What are /r/msp's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

No.

We are a Datto partner.

Why the hell would I buy something that costs me $99 + shipping up front then $6 a month forever, when I can buy this for $69 with no shipping and no monthly fee and still get the same "Auto reboot on ping loss" feature plus free cloud dashboard plus free mobile app? It makes no sense.

BGinfo

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/bginfo

Although even with the information right in front of the users face at all times they still won't enter it when creating tickets lol 😂

Hi u/AKGeek. Just curious: what is the perceived value of doing it yourself versus farming it out to a SOCSaaS provider and white labeling yourself as an MSSP? The barrier of entry is much lower and it may actually be more profitable, even in the long run. Running a SOC includes a lot of overhead and logistics.

I know someone who is an expert in starting SOCs and he has a book on Amazon:

Designing and Building Security Operations Center

Full disclosure, I work for a channel-only SOC vendor.

I use bittitan migrationwiz quite some times. It really isn't that hard.

Also, MS is coming with a native mailbox migration tenant-to-tenant solution. For data you have mover.io (aquired by MS).

You only have 7 mailboxes, so what you did was fine (but far, far, far from ideal), but for bigger migrations, mover.io and bittitan work really well. It saves you a lot of time and headaches (you'll still get a few, though, but that's just MS you know.. :D)

Gmail has some black listed Servers as well. Found out from a G-Suite user (not a @gmail.com).

Can't imagine it being out of the question of people getting compromised and then spam e-mail sent from a legitimate account.

Definitely Putty as suggested, but always handy to have already downloaded the Nirsoft Launcher which includes all Nirsoft tools, as well as the Sysinternals Suite by Microsoft, both free.

ScreenConnect.

One-time purchase, self hosted (though hosted service is seemingly available now that they've been acquired).

 

(not affiliated, just a happy customer)

There are really only two core secrets to co-manged, from which everything else derives.

• You use the MSP's tool stack ~ your entire ability to deliver service, the whole reason someone would hire you for co-managed depends on your ability to manage the service. Thats the M in MSP. You need to be using your stuff.
• You make the client's internal support staff look good ~ You cannot be seen to be undermine, replace, countermand, or make to look stupid the internal staff. That is essential to co-managed.

There is a good book that goes over how to best set up this model called the MSP Survival Guide to Co Managed Support

>- A couple of bootable USB sticks (Hiren's PE, some Live-Linux distris, Windows 10 recovery/install, ...)

An iodd mini is one of the best equipment investments you can make. It's a USB drive your can fill up with ISO and VHD files, then make it show up as any external DVD/HDD/flash or even floppy drive. My iodd has been the second most important device in my bag for about 5 years.

If you are looking for inexpensive DNS-based content filtering, then you really should take a look at dnsfilter.com. It's dirt cheap, and incredibly effective. It does not have near the feature set that Umbrella does, and there is no comparison between the 2 products, but for what it is, it's fantastic.

1Password is amazing. Used to be great on Mac and half assed on Windows but now they are feature parity.

They have a one time payout referral program. Its not much, but better than nothing I guess.

https://1password.com/affiliate/

Do your Service Agreements define hours of operations and define after-hours? If so, charge more! If not, fix your agreements. You do not want to burn yourself out on an AYCE agreement that does not limit what constitutes fair operating hours. For things like network operations (e.g. server up-time) outline that those are exceptions or a X% uptime guarantee.

After-Hours support is fine if you are rewarded for it, and scale it accordingly. Systems like OpsGenie are beautiful to help rotate that on-call feel and help you scale as well and eventually share the pain.

Commonly I see a 1.5x-2x hourly rate for after-hours w/ utilizing a special work type in your ticketing system. Normally the first time you can pull the "hey Mr. Customer, this is the exception call; next time it costs $x /hr after-hours" approach.

Kyle Christensen | Sierra Pacific Consulting

Hey u/ZureliaSE for monitoring these different brands and components have you had a look at something like Domotz network monitoring system yet? I'll be honest that I'm the community manager there and that makes me biased - but this is exactly what we do! The software is built specifically for monitoring and alerts for all these different brands of access points and switches. Happy to help if you have any questions.

You could clone it, but I'd be careful. I worked for a pharmacy and do IT work. You really don't want to fuck around with pirating stuff for actual businesses in general. Two of my clients had their licenses audited by Microsoft in the past 5 years and its a giant hassle. Very likely any pirated pharmacy/EMR etc software is going to be at least somewhat out-of-date. You don't wanna be where the buck stops if they get busted.

Plus pharmacies literally print money. They can afford it. If they are having problems paying for the software, which costs a fraction of what a pharmacist does, then they are doing something very very wrong as a business.

Anyway, if you are going to go for it anyway I suggest setting up a remote server with instanced logins using the same seat. Depending on the software their database system may not work with it though.

