Recently I tweeted about the Azure App Service Team announcement that you can now officially run MySQL in-app, that means running MySQL using the same resources as your web app instance. I see this as a game changer as we move to microservices a natural paradigm shift is also to move away from monolithic databases too.

In my opinion, most applications we will work on as developers will perform just fine using an in-app database, and we now have the opportunity to simplify our architecture but scale if / when required.

I'll follow up more on this in future posts, but right now this post is about migrating your existing WordPress blob to Azure.

One of the biggest selling points of Azure is Platform as a service (PaaS), meaning you don't need to worry about installing and updating the operating system this is taken care of for you. Unfortunately, until now, Azure options for MySQL were limited to a IaaS VM or ClearDB both of which are not really desirable.

Now with a couple of clicks, you can have an in-app MySQL database. This is great news for this blog, I've tried myself hosting MySQL in a worker role to take advantage of PaaS and keep costs down, but now I don't need to worry about using a hacked solution.

In this blog post, I'm going to show you how to migrate your existing WordPress to an Azure Web App with in-app MySQL. I'm pleased to say this blog is now running on an Azure Web App with in-app MySQL after migrating from Amazon Web Services.

Steps to migrate your existing WordPress to an Azure Web App with in-app MySQL

Step 1 Backup your existing WordPress blog

Backup your old WordPress database by running this command against your MySQL database (replacing the placeholders with your values):

mysqldump --add-drop-table -h YourServersIPOrHostName -u YourUserName -p YourWordPressDB > wordpress-backup.sql

Zip up the resulting sql file and name wordpress-backup-sql.zip

Zip up the root of your old WordPress site and name it wp-backup-content.zip

Step 2 Create Azure Web App with In-App MySQL

In the normal way, create a new web app (you can also add to an existing web app). Unless your making use of it turns app insights off.

new-web-app

Turn MySQL on

mysql

Step 3 restore your WordPress blog to your new Web App

Using the Azure portal for the Web App, you just created open Kudu.

kudu open

In Kudu click 'Debug Console' -> 'CMD' then Navigate to \home\site\wwwroot

kudu wwwroot

Drag and drop the wp-backup-content.zip backup of your WordPress blog to Kudu.

If your wp-backup-content.zip backup is large, Kudu won't automatically unzip the zip contents for you. If this is the case (it was for me) then copy the following command to the Kudu Command Prompt:

D:\home\site\wwwroot> wp-backup-content.zip

It will work but will take a while.

Now we are going to restore the MySQL database, to do this head over to the Azure portal, click on the web app you created and click on the MySQL blade, now click on the 'Manage' button.

mysql manage

Depending on the state of your web app you may get asked for a username and password. This means that your web app isn't initialised yet. If this is the case, don't try to log in, instead open your website using a browser (url can be found in the overview blade). You will get an error, but it will initialise the MySQL instance.

From the Azure portal 'Manage' should now open phpMyAdmin. From here, we need to create the WordPress database. To do this, click on the 'Database' tab. Name the database 'wordpress' and set the collation to 'utf8_general_ci' (for some reason, the server collation defaults to 'latin1_swedish_ci').

php myadmin

Next, we need to import our blog data to our MySQL database. To do this, click on the 'Import' tab and upload the backed up sql wordpress-backup-sql.zip you made in the previous step. Note if your backup is over 8MB, you will need to split it up.

php myadmin import

Step 4 Change your WordPress config

Now we have restored both the WordPress site and database. All we need to do is change the configuration to point to the new database. Using Kudu again edit wp-config.php in the root of your web app. First off we need to change the settings to point to our in-app MySQL instance, by changing the following values:

/*MySQL database username */ define('DB_USER', 'azure'); /*MySQL database password */ define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password'); /*MySQL hostname */ define('DB_HOST', 'localhost:49');

Now is a good time to explain how the in-app MySQL instance works, you can only access the instance locally, therefore, the username is always 'azure' and the password is always 'password'. The only thing that differs is the host it's always localhost, but the port number is random, in my case it's '49' (it's not but for explaining lets assume it is).

How do you find what your port number is? Simple as you did when you did the sql import in the Azure portal go MySQL blade -> 'Manage' button, then from phpMyAdmin you will see what your port number is.

mysql port

Next, you need to change the url in wp-config.php to the new url. The new url can be found in the Azure portal for your web app in the 'Overview' blade.

define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://www.dalsoft.co.uk');

Well done!!! Now your WordPress blog is migrated to Azure you are Awesome. Login to your migrated WordPress blog as there is one more setting to change from WordPress itself. Once logged in, click on 'Settings' and under general settings ensure that both 'WordPress Address (URL)' and 'Site Address (URL)' are the same url you set in wp-config.php.

Step 5 DNS (optional)

Now you can test your blog using the Azure url once you are happy, it's time to point your DNS to your new blog. This is the same as any web app, and you can find instructions here https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/documentation/articles/web-sites-custom-domain-name/. The only other thing you would need to do then is change the urls you set in wp-config.php and WordPress.

Conclusion

For a couple of weeks now I've been running my blog on an Azure Web App with in-app MySQL, and I've been really happy with the results. Not that WordPress is the quickest anyway but I've noticed that my blog loads a bit quicker. I'm also saving over 50% (it's costing me about £22 ) vs a VM using Amazon Web Services. I also host some of my other ad-hoc web apps on the same plan saving more money.

If you just wanted to get experience setting up, WordPress in-app MySQL works on the free and shared plans too, not sure if you could run it though without going over quota but great for testing it out. I'd be interested if anyone manages to run their blog on the free or shared their quota.