The Transition From On-Premise to Cloud

Where I Am Now

My server setup is split right down the middle.

New projects go straight to the cloud (AWS and the like), while the older ones sit on physical servers I set up in a data center years ago. Moving them over isn’t as simple as it sounds.

The Servers Are Aging

The real problem is that these old servers are deteriorating.

Every time a hard drive acts up, my heart skips a beat. In that moment, I always tell myself: “This time I’m definitely migrating.” But once the emergency fix is done and everything’s running again, the migration plan quietly slides back to the bottom of the to-do list.

It’s exactly like a diet plan. “Starting Monday.” Every Monday.

Cloud Advantages Are Clear

Having used the cloud for new projects, the benefits are undeniable:

No hardware worries
Flexible scaling
Automatic backups
Never need to physically visit a server room

With physical servers in a data center, there’s always that anxiety about getting a 3 AM failure call. Cloud takes most of that stress away.

Why I Still Haven’t Migrated

It’s not that I don’t want to — I can’t.

Migrating a live service without downtime is riskier than it sounds. Database migration, DNS changes, SSL certificates… one wrong move and the service goes down. And when it’s a production service with real users, you can’t just say “we’ll be offline for a bit.”

The developer’s survival instinct kicks in: “If it’s running, don’t touch it.”

A Realistic Plan

Migrating everything at once isn’t feasible. So here’s the approach:

All new projects go to the cloud — no exceptions
When an old server fails, use that as the opportunity to migrate
Start with low-traffic services and work up from there

Eventually everything will be in the cloud. Probably. Maybe.