A final thought: My pharmacy literally killed people through negligence and bad practices (not dispensing drugs, but with their automated drug dispensing system that got setup for people incapable of using it), you really don't want to fuck around with pirating something in a situation where someone could die or HIPAA violations could occur. Tell them to fuck off and pay their bills or get into another crooked business.

Anyway, if you decide to go with cloning I like Macrium Reflect. https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

If a company gets a VPN that might secure that data and provide it to their staff - I think it's ok. It's not nonsense, believe me, there have been multiple occasions when people connected to a fake hotspot and got their data leaked. I got NordVPN that automatically connects once you're on an unsecure network to avoid this because I'm paranoid

Everything inside of Ninite Pro

We recently moved our patch management from Shavlik to Managed Workplace patching (WSUS + Ninite Pro) due to inefficiencies with Shavlik needing a console for every client which means overall view and reporting was quite the manual task every month. MW patching was already in our contract so we're saving quite a bit of money there.

We're heavy in the financial industry so patching a huge part of the audit rules. However, each client does have their exclusions that we have to avoid (I'm looking at you, Java) and so they have special groups for those.

u/iworkherenot I think it's already been mentioned but the ebitda number really doesn't paint the whole picture. When MSPs grow and scale (whether organic or M&A) their revenue mix starts to be shaped in different ways. Some MSPs start to grow in certain verticals and take on heavier procurement or project services (I should clarify GOOD project services) or even SaaS for that matter (I work with a large MSP heavy in Microsoft licensing right now).

What this ultimately means is that your margins will start to sway based off the business you are in. I know some VERY successful MSPs that are more concerned about top-line revenue because it meets their business objectives. Now that being said, their profits are a lower percentage but the profit dollar is quickly growing due to their revenue band. This would potentially result in lower ebitda because of their competitive margins.

Now at $3M ebitda, assuming that is close to a $15M-$20M MSP assuming the mix is more towards managed services (thanks for the math u/JRVandy!). Normally this revenue band is hovering in the 50-75 employee range permitting your client base is broad (I do know one however at 40'ish because they locked down a single market!).

As far as the 'mix' of FTEs, Operational, Administrative, Sales/Marketing I've seen 20+FTEs at these sizes and as much as 40+ depending on the methodology you use to deliver service (TruMethods vs. ServiceLeadership vs. custom, etc) and if you consider some of your management or vCIOs FTEs.

It's a fun discussion regardless and I really look forward to all the answers that will pop up here!

Wondering if anyone would be interested in doing a webinar/ discussion to talk shop on this?

Kyle Christensen | Sierra Pacific Group

Check again. New update: choco sync. You can now run one command and have it start managing all software that wasn't originally installed via Chocolatey.

Hey MSP friends,
I'm a vendor, but I come bearing gifts. Blumira is new to the MSP space, but I'm not :-)
And the solution is really an ideal fit for the SMB and MSP space.

I'm building their MSP program and it starts with free-for-internal-use NFR licenses for our MSP partners. I understand that you need something that doesn't blow up your business model and am confident that once you use Blumira for internal use, you'll want to use it with your customers as well. I've also set a very attractive per-user-per-month price point for our MSP partners and 365-day retention is built in. Feel free to hit me up with questions or sign up to get your NFR going.

-Jeremy

There are a couple ideas that come to mind. A list serv program. I'd look into setting up a subdomain for your client that would have a list serv hooked up to it. It would need a static IP, with the proper PTR, SPF, DKIM and DMARC setup. If could probably run from their own systems at the office.

Second would be a product like sendgrid, mail gun, or smtp2go. I think sendgrid has instructions for setting up their account in Outlook so you just change the "from" in the compose window for email, put your group in the BCC list, and send it off. https://sendgrid.com/docs/for-developers/sending-email/outlook-2013/

Whatever solution you decide on, please be responsible and include a method for people to pull themselves off the list.

If the devices are getting GPOs, you can use device restriction policies to handle this.

You will need to get the ID of the device, then block that ID. Cat and mouse game.

​

That being said, you are fighting a losing battle. amazon.com/VAYDEER-Simulator-Driver-Free-Simulation-Awakening/dp/B08DTXPS51 - watch the video and it doesn't need to be plugged into a PC.

Sounds like you are looking for Ubiquiti and a UniFi cloud controller.

http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-Enterprise-System-UAP-AC-LITE-US/dp/B015PR20GY/

https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/209376117-UniFi-Install-a-UniFi-Cloud-Controller-on-Amazon-Web-Services

It does everything you're asking and can be fully managed through a web interface without connecting to the clients network

Here ya go... http://www.managedservicesinamonth.com/

Buy the book on Amazon here. It's a quick read but you'll refer back to it over and over. It's a good starting point for those just getting into the game.

