0001-cloud-provider-azure.md

1. Cloud Provider — Azure over AWS

Status

Accepted

Links to 0003

Date: 2026-05-11
Deciders: Engineering team

Context

The project requires hosting for a static frontend, a serverless API backend, and a CI/CD pipeline. A cloud provider had to be chosen early as it shapes infrastructure tooling, deployment targets, and available managed services.

Options Considered

Option A: Microsoft Azure

Dimension	Assessment
Team familiarity	High — existing Azure experience
Static + Functions hosting	Azure Static Web Apps bundles both in a single free-tier resource
Managed identity & secrets	Azure App Settings natively integrated
Free tier	SWA Free tier covers this project’s scale
CI/CD	GitHub Actions integration first-class

Option B: AWS

Dimension	Assessment
Team familiarity	Moderate — AWS experience exists but less recent
Equivalent hosting	S3 + CloudFront + Lambda — more resources to manage
Free tier	Lambda + S3 free tier viable but more complex to wire
CI/CD	GitHub Actions support good but less native than Azure

Option C: GCP / Other

Not seriously evaluated — team had no relevant experience.

Decision

Azure, using Azure Static Web Apps (Free tier).

Azure Static Web Apps is uniquely well-suited: it bundles static hosting, managed Azure Functions, custom domain, and CI/CD in a single resource with zero cost at this scale. The team’s existing Azure familiarity removes onboarding friction.

Consequences

Infrastructure is expressed in Terraform targeting the azurerm provider.
The Azure Functions runtime is constrained to the languages supported by SWA managed functions (.NET, Node, Python).
Future multi-cloud or AWS migration would require significant infrastructure rework.