Your infrastructure's route off the data center floor.
I plan and run migrations from on-prem infrastructure to Azure and AWS for teams who can't afford a broken cutover — with reliability engineering built in from day one, not bolted on after the fact.
Five ways I can help, from first inventory to steady-state operations
Engage me for a single phase or the whole journey. Every engagement starts with understanding what you actually run today — not a generic template.
Migration readiness assessment
Full inventory of servers, apps, and databases, dependency mapping, and a total-cost-of-ownership comparison so you know what to move, what to leave, and what it will cost before committing.
Migration execution
Phased, wave-based cutovers — rehost, replatform, or refactor per workload — with rollback plans and staging validation, so production keeps running while the move happens.
Post-migration SRE
Monitoring, alerting, and SLOs from day one, plus incident response runbooks and on-call setup, so reliability is a property of the system, not an afterthought.
CI/CD & infrastructure as code
Terraform or Bicep-managed environments, containerized workloads, and deployment pipelines that make repeat changes routine instead of risky.
Cost & reliability optimization
Right-sizing, reserved capacity, and backup/disaster-recovery design with clear recovery time and recovery point targets — so the cloud bill and the uptime both make sense.
Not sure which phase you need?
Most engagements start with the assessment — it tells us exactly where the risk and the savings are.
Start with an assessmentFour stages. Nothing skipped.
Every workload gets a documented decision — not a default. This is the sequence I follow on every engagement, whether the target is Azure or AWS.
Inventory, dependencies, and a real cost comparison
Discovery tooling maps every server, app, and database, plus what talks to what. Each workload gets a recommended strategy — rehost, replatform, refactor, repurchase, retire, or retain — based on business goals, compliance needs, and technical fit, not a one-size-fits-all default.
Landing zone, waves, and a rollback plan for each one
Before anything moves, we set up governance, networking, and identity in the target cloud, define recovery time and recovery point objectives, and group workloads into migration waves — starting with lower-risk systems to build confidence and process before touching anything critical.
Staged cutover with validation at every step
Each wave is tested in a staging environment first. On cutover day, the on-prem system stays available until the new environment is validated end to end — so there's always a way back if something looks wrong.
Monitoring, cost control, and continuous review
Post-migration, we set budgets and alerts, right-size what turns out to be oversized, and put monitoring and on-call in place. Migration isn't a one-time event — the environment gets reviewed on a regular cadence as workloads and cloud capabilities evolve.
What I won't skip, even under a deadline
Rollback before rollout
Every cutover has a documented way back. On-prem systems stay live until the new environment is proven, not assumed.
Waves, not weekends
Big-bang migrations are where most surprises happen. Workloads move in phased groups, smallest risk first.
Observability first
Monitoring and alerting go in before cutover, not after an incident makes it obvious they were missing.
Document everything
Runbooks, architecture diagrams, and decision logs are a deliverable, not an afterthought — your team can run this without me.
Three ways to work together
Exact scope drives the final number — these ranges reflect typical independent SRE/DevOps engagements for migration work in 2026.
- Full infrastructure & dependency inventory
- Per-workload migration strategy recommendation
- TCO comparison: on-prem vs. Azure/AWS
- Written roadmap & wave plan
- Full migration execution, wave by wave
- Infrastructure-as-code setup
- CI/CD pipeline build-out
- Staging validation & cutover support
- Post-migration SRE support
- Monitoring, alerting & SLO upkeep
- Monthly cost & reliability review
- Priority incident response
Rates are positioned against the current freelance SRE/DevOps market ($75–$350+/hr depending on seniority and specialization). Final pricing is confirmed after the assessment, once real scope is known — no engagement starts on a guess.
Mahesh — independent SRE / DevOps consultant
I work directly with engineering and IT leads to move production systems off on-prem hardware and onto Azure or AWS, then keep them reliable afterward. No account managers, no bench of junior staff learning on your infrastructure — you work with the person actually doing the migration, from the first discovery call to the last cutover.
With a background focused entirely on system automation, infrastructure security frameworks, and zero-downtime cutover deployment patterns, I build systems that remain deterministic, audible, and easily maintainable by your core internal staff long after my contract wraps up.
- Aging on-prem hardware nearing end-of-life or lease expiration
- Rising maintenance costs and slow hardware procurement cycles
- Compliance pressure (data residency, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2)
- A team that knows the applications but not the target cloud
- No current monitoring or incident response process worth the name
- Rehost — move as-is, fastest and lowest risk
- Replatform — small upgrades in transit (e.g. managed database)
- Refactor — redesign for cloud-native scaling
- Repurchase — swap for a SaaS equivalent
- Retire — decommission what's no longer needed
- Retain — keep on-prem where it still makes sense
Questions before you reach out
Do you support both Azure and AWS?
Yes — the right target depends on your existing stack, licensing, and team familiarity. If you run a lot of Windows Server and Active Directory, Azure often has the edge; for broader service breadth or existing AWS-native tooling, AWS is often the better fit. This gets decided during the assessment, not assumed upfront.
How long does a typical migration take?
Small environments with a handful of workloads can move in a few weeks. Larger environments with years of accumulated systems typically take longer — the assessment phase gives a realistic timeline once your actual inventory and dependencies are known.
Will there be downtime?
The goal is minimal to zero unplanned downtime. Planned cutover windows are scheduled and communicated in advance, with rollback plans in place so the on-prem environment can take back traffic if the migrated system doesn't validate cleanly.
Can you work with our internal IT team instead of replacing them?
That's the default model. I typically work alongside your existing team, documenting decisions and transferring runbooks so they can operate the environment independently once the engagement ends.
What if some systems need to stay on-prem?
Not everything should move. Systems with strict regulatory, latency, or dependency constraints can be explicitly retained and connected to the cloud environment for unified management, revisited later if constraints change.
Tell me what you're running today
A few details up front means our first call can go straight to the useful part — what's worth migrating, and how.
Submitting this form drops a secure structured digest directly to my ingestion intake channel.