MadeMyDay – Azure VMSS + Load Balancer Capstone

A 2-tier web application deployed on Azure with a highly available web tier using VM Scale Sets (VMSS) behind a Standard Load Balancer, plus a private MySQL DB VM. Images can be served either from a local folder (Phase II) or from Azure Blob Storage (Phase III) so the web tier becomes stateless and safe to scale (Phase IV).

Architecture (High Level)

Internet → Public IP → Standard Load Balancer → VMSS (Apache + PHP) → MySQL (Private VM) → (Optional) Azure Blob Storage (Images)

Features

• VMSS web tier (Uniform) behind Load Balancer with health probes
• Dynamic catalog rendered from MySQL via PHP
• Admin page to add items (and optionally upload images to Azure Blob)
• Hostname footer to verify traffic distribution across VMSS instances

Repo Structure

mademyday-azure-capstone/
├── app/                    # Web app code (copy to /var/www/html)
│   ├── index.php
│   ├── admin.php
│   ├── db.php
│   ├── css/style.css
│   └── .env.example
├── scripts/
│   ├── apache-php-setup.sh
│   ├── mysql-setup.sh
│   ├── blob-php-sdk-setup.sh
│   └── harden-permissions.sh
├── infra/
│   ├── azure-cli/          # Optional CLI automation
│   │   ├── 01-network.sh
│   │   ├── 02-dbvm.sh
│   │   ├── 03-webvm-image.sh
│   │   └── 04-vmss.sh
│   └── parameters.sample.json
├── docs/
│   ├── CHANGELOG.md
│   └── troubleshooting.md
├── screenshots/            # Add your portal + website screenshots here
└── .gitignore

Quick Start (Portal-first workflow)

1) DB VM (private) – MySQL

On DB VM (Ubuntu):

sudo bash scripts/mysql-setup.sh

This creates the database + table and a sample app user.

2) Web tier – Apache + PHP

On Web VM (Ubuntu) or your “golden image” VM before capture:

sudo bash scripts/apache-php-setup.sh
sudo bash scripts/harden-permissions.sh

Copy the contents of app/ into:

• /var/www/html/

Update database IP + credentials in /var/www/html/db.php or use env vars (recommended).

3) Optional – Azure Blob for images (recommended for VMSS)

On web VM:

sudo bash scripts/blob-php-sdk-setup.sh

Then set the Blob config in .env (see .env.example) and use the Blob-upload admin behavior (already included in admin.php).

4) VMSS + Load Balancer (High Availability)

Capture a golden image from the configured web VM, then create VMSS from that image and attach to a Standard Load Balancer.

To verify load balancing, refresh the homepage multiple times and watch the hostname change in the footer.

Environment variables

Create /var/www/html/.env from .env.example and fill values:

• DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASS, DB_NAME
• Optional Blob: BLOB_ACCOUNT_NAME, BLOB_ACCOUNT_KEY, BLOB_CONTAINER

Do not commit .env to GitHub.

📸 Screenshots

🏠 Homepage (Load Balanced Web Tier)

🎬 Coming Soon Section

🛠 Admin Panel

⚙️ VM Scale Set Instances

🔄 Load Balancer Backend Health

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License

MIT (optional). Add one if you want public reuse.