Just had a former customer call us yesterday, their SQL data files got encrypted over the weekend. Their trunk-slammer pizza tech left RDP open to the world and looks like they got into the server around early December and just hung out for a while. They had NordVPN installed and everything, and had disabled the backups. Didn't even have to rely on a drive-by download to infect, they encrypted just the files they wanted and waited for Monday morning.

You're a salesperson for your company, right? That's good. You're the first salesperson.

Now that you've made some sales, you did these all in a certain way. Write that down. Now do it again.

Then you can try hiring a sales person, now that you have the processes and guides for them to follow. This is doing it by the book, ala "The E-Myth Revisited".

The other way is finding someone who has what you're looking for. But it's expensive, and once they leave you don't have their processes written down.

Take a look at using Microsoft's Application Compatibility Toolkit to make a shim. Many of these poorly-written applications cause elevation (UAC) prompts even when not necessary. You can force the application to RunAsInvoker, or run as the user without an elevation attempt. Other times I've seen applications try to write data to areas that standard users aren't allowed (e.g. C:\Program Files\). In those cases, a shim + group policy to allow modify rights for standard users on a specific folder (e.g. C:\Program Files\LegacyApp\) seem to do the trick without shutting off UAC or granting local admin rights to users.

See: http://superuser.com/questions/24631/prevent-elevation-uac-for-an-application-that-doesnt-need-it

Create multiple desktops and have them rotate into view like a PowerPoint with virtuawin: https://sourceforge.net/projects/virtuawin

There is a module that will auto switch every N minutes.

Also, just making sure you are using the free instance for the autotask hud and not paying for that seat.

Lastly, just for fun, get a wifi camera and keep it in the break room- pointed at the coffee pot. If you do pizza or donuts, don't announce it, just move the camera to see the food and see who is monitoring the HUD.

Disclosure: vendor speaking

Check out the Yodeck partner program. Whitelabel CMS and Players, low entry barrier, low cost hardware (RPi). We have more than 320 resellers worldwide, with customers across 140 countries.

The barracuda's do content inspection and it looks like they are putting in links to a domain the barracuda doesn't like. IMO I would leave newsletter sending to companies that specialize in it. That way your content is coming from trusted systems who have built up a good rep with all the email providers and spam lists.

Mailchip is free for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month

https://mailchimp.com/pricing/entrepreneur/

Thanks for mentioning Domotz, I'm the Community Manager there so I'll stick to a few facts: plug & play, $19 per network for monitoring an unlimited number of devices, no contract, free trial, lots of integrations/APIs. Hope some of you will try it out if you've not already. If you've got any questions, of course just let me know.

As far as I know they do still sell the self hosted licenses.

https://www.screenconnect.com/Pricing

I'm on mobile and can't find a better link but It's under Self-Host/On premise bundle midway down the page. I think that's what you're looking for.

I've created a blog post and most importantly and audit report to list all DCs and the Spooler Service state, and start mode to check if all your domain controllers are safe.

You have two options:

1. Install a Lansweeper on-site ( I would recommend this)
2. Install it on a cloud server (or any server really) and run use a VPN to scan client subnets with a remote scanning server.

Issues that might occur when scanning different clients and putting it in one database is indeed with asset identification.For example, if two clients use the same domain\netbios, the Windows machines will start merging. A full explanation of how devices are uniquely identified can be found here if you're interested.

8:00 PM ET

This update provides further detail on July 6, 2021, 5:00 PM EDT and earlier updates.

The technical work for SaaS Deployment has started at 4:00 PM EDT and will continue for the next several hours pending no issues.
We are configuring an additional layer of security to our SaaS infrastructure which will change the underlying IP address of our VSA servers (the domain names/URL will not change) For almost all customers, this change will be transparent. However if, and only if, you have whitelisted your Kaseya VSA server in your firewall(s), you will need to update the IP whitelist. The new IP addresses can be found at: https://www.cloudflare.com/ips/ No SaaS VSA services are online as of 7:30 PM. The enhanced security measures are currently being implemented and verified for proper operation. Once operational, we will then publish the VSA availability timeline. We will be updating the web page hourly at https://helpdesk.kaseya.com/hc/en-gb/articles/4403440684689 Our On-Premises patch timeline is 24 hours (or less) from the restoration of SaaS services. We are focused on shrinking this time frame to the minimal possible – but if there are any issues found during the spin-up of SaaS, we want to fix them before bringing our on-premises customers up.

ELK stack is what i've been using for a while. You can ingest just about any logs and have them tailored to your liking. Not for the faint of heart tho as the technical setup is steep.

https://www.elastic.co/what-is/elk-stack

Google Forms with Sheets backend, AirTables Base with Form module, OneDrive/Sharepoint Forms, or a fillable PDF over email. Or even a shared document from OneDrive allowing the client to fill. Also Typeform if thats your thing.

https://forms.office.com

There is a "Disable Clipboard Capture" setting you may want to consider (in Admin -> Configuration -> Application Configuration -> Other Settings).

