Granby
IT services in Granby: leaving the old server behind, one step at a time
It sits in a closet, next to the electrical panel or under the printer. It has been humming for years, nobody dares switch it off, and the whole company runs through it. OKTO Solutions helps SMBs in Granby decide what to do with it, then moves what should move to Azure and Microsoft 365, from Trois-Rivières, about 137 km away.
A Granby SMB can leave an aging server without stopping work by migrating in waves: inventory, written plan, a landing environment built ahead of time, then one group of systems at a time. OKTO Solutions runs the move to Azure and Microsoft 365 from Trois-Rivières, about 137 km away, with data at rest in Canada.
How does a Granby SMB move from its server to the cloud?
A small business in Granby that wants to be free of its old server does not have to move everything over one weekend. OKTO Solutions works in stages. The inventory comes first: servers, applications, licences, and what depends on what. Each system is then sorted into one of three paths, which are moving it as is into Azure, modernizing it with a service such as SharePoint, or keeping it on site because a real constraint requires it. A written plan sets the order of the waves, the hosting region and the procedure for rolling back. The landing environment is built and validated before a single file moves. The migration then advances one group at a time, starting with the least critical. Data at rest stays in Canada. Everything is steered from Trois-Rivières, about 137 km from Granby, where OKTO has no office, and visits are scheduled when the hardware calls for one.
The starting point
What do you do with the server at the back of the office?
First, you leave it plugged in. A server that has been around for a long time nearly always carries more than people think: the files, of course, but also employee accounts, the print queue, a business application, sometimes a database nobody can name any more.
There are three possible answers, and going fully to the cloud is not always the right one. If the machine is two years old, under warranty and doing its job, we will tell you to wait. If it is at end of life and your staff work from home as much as from the office, the case for Azure is strong. In between, there is hybrid.
And when a server has to stay on site, its replacement is prepared like everything else: an evening picked in advance, a backup verified before starting, the old machine held in reserve.
OKTO console A file server switchover follows an evening plan, ticked off step by step.
Three ways to host
Buy another server, move to Azure, or mix the two?
What tips the scale is the age of the current machine, the kind of applications you run and the quality of your Internet link. The table sets the three options side by side.
| Criterion | On-site server | Azure managed by OKTO | Hybrid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardware | A purchase to repeat every few years, plus upkeep | No device to buy, a recurring cost that tracks usage | A smaller purchase, the rest as an operating cost |
| If the building is hit | Recovery is yours to build and test | Replication to another region and a proven restore | The local server’s backup copy lives outside the building |
| When the team grows | Capacity is frozen on the day of purchase | Capacity is added, then removed | The cloud absorbs the peaks, the local part stays fixed |
| Where the data sits | In your server closet | Canada Central or Canada East regions | Split, and written down system by system |
A weak Internet link, or one with no fallback, changes the answer: either it gets fixed first or more stays on site. Recovery itself relies on our backup and disaster recovery service.
The order of work
What happens before the first file is moved?
Five steps, and your employees will not notice the first three.
- Inventory and analysis. What runs on the server, what depends on it, and which path each system falls into.
- Written migration plan. The order of the waves, the maintenance windows, the hosting region, the rollback and who does what between your team and ours.
- Building the environment. Networks, identities in Microsoft Entra ID with multi-factor authentication, role-based permissions, logging, monitoring and backups.
- Migration in waves. From least critical to most critical. The users concerned sign off on each wave before the next one starts.
- Ongoing management. Patching, tracking consumption and resizing resources, once the server is switched off.
The cutover
Why migrate in waves and not all at once?
Because a problem found on a test server costs nothing, while the same problem found on the invoicing software on a Monday morning costs everyone a day. The first wave is there to prove the method on something nobody relies on.
Rolling back stays possible until each wave is signed off. If an application misbehaves once moved, we return to the previous state and fix it, and the remainder of the calendar does not shift.
For your employees, the goal is that there is almost nothing to see. Files, printers and applications are found in the same place. What changes is that remote work becomes as fast as working at the office. After the cutover, the bill gets watched: consumption is reviewed, and whatever is no longer used is removed.
Six servers, four waves: each goes from queued to replicating, then cut over.
The ground
Granby, about 137 km from our office
Granby is the seat of the La Haute-Yamaska regional county municipality, which has been part of the Estrie administrative region since 2021. Route 139 connects the city to Autoroute 10.
OKTO Solutions offers its services to SMBs in Granby from Trois-Rivières, and makes no secret of it. The cloud suits that distance well: once systems are in Azure and Microsoft 365, monitoring, patching and support travel over the network, wherever the team looking after them happens to be. What does need someone present is the hardware that stays with you, and those visits are booked ahead.
OKTO is a Microsoft Partner and runs for itself the kind of infrastructure it delivers. After the migration, day-to-day work falls under our managed IT services, with the levels described on our Base, Standard and Complet plans. If choosing the cloud raises questions about personal information, read our guide to Law 25 for SMBs, or write to us through the contact page.
Questions and answers
Your questions about moving to the cloud in Granby
Our server is eight years old and still runs. Should we replace it?
How long does a move to the cloud take for a Granby SMB?
Can we keep our accounting software on site and send the rest to the cloud?
Does Microsoft 365 replace our file server?
Will our data leave Canada?
Do you have an office in Granby?
Have your server assessed before buying another one
Give us its year of purchase, what runs on it and your number of workstations. We will tell you whether it is better to migrate, modernize on site or wait.
Reviewed by Antonio Pazzi, president of OKTO Solutions · updated