A software company in Turkey migrated from DigitalOcean to Hetzner, reducing monthly costs from $1,432 to $233 while maintaining service availability. The move addressed skyrocketing inflation and a weakening Turkish Lira, which made dollar-denominated infrastructure expenses unsustainable. The new Hetzner AX162-R server, powered by an AMD EPYC 9454P processor, offered superior specs at 84% lower cost, including 256GB RAM and 1.92TB NVMe storage.

The migration strategy involved six phases to ensure zero downtime. First, identical software stacks (Nginx, GitLab EE, Neo4j) were replicated on the new server. MySQL data (248GB across 30 databases) was migrated using mydumper with parallel threads, reducing transfer time from days to hours. DNS records were gradually shifted by lowering TTLs to 300 seconds, allowing a swift cutover without disrupting traffic. A Python script converted old Nginx configs to reverse proxies, silently redirecting lingering requests to the new server.

A critical challenge arose during MySQL migration: a schema mismatch in the mysql.user table after upgrading from MySQL 5.7 to 8.0. The team resolved this by force-upgrading the MySQL instance and correcting the sys schema structure. Replication was established using binlog positions from mydumper’s metadata, ensuring data consistency. The old CentOS 7 server, nearing end-of-life, was replaced with AlmaLinux 9.7, aligning with RHEL 9 compatibility.

The migration saved $14,388 annually while improving performance and security. By avoiding DigitalOcean’s ecosystem lock-in, the company gained flexibility and cost efficiency. This case study highlights the value of evaluating infrastructure costs amid economic volatility and technical debt.