Connecting the Dots

22Feb/100

Watched an Amazing 60 Min on Bloom Energy

I have always loved watching how people are trying to beat the Mega Energy companies, and build something that everyone can profit on. After all my years dealing with my house's energy problem and Edison to do nothing about it.. thousands of dollars spent every year and Edison tries to tell me that having 2 refrigerators is causing my 500 to 700 a month energy bill is outrageous. Until recently it was all due to a loose Breaker switch! Imagine, how convenient for Edison.

Anyway back to the story. I have loved watching people like Smaks on Youtube create HHO generators for his car etc.
Even went down the path and almost created one.
This 60 min aired tonight showing a man John Doerr created a Cell that generates more efficient energy.

Bloom customers include eBay, Google, Lockheed, Wal-Mart, Staples and the CIA. Backlog and sales are in the $2 billion range
eBay ordered four of the company's 100-kilowatt units.
The units run on natural gas, propane, biofuels or diesel which gives them about 48 percent overall efficiency.
60 Min states the unit could cost about 3000 for the home user.. IM IN, if it reduces my bills!!

Check out the video

Tagged as: Energy, Power No Comments

16Feb/100

Last Pass Enterprise

For thoes who followed my post back in March of last year. I switched my personal preference in Password management systems. Just to refresh, every website now pretty much requires a user-name and password to access your subscriptions and such. I used to use RoboForm, but switched to LastPass.com. Reasons are:

First and most important it imports from Roboform
Free! or 12 Bucks a year for premium version
I can access my stuff anywhere! (not just with a usb key can can be lost)
Password sharing (pretty cool when you run an IT Consulting firm and want control over passwords)
Reporting (so you can see history of use)
Many more features (mostly the same as RoboForm)

LastPass announces an Enterprise version coming soon!
The enterprise version can replace a SSO or work in tandem. With application auto filling of user-names and passwords. Power users at most remember and use about 100 user-names and passwords, Imagine now deploying this to your customer base and allowing for centralized password management (with all the same features as above!)

More details can be read here:
https://lastpass.com/enterprise_overview.php

Looks like the fee is about 1200 bucks a year for a 100 user network (as depicted from the ROI)
https://lastpass.com/enterprise_roicalculator.php

Overall I have dreamed of a solution like this I could manage for my customers, again I always look for ways to improve and lower my help-desk call center overhead.

The end-user would see something like this to train the application:
I opened Quickbooks told LastPass to train:

Then Give the application a name (Quickbooks, it defaults to the EXE name qb32.exe)
Assign it to a group (groups are used to help organize your passcodes, IE: Bills, Apps, Travel, Vendors)
Optionally tell LastPass to auto fill in the app, and for extra security check the box to ask for your passphrase.
(Prompting for the Pass Phrase is the passcode to release your saved passwords, you always need to log in with the 1 passphrase prior for use)

Now you can launch Quickbooks from the Tray Icon of Lastpass

Hope this info is helpful, stay tuned as they are still in beta with this app, the central management console is due out in beta in the beginning of March.

Tagged as: password management, SSO No Comments

5Feb/100

VirtualIron to Xen Migration Good to Know…

This week I have been migrating a customer that was on a Single User edition of Virtual Iron... Some of you may remember that Virtual Iron as lame as it was, would never support you in a production environment with this config. However we did it all the time as it was perfectly safe for the small business user.

So back to the goods, We now standardize on XEN mostly because of its tremendous support in the opensource community and due to the many features you get for free.

But how do you go from one virtualization platform to another?
Easy, Xen (and some others) have tools that allow you to do a V-V migration. This tool is called Xen Convert. Located here:
http://www.citrix.com/English/ss/downloads/details.asp?downloadId=1857892&productId=683148

A little about the environment first.. Being this was a Virtual Iron Single edition server this means the server is being used and we dont want to disrupt business to much during transfers and you want to CYA if the transfers dont work!! So we used another server that was spare to act as the new xen temporary host. After we transfer and test for a few days we will kill the VI server all together. Install XEN and redo the storage repositories, then transfer from the temp machine to the new primary.

Once you have XenConvert you can simply install this in your virtual machine and tell it to convert "This Machine" to the xen server. You will need a workspace (area for it to copy files prior to transfer to the xen host) I just used a buffalo nas drive on Gigabit.