Consider using a password manager that can autotype the password into the currently active window and doesn't rely on the clipboard. For example, the open source Keepass. Other password managers may have a similar function. YMMV.

I've also heard there is a "Clipboard Helper" extension in screenconnect marketplace. If you disable clipboard sync in screenconnect you can still send the contents of your clipboard to the target computer ("Send Clipboard Keystrokes" command). Certainly less convenient, but more secure.

OnyX has a lot of daily, weekly, monthly scripts for maintenance built-in as a standalone utility. A lot of these shellscripts can be directly incorporated to RMMs and deployed in similar schedules. https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html

It’s sister application built for just these feature sets, thus called https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/maintenance.html “maintenance”

Interesting timing, a new version of Hiren’s was just released in the last week or so (first update in 6+ years). It’s been taken over by the Hiren’s community and has been entirely redesigned to run directly from Win10 PE. I just tested this on Windows 10 machines and enabled the admin account, reset passwords, etc. without any problems whatsoever.

https://www.hirensbootcd.org/

This seems like a weird distinction to me and I wish it was at least emphasized on the home page. It's clearly confusing if he's having to spend so much time correcting people on Reddit and the Veeam forums. On the website for CE, here's what it emphasizes:

>Use Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition to protect up to 10 VMs — or a combination of VMs, cloud instances, physical servers or workstations. You can protect your production environment, use it in your home lab or use it for migrations at no cost. 

I'm guessing all the environments that we touch are paid as we have a service provider agreement. However, it does seems like an arbitrary distinction. Who other than a service provider is setting up and protecting less than 10 cloud and or virtual servers, anyways?

I'm not even advocating for people in this community to use it. In our org, we handle a lot of Veeam workloads and have to reach out to support pretty regularly. I also don't feel comfortable going potentially days without a backup because we're stuck on an issue we can't resolve. It's also clear to me that Veeam's excellent support is the result of a good business model that doesn't include giving man hours away for free. That being said, I have talked to support and my account manager, and they both seemed to think it's perfectly okay to used Community Edition if the client is under 10 seats. That wasn't an invitation to use support -- which I feel goes without saying.

I think this really comes down to a lack of communication from Veeam and a vision on what CE was supposed to be used for. If I was in his position, I would be pushing to put a footnote on the home page about this.

I like Clonezilla for disk imaging and cloning. It's free/open source, has a book CD/USB and uses standard Linux tools to so the job (dd and partclone).

Boot it and you can image disk to disk or save an image file on removal disk/on the network.

https://clonezilla.org

You could try using Zapier, I believe they have both Connectwise and Xero integrations: https://zapier.com/apps/connectwise-manage/integrations

PDF X-Change Editor/Editor Plus? Perpetual licenses w/ 1-3 year maintenance (per-year maintenance is cheap), volume discounts starting at 3 seats.

https://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor

Always possible there's some part of the subscription that you actually need, but if you just need the basic PDF editing options it's likely worth looking at.

this is way cheaper :)

https://www.amazon.com/Precision-Stimulation-Rechargeable-Waterproof-Stimulator/dp/B0838YZ692/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=vibrator&qid=1604020776&refinements=p_36%3A1253518011&rnid=386636011&s=hpc&sr=1-3

This is the one I used. Currently unavailable from Amazon but Monoprice might have it in their website.

Monoprice USB Extender over CAT5E or CAT6 Connection up to 150ft https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003L14ZTC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_1BuPBb72WB7KB

Dan Ariely writes a lot about incentives. Predictably Irrational is one of the books that touches on it. Technically compared to the value of a new client 50 dollars is nothing. So will people be excited about 50 bucks or offended by it?

chapter 4 dan ariely predictably irrational

Office 365 has Planner, which is an attempt at Trello. Microsoft Teams has some Planner functionality, but it's not fully tied into the full Planner..it's seemingly loosely tied.

I don't heavily use this, I only recommended them if you're already on 365, it's 0 extra cost to start using them.

Have you looked into Webdrive? It does exacty what you are looking to do and it is cheaper (and way better IMO) than zeedrive. It offers more range of capabilities (not just SharePoint) as well.

His client list is likely protected under Trade Secrets. There are a lot of details involved that can only be addressed by a lawyer, but the lack of a non-compete didn't mean you're automatically in the clear.

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Trade_Secrets_Act

We have a strange setup where we need to sync data between a windows 10 file server and other windows computers - stupid software that needs a physical dongle and doesn't run on windows server. And it needs to be located in the same room as some video editors.

We use this - https://syncthing.net/ - it's opensourced, secure and works well... as soon as you're done writing a file, it detects and copies it to the other computer(s) folder structure and all.

