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AIS Billing – another reason to choose a different colo

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

American Internet Service – San Diego

We moved into AIS in 2010 and signed a 2 year contract with them for our collocation services.  Our initial bandwidth requirements were too low so after about 2 months we bumped up the bandwidth.

In late 2011 we decided that after two power outages in two years (and no SLA reimbursement) we would move to a new collocation facility.  Unfortunately we were in a contract until the end of Jan. 2012.  We waited it out, made sure they had plenty of notice in writing, and moved out the day before our contract was up.  As I was moving out they tried to tell me I couldn’t take my hardware out of the building until all of the billing was up to date.  It was a Saturday so I told them to go kick rocks and get back to me.  I took my hardware.  What follows is the email conversation starting in August 2011 when I first notified them of our intent to move out.  The best part is that they are still billing me for Feb and March even though I have the cancellation acknowledgement in writing from them that the account was to be cancelled on Jan 30th.

 

Sent: Monday, August 08, 2011 12:47 PM
To: jmaddox@americanis.net
Subject: Intent to Cancel – On-site Tech Support

Hello Jim,

This email is to serve as On-site Tech Support’s official request to cancel service at the end of this contract (1/16/2012).  If there is any chance at all that this contract can be ended earlier, we would like to take advantage of it so please call or email with the details.

Please let me know that you received this request and if there is more that I need to do, as far as paperwork, etc., please let me know.

***************

Sent: Monday, August 08, 2011 1:54 PM
To: Sharon Smeltzer
Subject: RE: Intent to Cancel – On-site Tech Support

Sharon,

Your request has been received and I have cc’ed a member of our Accounting team who can get you your final invoice. You will be responsible for the remainder of your term. At this point it looks like 2/2/2012.

Please let me know if you need anything in the mean time.

***************

From: Jim Maddox
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 2:57 PM
To: Sharon Smeltzer
Subject: RE: Intent to Cancel – On-site Tech Support

Sharon,

I have gone ahead and updated both the original cancellation ticket

#809838 and have cc’ed out billing department to this email. Here are you contract end dates:

- Colocation Power, Space, and Bandwidth set to expire 2/1/2012

- Additional Bandwidth (3Mbps – Amendment #2) set to expire 4/7/2012 

I will have our billing team get you your final invoice.

***************

From: Scott Smeltzer
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 3:04 PM
To: Jim Maddox; Sharon Smeltzer
Subject: RE: Intent to Cancel – On-site Tech Support

I don’t understand why the bandwidth doesn’t expire at the same time the contract does.  This is a pretty shitty way to treat customers.

How much is the additional bandwidth?

***************

From: Jim Maddox
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 3:10 PM
To: Scott Smeltzer; Sharon Smeltzer
Subject: RE: Intent to Cancel – On-site Tech Support

Hello Scott,

 

Thank you for your response. The 2nd amendment to your original colocation agreement was on its own 12 month term (Bandwidth Upgrade from 3Mbps to 6Mbps). Let me speak with accounting and get back to you on this. The bandwidth upgrade per Amendment #2 (attached) was for an additional $300.00/month -

Let me see what I can do Scott. I thought you were aware of this. My apologies and by no means did I intend to insult you.

***************

Now my impression from this last email was that they weren’t going to charge me for bandwidth  for 2 months when I didn’t even have a rack any longer.  I was wrong.

On 2/27, 2/5, 3/29, and 4/1, I received invoices, late notices, overdue notices, etc.  My favorite was this one:

>>Our records indicate the current balance for your account is $3272.00, which includes charges for the service period of March 2012.
>>Of this amount, $1636 is now past due.
>>Please remit the past due amount within 10 days of this notice to avoid further action including possible suspension of services.  If you have already sent in payment, you may disregard this notice.

>>For your convenience, you can visit our website to view your most recent delinquent invoice in PDF format.

Seriously?!?!?  I have written confirmation of the cancellation AND had moved out of the facility on Jan 30th.  As of now, there is still no resolution to the invoices but I have no intention of paying them.

There is a great article here about how to select a collocation facility.  #3 on the list is “power requirements”.  Please make sure you ask them how many outages they have per year.   Interesting enough, how they handle contracts didn’t even make the list.

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World Backup Day March 31st

Monday, March 26th, 2012

backup

On the eve of April Fools’ Day, World Backup Day reminds us to back up our valuable data so we’re not caught as fools ourselves.   Of course, if On-site Tech Support provided your outsourced managed IT, this day would come and go as every other without another thought because you know your data is backed up, verified, and replicated off-site as a part of your monthly support contract. (more…)

Posted in Backup Feed, Cloud, News, Server 2003, Server 2008 | Comments Off

Windows 7 as a File Server – Why We Won’t Do It.

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

Over the years we have had many smaller clients that don’t want to spend the money to invest in a true server and want to use XP Pro or Windows 7 Pro as a file server.  Although we strongly recommended against it, a few insisted.  Since they were under contract, we were obligated to service and support the “server” and encountered many problems.  None of those clients are still with us (by our choice).