NOTE*** with some virtualization systems you should uninstall the virtual tools from the Virtual Machine FIRST!! However with Virtual Iron I left them in place as it made the transfer speed fast. Once you have transfered, boot the virtual server into safemode and disable the Virtual Iron Tools. Boot back into normal mode uninstall the tools, install xen tools etc.... Now once you have successfully transfered your servers you may have to re-activate. We also noted that some database files needed to be transfered from a backup. Probably due to the fact SQL was running at the time and volume shadow services could not release the file for the transfer, this was no problem for us as we HAD GOOD BACKUPS.

Ok so now we need to transfer out of the temporary server and back to the new Host, two ways you can do this. Again you can use the buffalo, OR if you want to get this done faster use an external USB hard drive, here are the Detailed steps:

1. Acquire a USB Harddrive

a. if it is formatted with NTFS you will need to format it as an EXT3 partition.

b: Here are these steps:

1. Plug in your hard drive to the XEN Host
2. Terminal into your XEN Host using Putty or using the console mode in XenCenter
3. type: fdisk –l (that is the lower case letter L) This will list all the drives in the machine.
4. The Drive you will be looking for (As long as you only have 1 usb drive plugged in) will be labeled with (e.g. /dev/sdg)
5. type: fdisk /dev/sdg to partition the RSB HDD
6. Assuming you have created /dev/sdg1 partition you need to format it using the mkfs.ext3 command.
7. Type: mkfs.ext3 -m 0 -v /dev/sdg1
8. Mount the new partition so that you can start the export routine.
9. Type: mount /dev/sdg1 /mnt

2. Export the machines to the hard drive. This must be done while the virtual machines are turned off, also you cannot do this via the XenCenter Console yet.

This is where putty comes in handy, as we can launch multiple putty instances to connect to
the same Xen Host.
Type: xe vm-list (Use this command to look up your UUID's of each Virtual Server) use notepad and your trusty copy paste for this
Type: xe vm-export uuid= filename=/mnt/.xva (xe vm-export uuid=721d0f80c-35e2-dsf1b-c7ce-3dadccddff12 filename=/mnt/Dcserver.xva)
Open another Putty session and start another copy.
You can use XenCenter to view the status of the copy (its about 1 GB/min)
After your copies are done, you can type ls /mnt to view your files
Type: unmount /mnt this unmounts the volume.

3. Lets move this drive to the newly formated and installed XenHost.

1. Type: xe vm-import filename=/mnt/.xva

2. Open another putty session to your server and copy a few more vm's at the same time.

NOTE: Something else that may help as we had a server with 8 drives. We had 1 raid container that had the install of Xen, and we did not allow the installer of xen to use the second raid container during the install otherwise this would cause the Xen host to see both containers as 1 large spanned volume. We wanted to use the second container as a second set of spindles for files and or other VM's If your wanting to use a few different Storage Repositories you should follow these steps:

1. During the install of Xen, DO NOT place a check box in your second disk.

2. After Xen is installed go to the shell command and follow these steps:

a. type: fdisk -l (again to see all attached volumes)

b. If you only have 2 internal hard drives or containers you should only see /dev/sda and a /dev/sdb

3. type: pvcreate /dev/sdb (This creates a partition)

4. type: ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/ (This will list all the Disk Id's that will be used for the next command.)

5. type: xe sr-create type=lvm content-type=user device-config:device=/dev/disk/by-id/ name-label=”Any Name Volume Label”

(Example: xe sr-create type=lvm content-type=user device-config:device=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-36001c230d3b2330012fdd683626c004d name-label=”LOCAL SR-LG”)

6. Thats it your done, look in your XenCenter and you will see the additional SR.

When your importing your VM's if you want to import them into a specific SR you can by following these simple steps:
1. Type: xe sr-list (This lists out all the SR's and the sr-uuid's for the next command)
2. Type: xe vm-import filename=/mnt/dcsever.xva sr-uuid=2bce2593-f6ed-a39d-a027-9d7b38ce19ea

I think that about does it.. Once all the VM's are imported just start them up.
Two hours later we were done and in time to go grab a bite to eat and some hang time.

Filed under: Uncategorized No Comments

14Dec/091

Reflexion Vs Average Joe Anti-Spam Provider.