About 2 years ago I read Personal Kanban by Jim Benson (http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/personal-kanban-the-book) and after a few months of post-it notes on my whiteboard I went looking for a digital version and found Trello (https://trello.com/). Now pretty much all our managers and high performers use Trello to track their personal tasks as well as tracking projects and initiatives. Being able to visualize your work in progress and prioritize accordingly is huge.

I use Obsidian (https://obsidian.md) and their tags feature, and have so a large graph view setup for my clients. I find this (synced to git or their services) work well, especially with the add-on extensions. Their PDF viewer inside the application works well too.

I will admit, the mac management is definitely the better of the two, but that doesn’t mean the Windows management isn’t up to par. The windows counterpart too supports app management, blacklisting, kiosk modes, as well as other security features like BitLocker and Microsoft Defender and custom script. For the most part, the policies available prove to be quite adept themselves, and on the very few occasions I needed something extra, the custom script option came in handy.

So, you could say Hexnode handles both platforms pretty well.

I hope this clears your query ;-)

If you really want to go with something basic you can set up Grasshopper.com or Voip.ms

Neither are free like Google Voice. You can get local numbers on both or port your number if needed.

Howdy everyone. Hope I'm not too annoying, let me know if I am.

I'm Alex, the founder behind Jitbit Helpdesk ticketing system. We offer both hosted and "on premise" versions at a very reasonable price. The on-premise version is Windows-based.

Has everything an MSP might need - AD/Win-domain integration, Azure compatible, SAML, HIPAA compliance etc. Integrates with Github, JIRA, Trello, Dropbox, Zapier and many others.

Can import your existing tickets from Zendesk or Freshdesk.

PM me for a special /r/msp discount

Pretty sure when I looked at Stripe one of the things not allowed was billing for tech support.

See item 51 here https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited-businesses I maybe wrong, but it and otherthings on the list put me off using it.

Currently using GoCardless but only UK.

Not sure it will totally work depending on how their "flow" is but OsTicket (https://osticket.com/) might work.

I haven't used it in years but I remember it being a super simple ticket system that is easy to run, self hosted, quite current in the OS world, and free to boot.

I know at one point I had customized it and integrated into a website and loved it. I think it can be pretty easily customized too.

We use it to deploy patches to around 150 server and 1300 workstations - works well enough. I've only opened a handful of tickets, but they get back to me pretty quickly. Even if the answer isn't what I want to hear ...

The patching actually uses WUInstall - https://wuinstall.com/ as the "patch management" agent, instead of some custom made/janky one. They must pay a hefty licensing fee to be able to use this.

I'm in the same boat as you. I've been testing Pulseway on few systems and it looks good. Nothing fancy as big players but powerful enough to get the work done. The best thing I like about it is the mobile app. You get all the alerts on the mobile app and user can initiate help request from the client and you can chat with them from your phone. They also have a "Dashboard", which I'm planning on displaying on a 50" screen in my office.

A new program called Ventoy. All of the utilities I've used in the past to make a multiboot USB require you to add them all through a utility and when you want to upgrade them you have to run the utility again. Didn't work all of the time. With Ventoy you prep the USB, then copy the ISO's to the drive. Nothing else. I do use Hiren's Windows 10PE with this.

https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html Not exactly what you were asking for, but awesome.

Never heard of these guys so I did some research.

Looks like you might comparing apples to pears (similar but not identical). The CJ full service offering is $40/user or less but includes Application Management with a stack of 2500+ apps you can install with a drop down list.

If you wanted to do that work yourself (like you would with v2) you could just use our software platform (CWMS) to deploy in Azure, GCE or a private cloud. It is $12 or less. https://cloudjumper.com/cloud-workspace-management-suite/

Another difference is company focus/size/experience/scope. It looks like they sell direct, are new (founded in 2015, Tutorials and APIs "Coming Soon") and small with 6 employees on LinkedIn.

Hey u/M0220H20 Domotz could also be an option to check out for this as we have bandwidth tests we perform on the network side, and we also provide Device Response Time which provide useful insights on the latency with the connections with any single device on the Network. For traffic monitoring of each device, we are currently working on an implementation that will allow traffic monitoring for each device on the network. If you are interested in this feature you can send me a DM and I'll let you know how you can into our beta program for this...I'm the community manager at Domotz by the way.

Another way to do this would be with Domotz, which has an IT Glue integration to streamline documentation of printers but also any other networked assets. This would send all details like IP address, vendor, model, serial number, software version, MAC addresses etc. directly to IT Glue to synchronize the assets. As others have mentioned the human side (like logins) would then be added in IT Glue manually. Here is a picture example of the kind of details that would be sent. In full disclosure I'm the community manager at Domotz.

