I just checked our Workd website ranking and we the #2,356,943th most popular website!!!!
In September of 2011 we were 7,212,239th.
At this pace we will be number 1 in a matter of months!!
Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Taking over the World!!!
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012Kaseya Script to get OS Install Date
Saturday, January 14th, 2012This script pulls the Original Install date from the system info and writes it to a custom field in the Machine Summary on the Audit tab.
Step 1:
Click on Audit then Machine Summary. In the top left of the right pane, click the “New Custom Field” button. Type “Orignal Install Date” (without the quotes) and leave it as a string.
Step 2:
Import the script and run it. The Original Install Date (as noted in System Info) will populate the custom field at the bottom of the Machine Summary Page.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ScriptExport xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://www.kaseya.com/vsa/2008/12/Scripting"> <Procedure name="System Install Date" treePres="3" id="1325867912" folderId="71817821612791213127822581"> <Body description="Get System install date and write it to the custom Audit field: Original Install Date."> <Statement description="Attempts to return results of a shell command to a global variable '#global:cmdresults#'" name="Execute Shell Command - Get Results to Variable" continueOnFail="false"> <Parameter xsi:type="StringParameter" name="Parameter1" value="systeminfo|find /i "Original Install Date"" /> <Parameter xsi:type="StringParameter" name="Parameter2" value="false" /> <Parameter xsi:type="StringParameter" name="Parameter3" value="User" /> </Statement> <Statement description="Update the selected System Info field with the specified value for the agent this procedure runs on." name="UpdateSystemInfo" continueOnFail="false"> <Parameter xsi:type="StringParameter" name="ColumnName" value="Original Install Date" /> <Parameter xsi:type="StringParameter" name="Value" value="#global:cmdresults#" /> </Statement> </Body> </Procedure> </ScriptExport>
Not the most elegant script but it gets the job done.
Kaseya Maintenance: Legal Extortion? *UPDATE*
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012I have pretty good instincts, but sometimes I let my brain override my instincts. I have to say a full 90% of the time i do this, my brain screws me. This is one of those times.
Let me preface this by saying we are still a current customer of Kaseya and are attempting to get resolution to these issues. I will keep this post updated as new developments occour.
In November of 2008 purchased 1000 seats of Kaseya VSA. For as much as they charge for this, I expected a full immplementation team wth fireworks, dancing girls, and a marching band. What I got was an email with a link to training.kaseya.com. The training videos were so bad they kept calling IIS, ISS. That was my first warning sign.
So now it’s time to install. I checked their recommended specs, and spoke to Justin Ramsay aboiut what to get. This was going to be a new install on new hardware with a fresh install of the OS and IIS. I asked several times “will this run on Server 2008 or do I need to put it on 2003?” 2008 is fine was the answer. After 2 days of this not installing, and dealing with level 1 support I get escalated to level 2 support and get this answer.
Dear Customer,
Apologies for the delayed response.
The Kaseya Server is not currently supported for use on Windows Server 2008. Due to IIS changes, significant re-development is required and this is planned for a future release. Please refer the following KB article.
http://kb.kaseya.com/article.asp?article=291895&p=11855
Regards
Kaseya Support.
Fuck me again! This was my second warning. I even wrote it in my email response back to them which follows here.
I was very specific with Justin Ramsey about Server 2008. I asked him specifically if this would run on Server 2008 and he said yes. I never would have gone with Server 2008 if there was even a question that it might not work. Now I have a server OS that I have paid for and can’t use. Also, since my server is hosted in Seattle, I will have to spend more time and money to get them to install a new Server2003 OS which I have to purchase. In addition, I have invested about 9 hours configuring the server and trying to get Kaseya installed. That’s $1000 for the OS which is now worthless, 2-3 hours @$175 for the hosting support to rebuild the server, 9 hours of my time @ $149/hr AND the fact that I am now two weeks late getting this to my customers who are expecting it on the 1st.
I am going to need some help or a credit or something here or I will have to opt out of the contract and find a different solution. My billing starts on 1/1/09 and it is going to take me at least 2 weeks to get my server straight and Kaseya installed. Then I have to configure the agents.
