1. Introduction

Recently, I successfully moved my web application from AWS to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The move was very smooth because I used Docker. This post is a record of how I run my Django app and IoT system using Docker Compose.

2. My System Parts

My compose.yml file manages everything. It has several important containers:

• Nginx: For the web server and safe HTTPS connections.
• Django & PostgreSQL: The main application and its database.
• Mosquitto (MQTT): For receiving data from IoT devices.
• InfluxDB & Grafana: For saving device data and showing it on beautiful graphs.

3. Moving and Restoring Data

Keeping data safe during the migration was very important. Here is what I did to restore my data on GCP:

I moved my Django data from SQLite to PostgreSQL.

I used backup files from AWS to restore my InfluxDB database and Grafana dashboards. I had to fix some file permissions to make Grafana work correctly.

4. Security and Auto-Updates

I use Certbot (Let's Encrypt) to get a free SSL certificate. To keep the website safe, I set up a "cron" job in my new GCP Ubuntu server. This cron job checks and updates the SSL certificate automatically every day.

5. Fixing Problems

To keep the server running smoothly, I used a few helpful tricks:

• Checking logs: If a container stops, I use docker compose logs to find the error.

• Memory: I created a "swapfile" in Ubuntu because my server needed more memory to run all the containers at the same time.

Conclusion

Moving from AWS to GCP was a great success. Because my whole system was containerized with Docker, I did not have to worry about OS differences. I could start my web app on GCP very quickly and easily.