As an alternative product, you could have a look at Domotz. This would be useful for the network assessments/documenting and onboarding networks - identifying all devices and finding out if there are certain security risks on the network (TCP open port scan, network security scan, UPnP port forwarding). It is more designed to sit on the network 24/7 but some of our customers use it ad-hoc only for onboarding since its a month to month agreement. The features for security are lighter than RapidFire Tools but still useful for an initial assesment. Still might be worth checking out for your purposes. I am the CM at Domotz if you have any questions.

Your question consists of few parts, so I hope i be able to answer for all your questions.

About comparing virtual desktops you can read some comparison post.

And from your question I understood that you are looking for solution for small business. Well, about Cloudjumper I just know, some users find it to be slow, that's why they start looking for some alternative solutions, like V2Cloud or AWS.
I think, that if have any special requirements better request demo from few WAAS solutions to compare and also to get some offer from vendor

Don't know what RMM your using, but here's a shameless plug for ConnectWise Control (formerly Screenconnect).

• Strengths: It just works.
• Weaknesses: People don't like the pricing model since it was acquired by ConnectWise (had perpetual, now recurring only)

Price: Here or see if someone has a legacy license they're willing to sell ;)

We use screenconnect and they make it clear that ios remote control support is unlikely...ever. https://www.screenconnect.com/Mobile-Device-Remote-Support

That being said, MDM solutions do provide some type of capabilities to help manage ios. Airwatch is one. Nable and Manage Engine have one. Lots to choose from.

I use ScreenConnect (now Connectwise Control) all the time for this. Recently did a trial of Lansweeper, it does WOL and you can run it for free in small environments.

I'm against running VNC these days. It's too easy to hijack the agent for an attacker to take control.

MeshCentral is free and it works ok. Pretty rough around the edges.

Simple Help is self hosted and fairly cheap.

Splashtop is another option, you'll just need a tech license. One tech license covers as many computers as you want.

If you're all Windows10 you can get licensing and join them to Azure AD Premium and push policy from there. There are also Directory-As-A-Service type operations like https://jumpcloud.com/ (which I have no experience with).

You can set group policy on individual workstations - with some limitation - but there's no way to monitor it and responding to things like user departures will be a mess.

https://www.zerotier.com/ Still shocked that more people don't use this.

Great implementation of openVPN that makes it way easier to manage. I have a few dozen nodes on this and it's been rock solid.

Hardware device is coming soon too.

From a technical perspective, once you have your big server you could use CrashPlan for free between computers (I don't know if that would extend to commercial use... check the EULA). Arq Backup would be a good option and offers a one-time purchase and easy configuration. You could also use something as simple as rsync or sftp, but you need to ensure files are encrypted before being transmitted and that you don't keep encryption keys on the same server - or at all, preferably.

When you're selling this to clients make sure you're clear the data is being stored at your office and may be damaged in the case of fire / flood / burglary. You might want to check with your insurance company and make sure you don't need to carry extra coverage. Obviously you'll need a pretty beefy UPS, and maybe a backup generator and redundant internet connection if you're supporting more than a handful of clients.

You might find after running the numbers that this is less cost-effective than you think.

One big advantage with Cattools and other such products is that they can email you config diffs.

And of course there is the classic open source RANCID - Really Awesome New Cisco confIg Differ. http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid/

CEO of DNSFilter here - yes, apologies, but of course any action that you'd like to take via the dashboard is impossible unless you were authenticated prior to the outage. To clarify, Auth0 (our authentication provider) is experiencing an outage. They're a major authentication provider used by thousands of organizations, so we're not alone and it has their full attention. For even more insight, their status page is available here.

​

We are in conversations with them directly. I apologize for the inconvenience - rest assured it does have our full attention and does not affect network access/performance or security/content filtering in any way whatsoever.

The true value of the partner program was in IUR and Azure credits - we could play in Azure/On-Prem without budget approvals or red tape.

The best protest here is to remove your vote (dollars) and skip your next partnership dues. I know we won’t be renewing.

For perspective just yesterday we got a “lead” from the Partnership - the prospect was so inebriated he couldn’t hold a conversation. A non existing business who hasn’t even purchased their .com yet. No thanks. We’ve gotten a total of zero qualified leads since we became Silver and spent time building up the profile in the new directory.

We’re now looking at alternatives such as https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/msdn-platforms/ which would satisfy some of the “pay to play” needs and give us access to old installers etc

The biggest loss for us will be the time it’ll take to adjust to the changes as we move away from Microsoft Silver and focus strictly on CSP.

Hi. You may use https://www.timecamp.com which be integrated with many another project managment software like asana, trello, evernote, github... I use timecamp so give me some question, I will answer for all:)

You can use HDMI-over-IP extenders (I like the Lenkeng LKV373A) through Powerline and distribute the HDMI output of a single device to the 3 units at each location. That can drop your playback devices count to 2.

