MSP

[marley1]

What you guys using? I have a demo of GFI Max going, LabTech, N-Able I have talked to.

- N-Able looks nice but very expensive.

- LabTech I have installed, looks a bit confusing just installing and going into it blind, have a demo tomorrow. Looks good price wise

- GFI Max looks nice as well, but limited and web based, low cost.

Any help would be grea.t

 

[Database]

We use N-Able, it's pretty nice, but I actually prefer Kaseya to the others. Check it out, it's not cheap either.

 

[Tee]

Zenith Infotech

http://www.zenithinfotech.com/

 

[marley1]

Does kaseya have a hosted price? We see it being hard to drop 30grand on something to start.

How was Zenith pricing?

 

[k1pp3r]

Does kaseya have a hosted price? We see it being hard to drop 30grand on something to start.

How was Zenith pricing?

I would stay away from Kaseya, requires a lot of configuration to get it up and going.

Zenith will cost you a lot more over time

Labtech is good, powerfull scripting, 2011 release has added several items that are nice to have. Integrates well with ConnectWise PSA, good pricing

Auto task would be another to look at

 

[SJConsultant]

We use Kaseya on an on premise server. Kaseya does have a hosted version as well.

In order to get the most from any RMM tool, be prepared to spend a good number of hours configuring the tool to perform the tasks you need it to do whether it be monitoring or scripting. Don't expect any built in scripts or monitor sets to simply "work" out of the box on every customer system either.

Each RMM tool has their own strengths and weaknesses, therefore you need to determine what is most important to you when renting or buying the tool. Scripting, Monitoring, ticketing, remote control, audit information, reporting are available in all RMM tools, but some do certain features or tasks better than others.

RMM Vendors will provide you with a 30 or 60 day trial, so take advantage of that and test drive each vendors application. Don't get hung up on the WOW factor of any particular feature of an RMM tool and forget to evaluate other areas of that tool.

Tell the vendors you are looking at competing products in order to negotiate pricing. If your planning on hosting the RMM tool on your own hardware, inquire into payment plans so that your not shelling out a large outlay of capital.

Whatever RMM tool you decide on, it is only going to be as good as your evaluation and the time you spend setting it up,configuring it, and tweaking it to meet you and your customers needs.

 

[C7J0yc3]

We use Kaseya and Connectwise. We recently started hosted Kaseya for one of our larger clients that decided that they wanted their own internal IT, but still wanted use of our tools. So far the pilot is going well.

Kaseya and CW are a huge PITA to get setup and working properly with each other, and even then there are still problems. However given the others I have seen they are still at the top of my list for MSP and CRM.

We are currently demoing Labtech as a replacement for Kaseya, but it is basically trading one evil for another. There are things that labtech does really well that Kaseya doesn't, and vice versa. The only major advantage to Labtech is you don't pay for anything up front. All your agents, AV, Backup, etc all come at a monthly cost and you pay for what you use which is what really drew us to them. We figured we would save on average $500 a month over Kaseya, HOWEVER we are a pretty decently sized MSP shop, so smaller guys may not see the same cost savings.

They are open source and it has been about 3 years since I looked into it, but Zenoss may be worth a look. It is open source, and supports a larger array of devices then Kaseya.

 

[Digital-Vortex]

It really depends on what your looking for.
We use GFI Max, I personally love it. It has all the stuff I need, and the development people listen to users. Some things are slow, but they do it right so its worth it.

Footprint isn't an issue, and I love the fact that they cap the prices. We account for the highest cost in all our client contracts which is just under £10 per server, and less than £1 for a workstation. So we can use everything without additional costs.

They are also bringing the Vipre AV into it as a managed solution - and expected costs I heard make it look like its going to be competitive!

 

[marley1]

I have a demo going for GFI Max but need a little full demo to see how it works.

Are needs are to break away from Break/Fix and start doing a monthly managed service for our clients to make it easier on our end.

We want to manage devices, do self healing for a few things, give us ability to run scripts say Malware Bytes, Ccleaner, run a Antivirus scan, etc. We also want it to be able to apply updates in WSUS and all that.

It doesn't look like GFI can do all that.

Labtech looks to have a lot of stuff but I am lost after downloading demo and installing.

 

[SJConsultant]

I have a demo going for GFI Max but need a little full demo to see how it works.

Are needs are to break away from Break/Fix and start doing a monthly managed service for our clients to make it easier on our end.

We want to manage devices, do self healing for a few things, give us ability to run scripts say Malware Bytes, Ccleaner, run a Antivirus scan, etc. We also want it to be able to apply updates in WSUS and all that.

It doesn't look like GFI can do all that.

Labtech looks to have a lot of stuff but I am lost after downloading demo and installing.

