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ADR-0001 — Production hosting

  • Status: Accepted
  • Date: 2026-09-18
  • Deciders: RE360Muse engineering

Context​

RE360Muse is a Next.js PWA plus an Express Prisma API. The API needs a long-lived Node process (JWT uploads, Paystack HMAC webhook, Socket.io, ffmpeg). Listing photos and public Market traffic should not pay S3 egress as they grow. Operators are worldwide, with a strong Africa footprint; the current AWS objects live far from that traffic.

Cloudflare Hyperdrive advertises Postgres and MySQL. It is a connection pool and query accelerator in front of an existing database, reachable only from Cloudflare Workers. It does not host Postgres. It does not sit in front of Express on Lightsail.

Decision​

Launch on a hybrid stack:

  • Cloudflare: DNS, TLS, CDN, and R2 object storage.
  • AWS Lightsail: Next.js app and Express API (one VM or two).
  • AWS RDS PostgreSQL (not Lightsail disk, not Lightsail Database).
  • AWS Amplify: this docs site (already in amplify.yml).

Do not put the OS API on Workers or Pages. Do not point DATABASE_URL at Hyperdrive from main-backend. Do not switch the API to MySQL.

Consequences​

Easier: image delivery and DDoS sit on Cloudflare. The API keeps Prisma, sessions, websockets, and ffmpeg. R2 uses the existing S3 client via S3_ENDPOINT.

Harder: two vendors. Lightsail does not autoscale; the next step is App Runner or ECS with the same Node process. RDS must allow the Lightsail VPC (peering), not the public internet, for the API.

Hyperdrive stays a documented option only if we later add a Worker that reads Postgres (for example a public listing cache). That Worker would pool to the same RDS. The Express API still talks to RDS directly.

Alternatives considered​

OptionWhy not
Full Cloudflare (Pages + Workers + Hyperdrive + D1/R2)Workers cannot run this Express API, Socket.io server, or ffmpeg. Hyperdrive does not replace RDS.
Full AWS (S3 + EC2/ECS from day one)Works, but listing-image egress is the expensive part. ECS is premature until one Lightsail size-up is not enough.
Postgres on the Lightsail instanceFills the box first. Backup and HA are worse than RDS.
Lightsail DatabaseWeaker than RDS; still migrate later.
MySQL on HyperdriveProduct schema is PostgreSQL.