@dustinb3403 said in Mac Book Air and Ubiquiti VPN:

So you're billing him by the minute to do research. .

That's pretty much how consulting works... Don't you wish every request from your users had a price tag on it?

OTOH there are days like Monday where I spent all day with a managed contract client waiting for Verizon to get the internet up.

@JaredBusch ZeroTier for the win! Once we got the Ubiquiti VPN configured and working, it proved to be unreliable. At first we thought it was the user, but after watching what he was doing and checking the stats on the ER, we found it was nothing he was doing - it just wasn't reliable.

I tried ZeroTier myself and then set it up for the client and it works just like I wanted it to.

amazon

and now we wait to see who points out that VoIP is a protocol and not hardware.

All accounting issues aside, in the end I think the mass upgrade is more disruptive to business on all sides than the trickle replacement.

For those of you that have done mass upgrades, consider the process.
You select a particular model and config based on that days standards.
You have them all shipped and have a pile of PCs sitting somewhere.
They have to all be unboxed. How many fit on your bench.
You spend time (weeks?) working up your image.
You start to push your image as quick as your hardware will allow.
You start swapping out user machines as quickly as you can.
User questions start rolling in - you're still trying to move computers off your bench.
You realize you have to tweak your image.
You redo the image and reimage the machines that were already done.

Trickle replacement
A few machines show up each month.
You unbox them in your office and put them all on your workbench.
You deploy your image and keep working on other tasks.
You deploy them to a few users and troubleshoot any issues.
Make a note of issues and tweak image for the next round.
Order up the next round and repeat next month.

As new OSs or software comes out, you can try it on your next cycle without disrupting the entire company. You don't have to update everything all at once so that users are getting a new OS and new software. In the mass upgrades, how long do the machines sit on the bench depreciating before they are put in front of a user? As employees are added ordering another computer for a new user can be done quickly. If you are in the 3 year of a mass upgrade, you have to price shop and all that since your original model likely won't be available.

Start with something like the HP Z840 workstation. If you can't afford it rethink what you're doing. You have a lot of questions that need to be answered. It's like you're looking for a server and a workstation in one.

For example, why do you think you need to consider single vs dual power supply instead of single power supply and a UPS?

At first glance I think you would be better suited with a i7 desktop for photoshop and a separate server.

Before taxes.... I think voice services typically have about 33% tax on them.

@scottalanmiller said in Business thinking - PC replacements:

I did this for a shop last week. Everything done in one day, the whole thing. Even replaced the firewall, apps, basically everything. If you have a company that has weekends off, you can do this in a weekend.

How many users and how many apps? Did you migrate user profiles? Was it part of the job to make sure the My Little Pony screen saver was migrated?

I'm working on a project that requires FIPS 140-2 security. I'm trying to figure out if a IPsec tunnel is compliant. I'm using an Edge Router X. From what I can find, it looks like triple-DES is compliant, but DES is not compliant. Is there any option for a compliant VPN tunnel with a Ubiquiti ER X or other Ubiquiti router?

@360col said in Port - What server OS to use:

@mike-davis said in Port - What server OS to use:

I'm not sure how effective Screen Connect would be. With my install commands that don't run within a few seconds time out. So I can't launch a .msi install unless it finishes in 2 seconds.

It is possible to run command that take a long time to finish. See example below. The first 2nd & 3rd line line is what you need. firs line is to say its powershell.

--------- paste below into ScreenConnect cmd windows ---
#!ps
#maxlength=50000
#timeout=300000
ping 127.0.0.1
etc

You can use this to launch batch files from network share etc.

BTW my first post ever on here

Welcome to Mango! Thank you so much for the tip. I tried that and it worked.

@dafyre said in hyper-v bad physical NIC? - vswitch or NIC teaming?:

What does the windows event log look like? (You said this was a gui install, right?)

My lab server is a GUI install, but the production server is non GUI.

I had a client that was sold four whitebox computers from an "IT guy" that "builds computers on the side". It turns out he installed windows 7 on the machines "with an OEM license from work." Needless to say, my client is buying licenses. It looks like we can only find Windows 10 licenses at this point. It doesn't look like the retail licenses have any downgrade rights. Is there a way to get a legit Windows 7 Product Key so I can avoid upgrading all the machines to Windows 10. Is there an option I'm missing here?

@dbeato said in site to site VPN only works with Keep Alive:

@mike-davis said in site to site VPN only works with Keep Alive:

5.9.0.7-17o

That is a pretty old firmware. Update to the latest 5.9.1.7 and 5.9.1.8.

I totally forgot about that. Like I said, this was a spare one I had on hand for testing and I wanted to make sure I could get the tunnel up when I factory reset the one under support since I can't log in to see its settings.

@wrx7m said in Windows 7 licenses:

I also had to take 5 pictures EACH of OEM license stickers from 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 Pro, to prove that I was actually using upgrades from OEM.

I had to do the picture thing the first time they audited us.

Based on my own personal experience, I don't agree with a few points here. I've grown my own MSP business without debt beyond just myself. As a one man shop there are a lot of tasks you can find for an entry level person. Your contract rates don't change, but you don't have to stop what you're doing for the easy tasks.

I also don't think partnerships are a good way to go for businesses of any type. Read about all the case studies and you'll find that a 51% to 49% split is way better than 50/50. At the end of the day there are some decisions that have to be made, and there needs to be a final authority.

I agree that larger companies have advantages in many ways, but it doesn't mean it's impossible to start and grow your own company.

The OP was asking how to go from a one man shop to two. What that looks like in reality, is going from google voice to a hosted PBX. Yes you now have an additional cost, but now you have two people that can answer the main number. Most of the growth steps look like this.

@ccwtech said in How to Grow from a One Man Operation to Two:

Are any speaking from experience in starting a company fresh or is this mostly anecdotal?

I started my company about 5 years ago and have been totally out on my own for a couple years now.

Consider "network issues" under normal. Who determines what's a network issue? Does it matter if it's for one person or the entire LAN? If no on can use the internet because your DNS server is down, is that a network issue, or a internet issue? DNS sounds technical, so does that mean it's a High priority? Do you see where I'm going with this?

The purpose of the SLA is to set the expectation for the end user. When you define things in terms you understand, the end user might still be confused.

As a MSP, when you walk in and see unmanaged switches under desks, you kind of know what needs to happen.

Last week I was onsite and uncovered a 100 Mb switch. The bonus was the 20 year old print controller hooked to it.