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!
Replicate workload from VMWare to Azure using Azure Site Recovery(ASR)
Hello, I am working on a project to replicate worklooad hosted on a VMWare to Azure Site Recovery for disaster recovery purpose. Current Environment: More than 80 VMs hosted on VMWare managed by VMWare Sphere running both Linux and Windows OS.. Databases: Oracle DB, Microsoft SQL and MySQL Requirements: seamless failover and disaster recovery requirements. scalable setup No down-time integrate identity and access mgt. integration with Microsoft Entra ID. RTO < 2 hrs and RPO > 15 minutes Backup: critical database backup every 3 hours App servers: Daily*incremental) and weekly (full) Transaction Logs: every 10 mins backup config. should be Daily Questions I have confirmed ASR supports fail back from Azure- on premise(VMWare specifically). Hence ASR(Azure site recovery) will be used for the project. However, what is the seamless method to replicate the databases(Oracle, Microsoft SQL and MySQL). https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/vmware-azure-failback What is the best approach to replicate the Application Servers? integrating existing on-premise 3rd party network security tool for firewall etc instead of the azure cloud native security tool. recommendation?? cost optimization techniques/recommendations Best practices for conducting non-destructive DR drills.
Mine your Azure backup data, it could save you 💰💡
Your data has a story to tell. Mine it, decipher it, and turn it into actionable outcomes. 📊🔍 Azure backups can become orphaned in several ways (I'll dive into that in a future post). But here’s a key point: orphaned doesn’t always mean useless, hence the word “Potential” in the title of my Power BI report. Each workload needs to be assessed individually. If a backup is no longer needed, you might be paying for it - unnecessarily and unknowingly. 🕵️♂️💸 To uncover these hidden costs, I combined data from the Azure Business Continuity Center with a PowerShell script I wrote to extract LastBackupTime and other metadata. This forms the foundation of my report, helping visualize and track backup usage over time. This approach helped me identify forgotten one-time backups, VMs deleted without stopping the backup, workloads excluded due to policy changes, and backups left behind after resource migrations. If you delete unneeded backups and have soft-delete enabled, the backup size drops to zero and Azure stops charging for it. ✅🧹 💡 Do your Azure backups have their own untold story to tell? 📸 Here's a snapshot of my report that helped me uncover these insights 👇Azure Storage
You've asked for something about Azure Storage, and there's a wealth of information both from your own work and from trusted external sources. Here's a tailored overview that blends your contributions with broader context: 🔹 What Is Azure Storage? Azure Storage [1] is Microsoft’s cloud-based solution for storing modern data workloads. It offers: High availability and durability through redundancy and geo-replication. Massive scalability to support everything from small apps to enterprise-scale systems. Security with built-in encryption and fine-grained access control. Global accessibility via REST APIs, SDKs, Azure CLI, and Azure Storage Explorer. Azure Storage supports multiple data services: Azure Blob Storage: For unstructured data like images, videos, and backups. Azure Files: Managed file shares accessible via SMB or NFS. Azure Queues: For message-based communication between components. Azure Tables: A NoSQL store for structured data. Azure Disks: Persistent block storage for Azure VMs. Azure Elastic SAN and Azure Container Storage: For advanced storage orchestration and container-native workloads. 🔹 Your Contributions on Azure Storage You've made significant contributions to the Azure community, especially through your blog and event series: In your MVP Contributions tracker, you’ve documented multiple sessions and blog posts covering: Types of Azure Storage (e.g., Blob, File, Queue, Table) [2] Cost optimization strategies for Azure Storage [2] Azure Files and file sharing capabilities [2] Your presentation A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO AZURE COST MANAGEMENT dives into how Azure Storage fits into broader cloud cost strategies, emphasizing budget control, resource allocation, and ROI [3]. 🔹 Practical Use Cases Azure Storage is ideal for: Backup and disaster recovery with geo-redundant storage. Big data analytics using Data Lake Storage. Web and mobile app content delivery via Blob Storage. Enterprise file sharing with Azure Files. IoT and telemetry ingestion using Queues and Tables. Would you like help turning this into a blog post, presentation, or training module? I can also summarize your past Azure Storage sessions or help you prepare new ones. References [1] Introduction to Azure Storage - Cloud storage on Azure [2] MVP Contributions [3] A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO AZURE COST MANAGEMENT
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.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?
Former Employer Abuse
My former employer, Albert Williams, president of American Security Force Inc., keeps adding my outlook accounts, computers and mobile devices to the company's azure cloud even though I left the company more than a year ago. What can I do to remove myself from his grip? Does Microsoft have a solution against abusive employers?
