A while back, I was pulled into what sounded like a fairly standard cloud migration conversation. A client wanted to migrate their application to AWS, modernise their stack, and position themselves for growth. On the surface, it sounded like nothing unusual. As we began unpacking the details of the migration, they outlined their plan for the database. They wanted to take their MySQL database… and run it inside a container. And that is when things got interesting. I've worked on a lot of migrations over the years, and while this approach isn’t impossible, it stood out for a different reason. It was trying to solve a problem that didn't quite exist, while quietly ignoring several that very much did. But before I explain why that pattern raised red flags, let me give you the full picture of what this client was actually trying to achieve. Background At the time of meeting the client, they were running a traditional monolithic application hosted with a local provider.…