For a few years my web site and weblog have been hosted on Amazon Internet Companies (AWS), however lately issues have modified.
My Internet hosting Historical past
I began life on a shared internet hosting platform and after a number of years I acquired an e-mail saying they had been kicking me off as a result of I had an excessive amount of visitors. They had been low-cost and had been anticipating most of their web sites to get no visitors, and they also charged little or no. After they seen how energetic my web site had change into they shut me down.
I moved to a different internet hosting firm that claimed limitless visitors. After some time I acquired kicked off by them as properly. They meant it was limitless visitors so long as you had no visitors. 🙂
That point I moved to a devoted bodily host. This was costly and labored fairly properly for a number of years, however finally the {hardware} was going out of assist, so I used to be compelled to rebuild. Moderately than rebuild on bodily equipment I selected to attempt internet hosting the web site within the cloud. At that time the one actual alternative was AWS. Azure and Oracle Cloud existed, however AWS felt like a safer possibility, so I selected that route.
AWS was much more costly per unit of useful resource (CPU/RAM) than a bodily host, however as a result of it was elastic, I used to be capable of provision every little thing very small, figuring out that it might simply broaden if I wanted further sources. With the bodily host I had to purchase sufficient headroom prematurely to permit for potential progress. So I ended up paying about the identical on AWS as I did for the bodily host, however technically I had quite a bit much less useful resource on AWS. That was high-quality. It was an experiment. 🙂
I can’t keep in mind precisely after I switched to AWS, however in a weblog publish from February 2016 I discussed I used to be planning to attempt it. So I assume that was over 8 years in the past.
Why transfer now?
My AWS compute occasion was working Oracle Linux 7 (OL7), which switches to prolonged assist in December, so I needed to do one thing.
In my actual job I’ve been pushing arduous to get our servers migrated from OL7 to OL8 or OL9, relying on vendor assist, so I used to be absolutely conscious it wanted to be finished.
Why OCI?
Regardless of being so single minded at work, for my web site I used to be kind-of paralysed by selections. Do I swap cloud suppliers? Do I attempt a distinct Linux distribution? Do I modify the tech stack? I actually spent months in denial, unable to decide. Then I simply snapped and determined it was OL9 on OCI, and I’d proceed with the LAMP stack. It ended up being such a fast determination, that I used to be amazed I had spent so many months fretting.
I’m positive Oracle would really like me to say I selected Oracle Cloud as a result of it’s the perfect, however I actually did it on a whim. Time will inform if it was a good selection. 🙂
What did I do?
A number of weeks in the past I began placing collectively some Terraform to construct the equipment I wished. It was largely simply variations of the Terraform articles I’ve written earlier than. I seen a number of issues have modified since these articles had been first written, so I needed to do some updates to a few of them.
With the equipment constructed I used to be planning on doing the configuration utilizing Ansible, however I rapidly determined it was a bit pointless. I do that so occasionally that it actually doesn’t make sense to take a position the time to make an ideal construct resolution. As a substitute I simply wrote some shell scripts to do every little thing I wanted. Low-cost and cheerful.
I had documented my AWS construct from 8 years in the past, so a few of the VM config may very well be repurposed for this. There have been some adjustments due to the transfer to OL9, but it surely was shut sufficient to provide me a head begin.
A number of days in the past I did the ultimate switch of the recordsdata and database contents, pointed the DNS to the brand new location and it was all finished.
I waited a number of days then began to take away every little thing from AWS.
Price?
I actually don’t have a clue at this level. One good factor is a few of the elements are lined by the All the time Free license, however that’s largely for a budget bits. The costliest bit is the compute, and what I’m utilizing just isn’t a part of the free tier.
It’s doable I might leverage a pair extra of the free tier elements to make issues cheaper, however I assume my willingness to do this will depend upon what the payments appear like after the primary couple of months. Perhaps there shall be a part 2. 🙂
Ideas
I’ve been taking part in with Oracle Cloud and OCI for a number of years now, so there wasn’t a studying curve to fret about. I feel doing the rebuild on AWS or Oracle Cloud would have concerned an analogous degree of effort, due to my previous expertise of each.
There’s a huge sense of aid that I’ve acquired this finished earlier than the OL7 deadline, however what occurs subsequent actually relies on how I really feel over the subsequent few weeks, and what the payments appear like.
Having the rebuild contemporary in my thoughts and with new documentation of the method, it will be very simple to modify again to AWS, or have a go at transferring to Azure. 🙂
Cheers
Tim…