I love my friends at Reflexion, Scott and I have known each other for some time and I feel like I need to put some of my bias about Reflexion on this blog. People know me as a "say it like it is type of person", I don't believe in censorship... either i like it or I don't and I will give you a very good reason one way or another.

When I was introduced to Scott I asked what people really should ask when looking for an Anti-Spam partner: What makes you different?

Scott went on about all the features in Reflexion that really didn't sound any different from other providers, I was not sold. I told Scott it sounds like you guys have pretty much the same features as anyone else... When he introduced me to the "Address on the Fly" function, I was intrigued and willing to try it out.

Since this day (about 4 years) more than just Reflexion's AOTF feature has emerged.

Friendships (throughout the Reflexion company)

100% Channel - not the want to be attitude or the on the fence type.

They listen to the Vars for feature requests.

They have helped me with setup for customers...

Bottom line they do more than any other company would be willing to do.

It offends me to read about comparisons that are completely unjustified, and outright false - just to make a sale. One in particular was a comparison with regards to Spam Soap vs. Reflexion, a close friend of mine got this letter and forwarded it to me for my thoughts.

Here is the letter with my comments:

Reflexion does a great job, however there are a number of differences.

We are going to be easier in setup because we don't require you to document all your users for filtering or mail delivery to be active. With Spam Soap users are auto discovered. With Reflexion you need to setup users if they are to receive email.

FALSE! With Reflexion you can setup LDAP integration that will sync with ALL users in the AD no matter what OU they are in. Also have Public Mail Enabled Folders added/synced, and have distribution lists created. The best part is you delete a user.... guess what it delets in Reflexion as well. Best part is you dont need software installed. If security is a big issue you can enable User creation on first outbound... Come on do some homework.

Message Continuity is an option that can be offered without higher priced services like archiving Reflexion requires archiving in order to get message continuity, which will cost more.

FALSE! With Reflexion you have message continuity though message queuing/spooling in the event the mail sever is unreachable.

If you want to add another layer you can use Radar lite at a $nominal user/month on top of the price for RTC (Reflexion Total Control)

We name our virus definition providers: McAfee, Sophos, and Authentium. Reflexion fails to name its anti-virus providers or processes, opting instead to tout the "Protective Addresses" feature.

OK you may have a point here but I laugh at it because I have a great comeback for this.

I had a customer that was not small in size using Spam Soap for services and their NAMED AV solution was failing daily.

Every Day this customer had viruses that hit the exchange server's Symantec quarantine. We switched them to Reflexion and not only did they notice Viruses were gone, they also noticed a HUGE improvement to Anti-Spam. LOL.

Spam Soap is owned and operated by an 80-person IT company, and uses technology from a 200 person subsidiary of the largest dedicated security company in the world, McAfee. Teams of people devoted to development, infrastructure, support, and service.

Sorry not good enough. I actually choose to give the smaller guys a chance rather than using a company that outsources the main component to an ANTI-SPAM solution... this component being FILTERING. Once upon a time Spam Soap ran their own filtering... now they rely on McAfee (once MXLogic). Guys really? Why not just go direct to McAfee... if you want to rely on someone larger that has no interest in Small vars like us. McAfee could care less if I or you disappear. Multiply that by 100's of small vars then they may think about you. The Focus for these giants are the enterprise.

Do you know how large Reflexion is, in terms of people? I would encourage you to ask. How much depth do they have in terms of support, service, etc?

Again sorry not good enough. In the 4 years of doing business with Reflexion I have yet to see a time where they were unavailable and of course that was when I needed to call. I rarely have to call them mainly due to the fact that all the tools I need to support the customer are in my control panel. I can read logs for inbound and outbound mail to troubleshot where the messages are hanging up. 99% of the time its the end-users mail server. So back at Spam Soap... why do you need a large staff? that sounds like overhead to me, if you provide such a great service why do you need support staff?

All opinions aside, Spam Soap really has only 5 people in support. Yes they work in the same building as InhouseIT but only 5 of these people know how to support Spam Soap, otherwise they have to rely on McAfee.