Please let me know what you can do ASAP. If I don’t have a satisfactory answer by 12/31/08 I will be forced to opt out.
Scott Smeltzer
Principal
On-site Tech Support
Their response:
Let me know when the server is running with Windows 2003. I’ll be more than happy to help you get installed.
No credit, no resolution, not even an apology for their ineptitude. This was a HUGE red flag, but again, my brain overrode my gut.
A new install of Server 2003 and IIS and the thing was finally running. I was getting agents deployed, writing scripts, life was good. Now all I needed was a good backup solution that integrated with Kaseya. What do you know?, Kaseya had a BUDR solution that plugged right in.
They gave me a 30 day trial which had to be extended 2X because I couldn’t get it to work. Third warning. Who in their right mind would waste 3 months trying to make something work? It even crashed one of my clients servers while trying to install it.
We did end up getting it to work and $4200 later and I had a brand new shiny BUDR solution. Now all I had to do was get it to replicate offsite. Two months and ALOT of time on phone and email support I finally got the first files to replicate! Two more months?!?!? WTF was I thinking? I should have handed this P.O.S. back to them during the trial period.
Sidenote: I have never taken drugs nor been committed to a psychiatric institution. Four major red flags and my brain still proceded to override my gut instinct.
The offsite replication was so slow and clunky no customer was ever even close to having all of their files replicated. For one of our larger clients, we “seeded” the backup at the colo. After the first week, we didn’t even have one day transferred. After 2 weeks, we had less than 2 days transferred. 12 days behind! In working with Kaseya to reseed the backup and make it faster we learned that the replication process looks at the files at the colo one time and notes the file name in a text file. Then it looks at the source and replicated everything that is not listed in the text file. Seriously?, a one time notation of the file name in a plain text file is how they keep track of what needs to be replicated?
Needless to say, we stoped using the BUDR and found another solution. I asked Matt Wertheim, my current sales rep what my options were to return or sell the licences and he said they would not take them back and I could not sell them. I told him I didn;t want thhem any longer and was not going to pay mainetenance. Here is his response.
Scott – following up on this maintenance invoice. Unfortunately you can’t selectively opt out on maintenance. It’s all or nothing on your support plan. I was incorrect in assuming we could do this. Your option on BUDR is to forfeit the seats if you don’t want to pay maintenance on them. Let me know what you’d like to do so I can have accounting process accordingly.
Matt
Forefit the seats?!?!?!?
Because I don’t want to pay maintenance on a product that never worked?!?!?!?!?
As of today, my VSA maintenance has been charged and updated in my Kserver but only through 1/22 when it expires again. I can only assume they did this to buy some time to work this out, but as of now, I still have not heard from them.
More to come.
***************UPDATE*******************
This morning (1/24/12) I got a call from Matt Wertheim to discuss my BUDR issues. I must say, up until this point it seemed that Matt has been passing this issue through to the accounting department and then giving me back the company line. Today, however he said he had been in meetings all weekend and my issue was brought up. After working with the accounting department again, he has come to a resolution that is acceptable to both On-site Tech Support AND Kaseya.
For as much crap as I gave Matt in our email conversations, he really is a good guy and worked very hard to achieve this resolution.
As I have said before, Kaseya is a great product but sometimes “company policy” is really screwed. In the end, I am happy and got the resolution I was seeking.
New Office
Monday, January 2nd, 2012We have been working long and hard on our new office and Tuesday 1/2/12 we will be open for business. The new address is 616 Stevens Ave. Suite B, Solana Beach, CA 92075.
The name on the door says Code29 which is our walk-in/home user division.
VIRUS WARNING: Fake DHL Email Has New Virus/Trojan
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011A new spam campaign masquerades as a shipping notification from DHL contains a virus. Currently, none of the major anti-virus providers are capable of catching and quarantining this message. As such, this scam has the potential to be successful and can have serious consequences.