Start by identifying those repeating problems/issues in which the resolution is the same. Now try to figure out with an RMM tool how to identify that issue and fix it automatically.

As a basic example, say you have a machine that seems to build up tons of temporary files in a temp directory. You could simply run a script that will delete all files in C:\windows\temp , C:\temp, etc on a regular basis. Then afterwards you can kick off a defragmentation using the built in defrag tool in Windows.

Another basic example: Say the Windows Server DHCP Database becomes corrupted. An event log monitor can pickup on that error, then automatically fire a script that will stop DHCP, Compact/Repair the database, then restart DHCP.

If your comfortable with scripting you could create scripts for each one of your tasks, then create a "master" script that calls each task in sequence to perform the operations you desire.

Microsoft Updates in Kaseya are handled without WSUS. We have ours configured to deploy patches automatically to a "test bed" of machines at various client sites within one week of their release. If there are no problems reported, the rest of the machines are updated automatically within a week after the testing period.

Any RMM tool is going to be overwhelming with all the features and functions. All i can tell you is your going to need to dig in, install some agents on computer(s) or virtual machines and start going through the training videos/help files, and play with the system to get an idea of the capabilities.

 

[marley1]

Start by identifying those repeating problems/issues in which the resolution is the same. Now try to figure out with an RMM tool how to identify that issue and fix it automatically.

As a basic example, say you have a machine that seems to build up tons of temporary files in a temp directory. You could simply run a script that will delete all files in C:\windows\temp , C:\temp, etc on a regular basis. Then afterwards you can kick off a defragmentation using the built in defrag tool in Windows.

Another basic example: Say the Windows Server DHCP Database becomes corrupted. An event log monitor can pickup on that error, then automatically fire a script that will stop DHCP, Compact/Repair the database, then restart DHCP.

If your comfortable with scripting you could create scripts for each one of your tasks, then create a "master" script that calls each task in sequence to perform the operations you desire.

Microsoft Updates in Kaseya are handled without WSUS. We have ours configured to deploy patches automatically to a "test bed" of machines at various client sites within one week of their release. If there are no problems reported, the rest of the machines are updated automatically within a week after the testing period.

Any RMM tool is going to be overwhelming with all the features and functions. All i can tell you is your going to need to dig in, install some agents on computer(s) or virtual machines and start going through the training videos/help files, and play with the system to get an idea of the capabilities.

Most of are clients on SBS 2003 - 2011, loggin in and doing WSUS approvals is a pain. So most of the RMM go around WSUS?

Tomorrow @ 3 I have a full hands on demo with Labtech. I like that is has so much features, I probably wont use them all. I think any of them will work I just want something that wont take me a year to figure out.

How are you working it with these platforms? Are you charging the client $xxx amount per month to handle all monitor and service calls?

 

[Database]

Most of are clients on SBS 2003 - 2011, loggin in and doing WSUS approvals is a pain. So most of the RMM go around WSUS?

Tomorrow @ 3 I have a full hands on demo with Labtech. I like that is has so much features, I probably wont use them all. I think any of them will work I just want something that wont take me a year to figure out.

How are you working it with these platforms? Are you charging the client $xxx amount per month to handle all monitor and service calls?

nAble can integrate with WSUS...

edit: do you not already have an automatic approval rule in WSUS to approve certain classes of patches?

 

[SJConsultant]

Most of are clients on SBS 2003 - 2011, loggin in and doing WSUS approvals is a pain. So most of the RMM go around WSUS?

Kaseya simply doesn't use WSUS, instead Kaseya scans the machines for missing patches, missing patches be installed by:
Download updates directly from Microsoft to the client
Download updates from a central share on a lan to the client
Download updates from your KServer to the client

Once setup, all the above is handled automatically.

Tomorrow @ 3 I have a full hands on demo with Labtech. I like that is has so much features, I probably wont use them all. I think any of them will work I just want something that wont take me a year to figure out.

You should see some immediate benefits within the first 60 to 90 days, however, to fully exploit the power of the RMM tool, it will take some time to do so.

How are you working it with these platforms? Are you charging the client $xxx amount per month to handle all monitor and service calls?

We typically push flat rate contracts. Figure up how many devices they have and the current state of the network. Then we plug some numbers into our spreadsheet which calculates the monthnly bill sent to the client. Typically our charges are calculated based upon the number of devices and we then include:

Monitoring
All labor - Break/Fix , site visits, support email & telephone calls, etc
Antivirus/Antispyware
Automated Maintenance
Remote Backup

About the only thing we don't include is running network drops. Oh and we bill for any parts.

 

[marley1]

What about project labor...like putting in a new server?