(Disclaimer: vendor speaking)

At Yodeck, we support uploading PowerPoint files. Right now, you need to do it through the dashboard of the service. In 2 months from now, we will release support for monitoring a Google Drive folder and auto-updating content from there. This should be exactly what you need. Players come for free with an annual subscription - unfortunately for your client, that would be $7.99/month per player.

Nextcloud? I have been running this in the lab and it seems to work great. I don't believe there is an outlook plugin but everything else about it works amazingly well.

Edit - looks like it does actually does: https://nextcloud.com/outlook/

I have ours running in a Ubuntu container with storage mounted over NFS to our SAN - works swimmingly.

This is what we use -

https://www.amazon.com/MacSports-Collapsible-Wheelbarrow-Groceries-Tailgating/dp/B08C5FW8Y5/ref=sr_1_10?dchild=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwxdSHBhCdARIsAG6zhlXQuchfr5tCi8je9ewgFLdVwGQMzfmXSpg1xKTsDOk9DLyzVHfiAyQaAi_kEALw_wcB&hvadid=327789574473&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9033259&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=b&hvrand=6683895259929862249&hvtargid=kwd-357605978073&hydadcr=21408_10118504&keywords=portable+collapsible+wagon&qid=1626737282&sr=8-10

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Funny how when we first go to a job site some of the workers snicker, by the end they all want to know where we got it.

Not arguing one way or another. We've had those conversations. Just making some corrections here.
1) We've had published apps for quite awhile - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oitvoip.oitconnect&hl=en_US and there is an IOS equivalent

2) Happy to fly out for any deal that's $3k MRR or more. Either myself or one of our sales staff. Otherwise, we will jump on a Zoom/Teams call with every opportunity, regardless of size.

Carry on... :)

Seems like this is what you're looking for: https://www.amazon.com/KETAKY-Dual-Bay-Lay-Flat-Tool-Free-Installation/dp/B0878KSRDK/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=m.2+dock&qid=1599166535&s=pc&sr=1-3

Looks like it has plastic pins to secure the drives, USB3.1, local clone function. I think I'm going to get one.

That's great.

I bought a similar connector for my PS4 controller at home. For some reason I didn't think it'd be good enough for a Camera feed. https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B004XYEXX4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

That would be a particularly hard road. First of all read the book The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber. MSP is not a dying business but it is being badly commoditised. If your new to it you could have some problems. However like all businesses it is evolving. Those who are not changing will die. Those who are willing to change will realize that IT support is not going away. The Cloud is just moving where the work is done, it does not require less expertise. Unless you are hardware support, then your screwed.

Here you go. It's heavily sanitized but you get the idea. You can design a visio that contains the basics and then just update the information.

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=7A5C5A92B136B8ED!27901&authkey=!ALgobt9-gTaVLC0&ithint=file%2cvsdx

Don't forget that Amazon also offers native AD functionality through its Directory Service. This is a managed AD environment, not just DCs you have to install and maintain. You just have to manage the AD objects. Standard and Enterprise Edition are supported.

Yeah but they support PeaZip, eMule and AIM! As an MSP this is a gam changer /s

Seriously though the app list says it supports a bunch of adobe readers. Which one do you mean? https://ninite.com/applist/pro.html

I think you're the first IT guy I've talked to that hasn't heard of combofix. it's a script that does blanket repairs on PC's. You'll find a lot of hate among SysAdmins because it changes what it wants without any options. It also changes several settings that can annoy people. We try to avoid using it because of potential problems but in the end it generally does clean a PC when others have failed. It also normally takes about 10-20 mins to run so not bad at all.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/combofix/

Haven't delved deep into this myself, but there's always this:

https://alternativeto.net/software/microsoft-active-directory/

You could use free ESXi if you don't need the extra integration features like for Veeam backups. Spin up a Linux VM to host Samba shares for network drives. Spin up another Linux VM for one of those AD alternatives. You could also make a PFSense VM for DHCP if you don't like options on Linux, but I imagine that's simple enough. PFSense is great though even if DHCP works on an AD replacement Linux box.

So I tested out webroot and I put those fake test virus files in place as part of a standard test and webroot never caught them or blocked them. It seemed like it was useless at that point to me.
Also created a VM and threw a few viruses on it but webroot never caught it.
I was really disappointed as I was really really hoping it would kick ass, especially because of the cryptolocker stuff Someone over at /r/sysadmin posted cryptomonitor. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/572146/cryptomonitor-stop-all-known-crypto-ransomware-before-it-encrypts-your-data/

I'm going to be testing that one to see if it helps.

Looking at Glacier's FAQ:

> Q: Can I use data retrieval policies to “slow down” my retrievals or spread them out?

> No, data retrieval policies such as “Free Tier Only” and “Max Retrieval Rate” will not accept a data retrieval request which would exceed your predefined data retrieval limit to help you manage data retrieval cost. Data retrieval policies will not change the 3 to 5 hour data retrieval latency or spread out your retrievals. You can leverage Amazon Glacier’s range retrieval feature to spread out retrievals and lower the peak retrieval speed. Learn more.

