. It does prompt me for MFA and does show our tenant welcome page background image so it is doing "something" Has anyone done this successfully?
Service Trust Portal no longer support Microsoft Account (MSA) access
Dear all, We need to access certain documents (i.e., SOC 2 or ISO 27xxx) on the https://servicetrust.microsoft.com/DocumentPage/d013b518-c1fe-462c-8124-de901f3b68dc. To download documents you need to be signed in first. However, when I click on "sign in" (using the same email/account as for our azure account) I get the error message "Service Trust Portal no longer support Microsoft Account (MSA) access." (see screenshot below). It seems that I am not the only one since other users had similar issues but they also could not find a solution (or at least it was not mentioned in their post): https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-compliance-and-identity/cannot-login-to-service-trust-portal/m-p/3632978 I have been trying this now since more than a week and also created a support ticket (which has not been assigned to a support agent yet). It is quite cumbersome and I hope some of you could have an idea since getting these documents is quite crucial for us.
AZ-900 exam free voucher Azure
Hello, I recently finished Azure Fundamentals (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/azure-fundamentals/?practice-assessment-type=certification) But I see, to take final exam and then claim certificate, it is needed to pay around $50-$90 based on region. So my question is, are there currently any absolutely free vouchers for that exam? -100% I have been looking for it for around month, still no clue. Please help, and best regards to You Microsoft Learners.
Scaling Smart with Azure: Architecture That Works
Hi Tech Community! I’m Zainab, currently based in Abu Dhabi and serving as Vice President of Finance & HR at Hoddz Trends LLC a global tech solutions company headquartered in Arkansas, USA. While I lead on strategy, people, and financials, I also roll up my sleeves when it comes to tech innovation. In this discussion, I want to explore the real-world challenges of scaling systems with Microsoft Azure. From choosing the right architecture to optimizing performance and cost, I’ll be sharing insights drawn from experience and I’d love to hear yours too. Whether you're building from scratch, migrating legacy systems, or refining deployments, let’s talk about what actually works.
Error Running Script in Runbook with System Assigned Managed Identity
Hello everyone, I could use some assistance, please. I'm encountering an error when trying to run a script within a runbook. I'm using PowerShell 5.1 with a system-assigned managed identity. The script works find without using the managed identiy via powershell outside of azure. Error: System.Management.Automation.ParameterBindingException: Cannot process command because of one or more missing mandatory parameters: Credential. at System.Management.Automation.CmdletParameterBinderController.PromptForMissingMandatoryParameters(Collection1 fieldDescriptionList, Collection1 missingMandatoryParameters) at System.Management.Automation.CmdletParameterBinderController.HandleUnboundMandatoryParameters I am using this script Connect-ExchangeOnline -ManagedIdentity -Organization domain removed for privacy reasons # Specify the user's mailbox identity $mailboxIdentity = "email address removed for privacy reasons" # Get mailbox configuration and statistics for the specified mailbox $mailboxConfig = Get-Mailbox -Identity $mailboxIdentity $mailboxStats = Get-MailboxStatistics -Identity $mailboxIdentity # Check if TotalItemSize and ProhibitSendQuota are not null and extract the sizes if ($mailboxStats.TotalItemSize -and $mailboxConfig.ProhibitSendQuota) { $totalSizeBytes = $mailboxStats.TotalItemSize.Value.ToString().Split("(")[1].Split(" ")[0].Replace(",", "") -as [double] $prohibitQuotaBytes = $mailboxConfig.ProhibitSendQuota.ToString().Split("(")[1].Split(" ")[0].Replace(",", "") -as [double] # Convert sizes from bytes to gigabytes $totalMailboxSize = $totalSizeBytes / 1GB $mailboxWarningQuota = $prohibitQuotaBytes / 1GB # Check if the mailbox size exceeds 90% of the warning quota if ($totalMailboxSize -ge ($mailboxWarningQuota * 0.0)) { # Send an email notification $emailBody = "The mailbox $($mailboxIdentity) has reached $($totalMailboxSize) GB, which exceeds 90% of the warning quota." Send-MailMessage -To "email address removed for privacy reasons" -From "email address removed for privacy reasons" -Subject "Mailbox Size Warning" -Body $emailBody -SmtpServer "smtp.office365.com" -Port 587 -UseSsl -Credential (Get-Credential) } } else { Write-Host "The required values(TotalItemSize or ProhibitSendQuota) are not available." }Resoure Graph Explorer
I’m looking to retrieve a list of Azure resources that were created within the last 24 hours. However, it appears that Azure does not consistently expose the timeCreated property across all resource types, which makes direct filtering challenging. Request for Clarification/Support: Could you please confirm if there’s a reliable way to filter resources based on their creation time — for example, resources created in the last N days or within the last 6 hours? If timeCreated is not uniformly available, what’s the recommended approach (e.g., using Resource Graph, Activity Logs, or any other reliable method) to achieve this?Comparision on Azure Cloud Sync and Traditional Entra connect Sync.
Introduction In the evolving landscape of identity management, organizations face a critical decision when integrating their on-premises Active Directory (AD) with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD). Two primary tools are available for this synchronization: Traditional Entra Connect Sync (formerly Azure AD Connect) Azure Cloud Sync While both serve the same fundamental purpose, bridging on-prem AD with cloud identity, they differ significantly in architecture, capabilities, and ideal use cases. Architecture & Setup Entra Connect Sync is a heavyweight solution. It installs a full synchronization engine on a Windows Server, often backed by SQL Server. This setup gives administrators deep control over sync rules, attribute flows, and filtering. Azure Cloud Sync, on the other hand, is lightweight. It uses a cloud-managed agent installed on-premises, removing the need for SQL Server or complex infrastructure. The agent communicates with Microsoft Entra ID, and most configurations are handled in the cloud portal. For organizations with complex hybrid setups (e.g., Exchange hybrid, device management), is Cloud Sync too limited?
