Out of the Server Room and Into Something Maintainable
Whether the goal is full cloud, hybrid, or just retiring one aging server, we plan the migration, run the cutover, and operate the result. Azure, M365, hosted SQL, file shares, and line-of-business apps.
Whether the goal is a full move to Azure, a hybrid architecture that keeps your most sensitive workloads on-premises, or simply retiring one ageing server before the hardware fails, North Star plans the migration, runs the cutover, and operates the result.
We serve businesses across Prince George, Northern BC, the rest of British Columbia, Alberta, and Yukon with fixed-price cloud migration projects that include a documented design, a phased execution plan, and post-migration support.
What Is Included
We do not hand you a platform and leave you to figure it out. Every migration project includes scoping, architecture, execution, and a handoff, whether that is to our managed service or to your internal team with full documentation.
Lift and Shift
Virtual machines migrated as-is to Azure. The fastest path for legacy applications that cannot be re-architected. Properly right-sized, monitored, and budget-capped from day one.
Replatform
SQL Server, IIS, and file shares moved to managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS) equivalents where it makes sense. Lower ongoing maintenance overhead and improved security compared to self-managed VMs.
Hybrid Architecture
Some workloads on-premises, some in the cloud, connected by a secure private link. Not everything belongs in the cloud. We design and operate the hybrid so it does not become two separate messes that nobody understands.
Decommission
Old hardware removed from the floor. Licensing rationalised. Secure data destruction certificates provided. The server room does not need to stay running alongside the cloud.
How It Works
Step 1, Inventory
Every server, application, file share, integration, and dependency catalogued. Surprises surface here, not on cutover day. You receive the inventory document before any design work begins.
Step 2, Design
Target architecture produced: Azure landing zone or hybrid design, cost estimate, and cutover plan. You see and approve before anything is provisioned or ordered.
Step 3, Migrate
Phased moves with parallel running where possible. Documented rollback procedures for every step. Critical workloads migrate last, after the process is tested on lower-risk systems.
Step 4, Operate
Handoff to North Star's managed service or to your internal team with full documentation, monitoring configuration, and a post-migration support period. We do not disappear at go-live.
Who This Is For
- Businesses in Prince George, Northern BC, BC, Alberta, or Yukon with ageing on-premises infrastructure and an upcoming hardware refresh decision
- Organisations with a server room lease expiry or a co-location cost that no longer makes sense
- Teams that rely on a single on-premises server and want to eliminate the hardware failure risk
- Businesses that have started using Microsoft 365 but still have on-premises workloads running on legacy hardware
What buyers ask before they sign
How is the project priced?
Fixed-price, scoped after the discovery phase. We document your environment first, then produce a written proposal with a defined scope, timeline, and price. Changes to scope are documented and agreed before any additional work is done.
Do we have to move everything at once?
No. Phased migrations are standard. We migrate workloads in priority order, test each phase before moving to the next, and maintain your existing environment throughout the process so your business keeps running.
What happens to our data during the migration?
Data is replicated to the target environment before cutover. We run both environments in parallel during the replication period and validate data integrity before switching. You do not lose access to your data during the migration.
What if something goes wrong during cutover?
Documented rollback procedures are produced for every step before migration begins. If a cutover step does not pass validation, we roll back and investigate before trying again. Critical cutovers are staffed by North Star throughout and not left on automated processes.
Can you migrate line-of-business applications?
We assess every application in the inventory phase. Most common business applications migrate without issues. Where a line-of-business application has specific requirements, vendor-mandated server versions, database configurations, or licensing restrictions, we document those and work with the vendor to resolve them before migration.
Do you provide ongoing management after migration?
Yes. North Star offers managed services covering monitoring, patching, backup, security, and helpdesk support on a monthly retainer. Most migration clients continue with managed service after cutover.
Why North Star
North Star is a Prince George-based MSP serving Northern BC, BC, Alberta, and Yukon. Fixed-price projects. Security configured during the migration, not proposed afterward. Post-migration support included. Local team that picks up the phone.
Get a Quote on Cloud Migration
Tell us about your environment and we will come back with a scoped proposal in two business days.
Call 672-983-1174 or request a quote online.
Get a quote on cloud migration.
Tell us a bit about your environment and we'll come back with a scoped proposal in two business days. No obligation, no pressure.
Request a Quote Back to Cloud & InfraGetting out of the server room without losing what's running in it.
A cloud migration is the process of moving workloads that currently run on physical hardware in your office (or a colocation facility) to cloud infrastructure maintained by Microsoft, Amazon, or Google. The objective is not to move to the cloud because cloud is a trend. The objective is to reduce the operational burden of maintaining on-premises hardware, improve availability and disaster recovery capability, and enable staff to work effectively from anywhere. For most BC and Alberta SMBs, that means moving file shares to SharePoint or Azure Files, moving email to Exchange Online if it is not there already, and retiring one or more ageing Windows Server systems that are consuming IT budget and generating risk.
A Prince George engineering firm running its project files on a physical file server in a back room is also running the risk that the server fails, the drives fail, or the building floods. Moving those files to SharePoint or Azure Files eliminates the hardware risk, adds built-in versioning, and lets staff access files from the field on an iPad without VPN complexity. The migration involves mapping what is on the server, choosing the right cloud destination for each workload, migrating the data with minimal downtime, and decommissioning the hardware once the migration is verified. North Star plans and executes all of that, including the Canadian data residency considerations under BC PIPA and PIPEDA that determine where your data must actually live.