Reflexion has about 15 employees and I believe they are larger than that now... of which Everyone including the CEO knows how to support a customer. (this includes developers, support staff, sales, etc)

So lesson? Yes people need to do their homework and be thorough about it, ask other partners look at price; In Anti-Spam its very marginal anyway so look at functionality and extensibility. Who integrates also provides a bigger clue. My Choice is Reflexion for Anti-Spam.

Filed under: Anti-Spam, Channel, Reflexion, Spam Soap 1 Comment

23Nov/092

Who done it?

I have found myself talking to people about the Kaseya/ConnectWise Executive Summary and when I built it. It sounds funny when I hear from others that Chad Gniffke is saying the same thing, and of course I correct the story by giving the long version as depicted here. Its actually fun to reminisce the good old days.

There was a time when RMM tools were not even thought of, a time when Kaseya was in its infancy, N-Able had their N-Central product as the first product, in reality, to provide centralized monitoring (when it worked )

During this time while I was employed with InhouseIT; Chad Gniffke, Yann Bouan and I were the dream team. This was a time when InhouseIT was a great company to work for, everyone had one goal in mind... How do we become the best???

Prior to this I came from a large company that had many datacenters throughout the world, and one of my responsibilities as Network architect was to monitor closely the portal site that was known as GotoWorld.com, one of the first "pay to surf the internet" MLM/Advertising portals. This company was, I believe, the first company to actually send out real pay checks! This portal site had so many hits and trends that our Webtrends server (massive beast that it was) never could recover from the prior days’ logs. We were using just good old perfmon stretched across several monitors (not the nice space saving LCD screens we have today).

When I joined InhouseIT, an IT Services company out of Orange County CA, I was almost denied a job because they thought I had too much experience. Funny as that was, I believe this started a new wave of services. One of the first things I noticed was the lack of monitoring on the customer machines/servers etc. I flat out could not believe this. Then along came N-Able.

I believe N-Able is the one that really started this RMM Trend. We (InhouseIT) loaded it up on all its customers’ machines and it did what I (we) expected it to do... Sent in alerts (and a crap load of false positives). However one thing was missing - Customer Value. As fast as we were adding customers to the NetManager system, they were dropping off. We simply needed to provide a value statement, and this is where Chad and I thought of combining graphs and metrics to an Executive Summary Report. But how?

One day I was at a large customer of ours searching for a centralized patch Management system when I came across Kaseya. My first thought was ‘Wow this thing is clunky!” as I installed it on my laptop lol. Not knowing anything about the product, I soon realized how powerful this platform was. I started to talk to Jim Alves as he gave me a demo of the product at our office in Costa Mesa. I spent a few weeks and was amazed at the solution, not for the Patch management side of the system, but how I can duplicate my knowledge into scripts and routines! This was my dream come true. Prior to this, as an IT Manager, I was managing these things though complex log-in scripts and batch files for all my customers.

Because InhouseIT had already invested a lot in N-Able, Craig McHugh (Once CEO of InhouseIT) stated he would not invest in another solution unless it had an Executive Summary. I simply told him, "You will have it in 1 week."

By this time I believe Chad had an Excel document he had created that showed a "Weather Report" based on some scoring (a mock up report). We discussed it as it sparked our imaginations, and we started down a path working on an actual report with data collected using Kaseya. We had to show data to the customer as it pertains to Value - "This is what we did for you over the last 30 Days". After all, it was in a SQL database in my server. Although I knew some programming, I was still green, so I turned to Yann who was an intern for InhouseIT and has an extensive programming background. With my direction/execution, we built the first known RMM Executive Summary. N-Able couldn't even touch it. The best part was that with Yann’s help, we completed this report in 1 week exactly. Mark Sutherland, Paul Wong, and Jim Alves then received the report and we showed them what they could also have. One week later we sent them the code. However, I was disappointed because they took our beautiful report and made it look just as bland as the Kaseya system.

We continued to use our report. At InhouseIT, we packaged this report and started to sell it to the True Profits group members. Within this time frame also, I started building a BI Dashboard based on metrics in ConnectWise and Kaseya, (another BI blog later).

Soon afterwards, ConnectWise also received the Executive Summary, which to this day "looks" like the same beautiful summary Chad, Yann, and I built from the start. However that was 5 years ago now. Amazing how time flies! It’s a new day, and there are plans for a much better Value Statement Report, thanks to a few of my friends in HTG14. I have passed on the ideas to my cigar-smoking friends at ConnectSmart as well. Let’s see who can build it first!

