Migrating Existing PHP Web Applications to the Cloud

The purpose of this paper is to present a set of best practices for moving PHP web applications from a traditional hosting to a Cloud based one. PHP applications are widespread nowadays and they come in many shapes and sizes and that is why they require a special attention. The paper goes beyond just moving the code in the Cloud and setting up the run-time environment as some architectural changes must be done at application level most of the time. The decision of how and when to make these changes can make the difference between a successful migra-tion and a failed one. It will be presented how to decouple and scale an application, how to scale a database while following the high availability principles.