Cloud → Hybrid Infrastructure Migration

Running the e-learning platform exposed a hole in the cost structure. Serving five 3GB videos to 1,000+ learners meant AWS egress piling up — about $1,500 a month, bleeding like a fixed cost. Breaking the bill down by traffic path made the bottleneck obvious: cloud outbound.

The fix started with negotiation, not code. I discovered the client had idle in-house server hardware and negotiated my way to using it. The design: keep app and DB on AWS, move heavy video on-premises. On the on-prem side I did everything solo — shared folders, free SSL issuance, a hand-built Nginx reverse proxy — opening a path where clients stream straight from the on-prem box.

Cloud egress went from $1,500/mo to $0. The bigger win is structural: the weekly ritual of staring at the billing page simply stopped existing.