Cloud migration deliverables.
- Discovery and inventory: complete inventory of what is currently running on-premises, including servers, services, applications, databases, and file shares, with dependency mapping.
- Migration strategy: recommendation for each workload: lift-and-shift to Azure IaaS, replatform to PaaS, replace with SaaS (M365, Dropbox Business), or retire. Written rationale for each recommendation.
- Data residency planning: all Canadian data residency requirements assessed under BC PIPA and PIPEDA. Azure Canada regions (Canada Central, Canada East) used by default for data that must stay in Canada.
- Microsoft 365 migration: email migration from Exchange on-premises or Google Workspace to Exchange Online, including calendar and contact migration and cutover coordination.
- File share migration: migration of on-premises file shares to SharePoint document libraries or Azure Files, with permissions mapping and user communication.
- Application migration or lift-and-shift: Windows Server workloads moved to Azure virtual machines or replaced with equivalent cloud services where applicable.
- Cutover planning: staged migration with a defined cutover window, rollback plan, and user communication. Most migrations complete over a weekend to minimize business disruption.
- Post-migration validation: confirmation that all users can access their data and applications, that backup is configured for the new cloud workloads, and that the old hardware is safely decommissioned.
Businesses with ageing on-premises infrastructure or a hardware refresh coming up.
The right time to evaluate a cloud migration is when on-premises hardware is approaching end of life and a hardware refresh is on the horizon. Instead of spending $20,000-$40,000 on a new server with a five-year depreciation schedule, the question is whether the workloads that server runs are better placed in Azure, in Microsoft 365, or in a hybrid configuration where latency-sensitive applications stay local and everything else moves to the cloud. North Star evaluates both options honestly: sometimes the right answer is a hardware refresh, sometimes it is migration, and sometimes it is a hybrid. We do not push cloud migration when on-premises makes more sense for the workload.
BC and Alberta businesses with compliance obligations under BC PIPA or PIPEDA need to understand where their data will be stored before migrating to the cloud. Cloud providers that store data exclusively in the United States subject Canadian personal information to US law, including the CLOUD Act. Microsoft Azure's Canadian regions store data in Canada and are the appropriate choice for BC and AB businesses handling client personal information. North Star configures all migrations to use Canadian Azure regions by default.
Businesses with multiple BC or AB locations that currently rely on site-to-site VPN to reach a central server are often better candidates for cloud migration than single-site businesses, because moving the workload to the cloud eliminates the VPN dependency and typically improves performance for remote and secondary-site staff.
Fixed-price project scoped after discovery.
Cloud migrations are scoped and priced as a fixed-price project after a discovery engagement that assesses what is on-premises and what the cloud destination will be. The discovery is typically a short paid engagement (a few hours of technical review), and the migration project is then quoted with a fixed price and a defined timeline. Ongoing cloud infrastructure costs (Azure subscription, Microsoft 365 licensing) are separate from North Star's project fee and are billed directly by Microsoft. Contact us to schedule a discovery call and receive a migration scoping proposal.
What clients ask before migrating.
Will our line-of-business applications work in Azure?
It depends on the application. Most modern Windows Server applications run correctly on Azure virtual machines. Legacy applications with hardware dependencies (dongles, specific network drivers, serial port devices) may have complications. We assess each application during the discovery phase and identify any that require remediation before migration. Applications that vendors no longer support on cloud infrastructure are flagged and alternatives are recommended before the migration begins, not during it.
Where will our data be stored?
By default, North Star configures all Azure migrations to use Microsoft's Canada Central region in Toronto or Canada East region in Quebec City. These regions store data in Canada, which satisfies the data residency requirements under BC PIPA, AB PIPA, and PIPEDA for personal information. Microsoft 365 data for Canadian tenants is also stored in Canada by default. We document the data residency configuration in writing so you have a record for regulatory or audit purposes.
How much downtime is involved?
We design migrations to minimize downtime. File share migrations run in parallel with your existing server; staff are moved to the new location in waves, not all at once. Email migrations typically have a cutover window of a few hours. Server workloads can often run in parallel (old server and new Azure VM) until validation is complete. We plan a defined rollback procedure so that if anything does not work as expected after cutover, we can revert to the previous state with minimal additional disruption. Most migrations complete over a scheduled weekend.
What happens to the old hardware after migration?
After migration is complete and validated, we coordinate decommissioning of on-premises hardware. This includes secure data wiping of storage drives to NIST 800-88 standards, coordination with a certified electronics recycler for hardware disposal, and documentation confirming that all data has been wiped before the hardware leaves your premises. We do not leave decommissioning as a loose end for you to manage after the migration project closes.
Cloud migrations with Canadian data residency built in from the start.
North Star is headquartered in Prince George and serves BC, Alberta, and the Yukon. We migrate businesses to Azure and Microsoft 365 with Canadian data residency as a default, not an afterthought. We understand that BC PIPA and PIPEDA impose real obligations on how personal information is handled in the cloud, and we configure migrations to satisfy those requirements rather than explaining them after the fact. We use AI-assisted tooling to accelerate the discovery and inventory phases, giving you a faster and more complete picture of what you are migrating before the project starts. After migration, the cloud workloads are managed as part of your ongoing managed IT services agreement.
Cloud migration across BC, Alberta, and Yukon.
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