Over the past few days, I completed one of the biggest infrastructure changes I’ve made to my online projects in years: I began moving my entire server environment to OVHcloud in Canada.
This isn’t just a change of hosting companies. It is a complete restructuring of how I run my websites, email, publishing projects, e-commerce infrastructure, and EduBank.
The first—and probably the most stressful—part was moving my production mail server from Germany to Canada.
It worked.
And after comparing the numbers, the move also makes financial sense.
The Mail Server Migration
My Mailcow server had been running in Germany. Moving a WordPress site is relatively straightforward. Moving a production mail server containing years of email, databases, account information, DKIM data, configuration files, spam-filtering data, certificates, and Docker volumes is another story.
I used rsync to migrate the entire environment.
The first synchronization transferred most of the data while the old server remained operational. Then I shut the original Mailcow instance down, performed a final synchronization, and started the copied environment on the new Canadian server.
The process took the entire night and most of the following day.
It was time-consuming, but remarkably smooth.
I have a new appreciation for whoever created rsync.
After copying the final Docker volumes, starting Mailcow on OVHcloud, and verifying the migrated data, the server came back online with the existing mailboxes and configuration intact.
Welcome home, email data. 🇨🇦
The New OVHcloud Architecture
Rather than putting everything on a single large server, I decided to separate different types of workloads.
WEB-01 — General Websites
OVH VPS-3
- 6 vCPU
- 12 GB RAM
- 100 GB NVMe
This server hosts the majority of my general websites:
These sites have very different purposes, but their infrastructure requirements are relatively similar, making them good candidates to share one web server.
WEB-02 — Business, LMS and E-Commerce
OVH VPS-4
- 8 vCPU
- 24 GB RAM
- 200 GB NVMe
This is the largest server in the environment and will handle the more demanding applications:
- edubank.ca
- igorsbookscorner.store
EduBank is particularly important because an LMS can become significantly more resource-intensive than an ordinary WordPress website.
Students logging in, instructors managing courses, quizzes, database operations, video integrations, WooCommerce transactions and background processes can create considerably more load.
Separating these applications from my general websites means a traffic spike on EduBank won’t necessarily affect my personal website or publishing infrastructure.
MAIL-01 — Dedicated Email Infrastructure
OVH VPS-2
- 4 vCPU
- 8 GB RAM
- 75 GB NVMe
This machine is dedicated to Mailcow.
I deliberately wanted email separated from my web servers.
Mail infrastructure performs a very different job from a WordPress server. It runs services such as:
- Postfix
- Dovecot
- Rspamd
- SOGo
- MariaDB
- Redis
- Nginx
- Let’s Encrypt/ACME
- IMAP and SMTP services
Keeping mail isolated means that a problem with a website, WordPress plugin, LMS update, or e-commerce application doesn’t automatically become a problem with email.
Across the three servers, the new environment provides a combined:
18 vCPUs 44 GB of RAM 375 GB of NVMe storage
That gives me considerable room to grow.
The Financial Side
The migration wasn’t only about infrastructure design.
It also reduces my monthly hosting costs.
My previous environment included approximately:
| Previous provider | Monthly cost |
|---|---|
| Spaceship — 2 VMs | C$57.00 |
| Hetzner | ~C$20.88 |
| Total | ~C$77.88/month |
The Hetzner server cost US$14.99 per month, which was approximately C$20.88 at the exchange rate I used for the comparison.
My new OVHcloud environment is approximately:
| OVH server | Monthly cost |
|---|---|
| MAIL-01 — VPS-2 | C$11.64 |
| WEB-01 — VPS-3 | C$16.83 |
| WEB-02 — VPS-4 | C$32.21 |
| Total | C$60.68/month |
That means the migration reduces my infrastructure spending by approximately:
C$17.20 every month
or roughly:
C$206 per year
Over three years, that’s approximately:
C$619 saved
And over five years:
C$1,032 saved
That’s roughly a 22% reduction in monthly infrastructure costs.
The more interesting part is that I am not reducing capacity to achieve those savings.
I am actually ending up with a much cleaner infrastructure design and substantial CPU, memory, and NVMe resources.
Why Separating the Servers Matters
I could technically put many of these services onto one powerful VPS.
I don’t want to.
Separating infrastructure creates clearer boundaries.
If WEB-01 requires maintenance, my email server continues operating.
If EduBank experiences unusually high traffic, it doesn’t have to compete with Mailcow for RAM and CPU resources.
If I need to reboot MAIL-01 after an email infrastructure update, the websites remain online.
The architecture becomes:
Internet
│
┌─────────────┼─────────────┐
│ │ │
WEB-01 WEB-02 MAIL-01
VPS-3 VPS-4 VPS-2
│ │ │
General Sites EduBank + Mailcow
Publishing E-Commerce Email
It also gives me much more flexibility later.
If EduBank grows significantly, WEB-02 can be upgraded independently.
If the publishing sites grow, WEB-01 can be scaled.
If email storage increases, MAIL-01 can be expanded without touching the websites.
That is much better than treating the entire online operation as one giant server.
Why Canada?
There is also a personal reason behind this migration.
I wanted more of my production infrastructure hosted in Canada.
For years, it has been normal for Canadian businesses and individuals to automatically look south of the border or overseas for technology infrastructure.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that.
But if Canadian infrastructure can deliver the performance, reliability and pricing I need, I see value in using it.
I work with Linux, networking, virtualization, cloud systems and web infrastructure. Instead of debating what Canadian infrastructure can or cannot do, I prefer putting it to the test with my own projects.
So far, the result is simple:
It works.
My production mail server has already completed its journey from Germany to Canada.
The rest of my infrastructure is following.
More Than a Hosting Migration
This move represents something larger for me.
Over time, these websites have grown from individual experiments into an interconnected collection of projects:
ivalianski.me — my personal presence.
ivalianski.online — infrastructure, technology and personal publishing.
Igor’s Book Corner — my publishing and content ecosystem.
Canada in Colours — my colouring-book brand.
Igor’s Book Corner Store — e-commerce.
EduBank.ca — an education marketplace.
And behind all of them is infrastructure that needs to be reliable, understandable and affordable.
Moving everything to OVHcloud gives me an opportunity to redesign that foundation properly rather than simply continuing to add servers whenever something needs more capacity.
The First Major Milestone Is Complete
The most difficult part of this migration was always going to be email.
Websites can be backed up.
WordPress can be reinstalled.
Applications can be redeployed.
But years of mailbox data and a working production mail environment deserve considerably more care.
That migration is now complete.
📧 Mailboxes migrated
🗄️ Server data migrated
⚙️ Mailcow configuration migrated
🇨🇦 Production email infrastructure moved to Canada
💰 Overall infrastructure costs reduced
🚀 More resources available for future growth
There is still work ahead as I complete the migration of the remaining web infrastructure, configure monitoring, optimize backups and finish tuning the individual servers.
But the foundation is now taking shape.
After spending an entire night and most of a day watching rsync move data across the Atlantic, seeing everything come online successfully was incredibly satisfying.
Welcome home, email data. 🇨🇦🍁
And welcome to the next chapter of my infrastructure.