(emphasis mine)

Also:

> Q: What are Expedited retrievals?

> Expedited retrievals allow you to quickly access your data when occasional urgent requests for a subset of archives are required. For all but the largest archives (250MB+), data accessed using Expedited retrievals are typically made available within 1 – 5 minutes. There are two types of Expedited retrievals: On-Demand and Provisioned. On-Demand requests are like EC2 On-Demand instances and are available the vast majority of the time. Provisioned requests are guaranteed to be available when you need them.

(emphasis again mine)

Other than that, I get the impression the bottleneck will not be on Amazon's side.

Happy to answer questions about it in person if you want to schedule a meeting with me at https://calendly.com/reillychase/unifi-demo but TLDR sometimes time is more important than the few bucks they could save with DIY. We provide support, controller/Linux/MongoDB/Java updates, backups, SSL management and UniFi 6.0.20 is one great example of why people pay for it, we saved our customers a lot of headache by testing this release and not rolling it out.

Bingo!

Only takes one invoice for a Client's controller to hit the stop button for you. Don't be the bad guy if you don't have to.

Kyle Christensen | Sierra Pacific Consulting

https://the-eye.eu/public/MSDN/SQL%20Server%202012/

the-eye.eu has the old MSDN mirror, all the data is legit, you can check the hashes and all that.

They mirrored the old digital river MSDN copy before it went down.

Honestly...for a quick and simple option, use Square, it's SUPER common, it plugs into an ipad which you can get for pretty cheap money if you buy an Older one, and people almost universally recognize it.

On top of what people have already said. Local SEO is critical - Google places and so on are a huge for my MSP clients.

With all things SEO. Moz has the answer. https://moz.com/blog/category/local-seo

I run about a 1 week delay on patching and before I approve. I check /r/sysadmin for any known bad patches/win 10 upgrades. They are pretty good at detecting and complaining about that stuff in a day or two. I'll also check websites like http://www.ghacks.net/2015/04/17/how-to-remove-windows-10-upgrade-updates-in-windows-7-and-8/ which keep a running list of KB's to avoid and seem to update frequently enough.

Check out Chocolatey, easy to write scripts to deploy whatever you want.

@powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('<code>https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1</code>'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"

setx /m "%path%;C:\programdata\chocolatey"

c:\programdata\chocolatey\choco install firefox googlechrome adobereader windirstat adobereader-update flashplayerplugin javaruntime 7zip.install procexp cutepdf dotnet4.6 -y

If you deploy any images and need to load bios product keys:

$ProductKey = (Get-WmiObject -Class SoftwareLicensingService).OA3xOriginalProductKey

iex "cscript /b C:\Windows\System32\slmgr.vbs -ipk $Productkey"

Start-Sleep 5

iex "cscript /b C:\Windows\System32\slmgr.vbs -ato"

&#x200B;

Fix outlook delegate mode to something actually fucking logical:

reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\x.0\Outlook\Preferences\ /v DelegateSentItemsStyle /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

&#x200B;

Disable sleep on AC power

powercfg /x -hibernate-timeout-ac 0

powercfg /x -hibernate-timeout-dc 0

powercfg /x -disk-timeout-ac 0

powercfg /x -disk-timeout-dc 0

powercfg /x -monitor-timeout-ac 0

powercfg /x -monitor-timeout-dc 0

Powercfg /x -standby-timeout-ac 0

powercfg /x -standby-timeout-dc 0

&#x200B;

Nothing complex but they do make life easier.

Assuming you are using AEM, Just create a component and schedule it to run. You would use the command line info for Ninite pro to do the install/updates. Below the script box, upload the ninite.exe file you get from the pro version.

Create scheduled task for each client or group of computers you want to update You can tweak the script as needed for each client/group of computers you manage (i.e. one client uses Foxit Reader, the other uses Adobe)

Choose apps via command line: https://ninite.com/help/features/selection.html

please note I haven't tried this specifically, but I've got something similar in production.

This is how we have it configured:

System > Configuration > Dashboard > Config> Configurations > Virus Scan.

Virus Scan Config

Computer Screen

Many financial institutions are offering one-time virtual cards these days. We have them on our business accounts.

You should also check out https://privacy.com/ which provides the capability to anyone for free (there are cheap paid plans if you need to create more than a dozen cards per month). You can put whatever limits you want on the virtual cards.

For example, I pay for various subscription services with unique virtual cards, each with a monthly spending limit equal to the subscription cost. This significantly limits my risk as the worst case scenario for losing my "Netflix" virtual card is $10. I also use them for larger one-time payments and set the all-time limit to that amount (plus a few percent to avoid rejection if there's a $1 convenience charge or something I missed).