For anyone out there with clients considering doing this, I have put together several reasons why we do not recommend/support this scenario.

  1. Windows 7 is a consumer OS. Windows server is a server OS. 
    1. A server OS is supposed to be up 24/7. A consumer OS is not.
    2. IIS will on Windows 7 only allow 10 concurrent connections and 20 connections for file shares.  While this is more than enough for most small offices, what we have found is that Windows 7 holds onto the connection and eventually users can’t connect. 

 

  1. Hardware – there are the following differences (some of these are related to motherboard support which is tied to these processors): 
    1. Higher chip validation (i.e. testing) 
    2. Multi-processor support
    3. Support for more error resistant hardware (ECC memory, battery backed controllers) 
    4. Redundant BIOS images in case of corruption/failure 
    5. Support for larger amounts of memory (many many more RAM slots)
    6. etc. 
    7. Server CPUs are usually the very highest quality chips out of a batch… they handle the stresses and constant operation of a server environment better than desktop CPUs.
    8. Permissions – Permissions are rules associated with objects on a computer or network, such as files and folders. Permissions determine whether you can access an object and what you can do with it. For example, you might have access to a document on a shared folder on a network. And even though you can read the document, you might not have permissions to make changes to it. System administrators and people with administrator accounts on computers can assign permissions to individual users or groups.
      1. If you need to setup permissions for users to have different levels of access to different files, stop now.  While it is technically possible, it is a PITA to maintain.  Google “windows 7 permissions problem” and you will see 26,000 entries. 
      2. Someone is going to use it as a workstation.  Typically with a server OS, people are scared of it and will not touch it, however a file server running Windows 7 is just like every other machine in the office.  When the customer adds an additional user, or one of the other PC’s in the office goes down, invariably they think “They can use the file server.  It has Windows 7, what could go wrong?”

There are a lot of people that will tell you that Windows7 is fine for a file server.  There are also a lot of people that will tell you to use any number of a variety of Linux OS’s, or to just get a NAS, and while those are viable options for some, we cannot recommend it because we can’t efficiently support it. 

Posted in News, Uncategorized, Windows 7, Workstations | Comments Off

6 Steps to Protect Your Company From a Lost Smartphone

Monday, March 19th, 2012

Symantec’s Honey Stick Smartphone Project has the small business world talking. The project, which involved Symantec purposely misplacing fifty smartphones and examining what happened next, revealed just how vulnerable your small business’s data is.

The study found that six out of ten people who found a “lost” smartphone tried to access social media and e-mail and eight out of ten tried to access business information.

If you’re a small business owner, here are six ways you can protect yourself in case of an accidental smartphone loss, whether it’s your phone or a phone of one of your employees:

1)     Hire On-site Tech Support to manage your network.

2)     Do not allow BYOD or Bring Your Own Device.  If you are truly concerned with your corporate data, do not allow users to put your company email, etc. on their personal devices.

a)     If this is not a realistic option, make sure the following are in place.

3)     Require password protection. Most cell phones have a way to password protect your phone’s lock screen. Any device that has information about your business should be password protected as a requirement.

4)     Set up remote wiping. Software is available for a variety of device platforms that will allow you to kill a device remotely if it should ever fall into the wrong hands. Some of this software will not only let you hit a kill switch, but it will also use the phone’s GPS to tell you exactly where your device is.

5)     Know which devices are accessing your business’s network. You can set this up on your server, but also make sure all of your employees know the importance of keeping your business data secure. This is something that affects them personally, as well as you professionally, as bank logins and personal e-mails can also be accessed from a lost smartphone.

6)     Have a plan. In the event one of your mobile devices is stolen, have a plan in place to kill that device as quickly as possible. Educate your staff on the importance of reporting lost devices as soon as possible to avoid further data compromise.

We live in a world in which we rely on our smartphones for many of our daily tasks. While losing one can be personally difficult, it can be severely detrimental to the company.  Having a written plan in place in the event that something does happen to your phone someday, is a good first step to protecting your business’s crucial data.

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Sadness.

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Today the MSP Top 100 list was revealed and for the second year in a row, we did not make the list.

http://www.mspmentor.net/top-managed-services-providers-2012-msp-list/

Posted in News | 3 Comments »

Taking over the World!!!

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

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!!

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Kaseya Script to get OS Install Date

Saturday, January 14th, 2012

This 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 &quot;Original Install Date&quot;" />        
<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.

Posted in Kaseya Scripts, News | Comments Off

Kaseya Maintenance: Legal Extortion? *UPDATE*

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

I 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.

 

F@# 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.

Posted in Kaseya Scripts, News | Comments Off

New Office

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

We 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.

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VIRUS WARNING: Fake DHL Email Has New Virus/Trojan

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

A 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. 

(more…)

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