You may already have messages in their inbox. Therefore, we recommend that you take the following action:
- Notify all your email users about this threat
- Caution your users not to open any attachments from DHL or any unknown sender
- Be aware that this is a rapidly-changing virus. Even if your anti-virus provider lists it as covered, you may still be at risk.
Hard Drive Prices GOING UP.
Thursday, October 20th, 2011Flooding in Thailand means hard drive prices are going up.
Thailand is currently experiencing its worst flooding in 50 years, brought on by heavy monsoon rains that have been pounding southeast Asia since July. Almost 1/3 of the country is under water. current estimates have the flood waters receding in mid-December.
Thailand produces 70-80% of the worlds hard drives and hard drive parts. Some of the worst affected companies are Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba.
Western Digital released this statement Monday,
“The company now expects that the flooding of its Thailand facilities, combined with flood damage to the company’s supply chain in Thailand, will have significant impact on the company’s overall operations and its ability to meet customer demand for its products in the December quarter.”
With some facilities being as much as 10 feet under water, estimates don’t have those facilities back in production until Q3 2012.
Free Bejeweled! (For BlackBerry)
Monday, October 17th, 2011To applogize for the 2 day worldwide service outage on Tuesday, Blackberry has decided to give you Bejeweled for Free!
This is a bit oversimplistic, but to have a failure of the magnitude they had last week is just not acceptable considering RIM is already teetering on the brink of colapse with almost every smart phone on the planet being better than BlackBerry. According to JDPower.com’s 2011 Wireless Consumer Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Survey, RIM Blackberry ranked BELOW PALM and was 6th out of 7 only beating Samsung on battery function. Below Palm?!?!? Palm was bought by HP in mid 2010 and was shuttered in 2011 when HP stopped selling the TouchPad. How can BlackBerry rank below a company that doesn’t even produce products? Does this mean that having nothing is better than having a BlackBerry? On Monday and Tuesday, probably.
RIM doesn’t usually explain the cause of its outages and disruptions. In the past, those outages have lasted one or two days and have only affected a certain region of a country or a portion of a continent, not several continents as happened Monday and Tuesday. Computer World
Past outages?!?!? One or two days?!?!?! Yes, in 2010 the US and UK were both down with a Wi-Fi issue and in 2009 the US was down because of a RIM update. With a major failure happening once per year, I don’t see how RIM BlackBerry is going to make it past 2012.
“We have apologized to our customers, and we will work tirelessly to restore their confidence. We are taking immediate and aggressive steps to help prevent something like this from happening again,”
co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in the statement, but didn’t elaborate on what the company actually plans to do.
I have an idea. Stop sitting on 20 year old technology with your head in the sand hoping the iPhone and Android phones will go away.
OnePlan Managed Services – How To Submit a Trouble Ticket.
Saturday, October 8th, 2011On-site Tech Support provides OnePlan Managed services for all of our clients. This includes a trouble ticketing system. The instructions and video below will explain how to submit a trouble ticket if your computer is misbehaving.
- Check your email for your login information.
- Double click the OTS logo in the corner by the clock. This will open a web browser to the login page.
- In the top menu click the New Service Ticket button.
- Please put something relevant and informative in the Summary field. “Computer Problem” is not relevant and informative. “Outlook is not sending email” is a relevant and informative Summary.
- Enter as much as you can in the notes field that will help us diagnose and fix the issue. Poor or few notes delays the process by us having to call you for more information that you could have put in the notes field to begin with.
- If you have any questions about what information to put in the ticket, click the link in the yellow bar at the top of the screen. There are very detailed instructions there.
If you need to add more information to the ticket, please click on the “View Tickets” tab at the top and add the information to the correct ticket. DO NOT SUBMIT A SECOND TICKET TO UPDATE AN EXISTING TICKET.
Quote of the Day
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011“Companies that invest in technology, irrespective of line of business, are more productive and more profitable than their competitors.”
Moving on up!
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011On-sitetechsupport.com has a three-month global Alexa traffic rank of 7,212,239.
That is a 6% increase since April 2011!