How are you liking the remote backup built into the product? We have some reservations about that, tempted but thinking we will stick with iBackup or others.

 

[Database]

Our MSP we have a monthly contract with our Managed Services client that include break fix on their current systems, including servers, and monitoring.

We bill for:

New PC installs
New Server installs
New software setups, etc
All parts
Basically anything considered a "Project"

 

[SJConsultant]

What about project labor...like putting in a new server?

How are you liking the remote backup built into the product? We have some reservations about that, tempted but thinking we will stick with iBackup or others.

We include labor for nearly everything including setting up a new server.

We've been wrestling with remote backup for quite sometime trying various products, but recently Kaseya and Appassure have teamed up. While the integration piece within Kaseya is sorely lacking, I can attest that Appassure itself is the "backup" product that we have been looking for.

We are currently working on migrating our largest clients from our Ahsay backups to the AppAssure backups. We've been deploying our own utility boxes at these sites to store the images create by Appassure and then our utility box will replicate those images offsite to our server.

That allows us to restore backups in our office or at the client site. We can restore the entire server, or we can mount any of the hourly snapshots and pull invidiual files. In a DR scenario we can convert the backup images to a virtual machine (Hyper V or Vmware) onto our utility box within a couple hours depending on how much data is backed up.

 

[marley1]

Interesting. Kaseya seems to be the most refined, dunno if we wanna drop the cash. Trying to get a demo but I guess they outsourced teh operators to india...so far I haven't understood the person answering the phone yet. Hoping tomorrow I can speak to an american....

 

[SJConsultant]

Interesting. Kaseya seems to be the most refined, dunno if we wanna drop the cash. Trying to get a demo but I guess they outsourced teh operators to india...so far I haven't understood the person answering the phone yet. Hoping tomorrow I can speak to an american....

Kaseya has alot going on, but they are not perfect. You need to ensure the money you save (or make!) with the tool is going to exceed the cost of the tool as well as the time your spending managing the tool.

 

[Protoform-X]

There's a version of Kaseya called IT Center that's hosted and has a monthly price per agent. Somewhere around $5 per agent per month and the price goes down as you hit quantity mile stones.
http://kaseya.com/itcenter/pricing.aspx

I've used both IT Center and full Kaseya. They're practically similar in every way.

 

[marley1]

Thanks! I'll look at that more tomorrow after the demo from labtech

 

[marley1]

One more for the night, looked at hte video for Level Platforms, looks nice. Anyone use it?

 

[marley1]

One more for the night, looked at hte video for Level Platforms, looks nice. Anyone use it?

 

[Tee]

How was Zenith pricing?

It's more than fair for the tools you get after you sign up. If you would like to demo it they have a demo you can sign up for and test it to see if you like it. I would highly recommend you do this but devote as much time as you can to testing it because it does take some time to find and see all the amazing things that can be done with this product.

I am not saying this is the end all be all and I wouldn't say any MSP tool sets are but for the money spent it's pretty damn good.

I will gladly answer more questions in private if you want some added detail. I helped to build the MSP I work for so I have a lot of background in the MS department and we came from break / fix as well so I know how that goes to!

 

[C7J0yc3]

How are you working it with these platforms? Are you charging the client $xxx amount per month to handle all monitor and service calls?

We do three levels of MSP.

MSP Full: Covers everything except what is mentioned below. Desktop, server, vender management, everything. We are your IT department. Monitoring is 24/7 365, tickets will receive 15 minute response between 8-8, and 4 hour response overnight.

MSP Light: Monitoring and alerting only. Includes 4 hours a month of labor. Monitoring is 24/7 365, tickets will receive 4 hour response, and have lower priority to MSP full customers.

MSP Server Only: Like MSP full, but only covers your servers, however gives you access to our MSP bill rate for desktop labor if needed. SLAs are same as full.

We charge per managed desktop, and per managed server. We have a labor rate of $125/hr for MSP 8-8, $150/hr for MSP off hours, and $175 for non MSP customers (usually project customers look at doing light or server only, and if they sign the MSP contract before the project starts we give them the MSP bill rate).

Things that are not included.
-New equipment setup. PCs, switches, servers, etc. Exceptions are made, but if it takes at least an hour to configure, it is considered new.
-Virus cleanup more then 2 hours. We have a pretty awesome system for cleaning systems and thus usually have the ticket done in 1 hour, however over 2, and you are paying for it.
-Windows Upgrade / Reinstall (Usually upgrading to 7, or reinstalling XP for some reason).
-Project work (Anything that would need a project plan).
-Software configuration (things like if the company decides to get a new CRM, or deploy sharepoint).

 

[Protoform-X]

More or less, that's the setup every MSP has if they have their shit together.