Since I recently joined Google Cloud Platform (GCP), I thought it’s time to get some practical experience with the platform. As a result I’m going to migrate this blog from Rackspace to GCP — specifically I’ll use GCE for WordPress, and Cloud SQL for the persistent database storage.

It took about an hour to provision both the GCE and Cloud SQL instance, and it’s was very easy to have the first connect to the second. WordPress is up and running too.

A new architecture

Architecturally this new system will be somewhat different from the Rackspace-based deployment. With Rackspace the MySQL database runs on the same virtual machine instance as WordPress, whereas I’m using a dedicated, highly-available MySQL instance in GCP, distinct from the GCE instance.
While I never had any issues with Rackspace reliability, presumably a highly available MySQL database will result in a more reliable system. The media — mostly images — will also be stored in Google Cloud Storage, which takes even more load off the GCE instance.
It should also allow me to run a lower-powered virtual machine, so I’m hoping the costs will remain about the same.