Bottom line literally: Think outside the box. Don’t buy an RMM tool and use it for its face value. Expand it and build upon it. That’s what we did, and some continue to do today!

Filed under: Uncategorized 2 Comments

21Nov/090

Labtech the Kaseya killer?

Labtech is so far the only winner of my Challenge.

To sum this up briefly Labtech was able to take my example from the K6 Countdown Blog and make it work.

After our 2 and a half hour phone conversation with Greg at Labtech I was able to go down a road I never thought would be possible without a system like Kaseya. Labtech was able to pretty much take it to the next level with the ability to not only allow me to build an SLA system (without hacking or hidden variables) but also allow me to add tables and input variables in the GUI. Shane from Arrc Technologies of Bakersfield was on this call and stated we took this conversation to a place he never had imagined, further validating that Labtech is the solution for them.

Ok so what does this all mean to everyone?

Most people that use an RMM (Remote Management and Monitoring) basically use it for the face value. Monitoring = Alerts, RC=RC, Patch=Patch etc...

Sure you can use: Zenith, LPI, N-Able, Kace etc and get just that and basically run your business until you realize that you need something else. The fact is that you do need to monitor your customers, these platforms will do this for you.

However if you want to build intelligence or remote remediation based off some rules you cant. They all claim to have scripting, however with some it takes weeks if not months to get a script you may need. You cant afford to wait on a company to build something, your business is growing and you need to make change fast. Kaseya had always been that system to give you these basics for building a form of AI (Like mentioned in the challenge) but for many years this system has had allot of limitations. These limitations have never been a secret to them, I along with others told them to build SQL queries and the ability to add custom tables etc, but I suppose they know better than us ;-0 because they have ignored these requests.

The other issue that the Managed Services Community has been plagued with is that of; not knowing what to do, or how to see past the pane of glass in front of them. Taking the tools and going beyond what they were built for. I believe with a system like Labtech we will be able to accomplish this.

Oh I should also mention that Labtech is half the price of Kaseya.

This is going to be a fun 2010.

Filed under: Uncategorized No Comments

18Nov/091

Diamond in the rough

For those of you interested, I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed with the idea that Kaseya cannot be the only RMM that can produce the results I am looking for.

Recently I have asked Kaseya to stop purging and removing my +++SQLCMD: variable from my scripts. I have had to edit a file on my Kaseya server to stop them from doing this. (Which by the way anyone interested in knowing how I can help you). I am tired of feeling like I need to defend what I do and not going to let a company like Kaseya dictate how I run my business. So I have started to look for alternatives.

I have started a topic on Linked in as well regarding this subject and today I posted:

I am looking at Labtech as the second choice if Kaseya does not add a Script option for running RAW sql commands. For anyone looking Labtech has this function, they have some short comings but in the long run I believe they are the Diamond in the rough. Ultimately I can see changing as they are half the cost, and are listening to people like us to build the best RMM.

I have a Con Call with Labtech and a few other strategic partners this Friday to demo my SLA system that I have been running for about 2 years, I have asked Kaseya to add this system 4 years ago... Imagine running your RMM on autopilot (mine does!) How many people are plagued with Agents falling out of compliance...etc, how many people have Vipre AV (the best AV for now) auto install and auto schedule scripts and routines upon install? Seriously it’s not hard to do.. but requires SQL queries.

Anyone interested in what I am doing with my Kaseya server I would gladly share.

I think I will post a youtube video on a few of these topics, thoughts?

Filed under: Kaseya, Labtech 1 Comment

4Nov/091

Calling all KScripters

Hey guys,

My previous post gives you some background on this but we need to get a petition going that will vote in keeping the scripting variables open for us Power Kaseya users. Please comment to this post to allow the use of +++SQLCMD: statements in the scripts!

Again if you have this already in your scripts they will be lost in K6!

Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment

3Nov/090

K6 Countdown..

Although I love the idea in upgrading to K6, its a nightmare to think about as well.

For thoes of you who dont know, Kaseya runs everything off of scripts.
Recently Kaseya has taken away a variable that allows you to run SQL queries and use them to better your service offering.

Here is an example:
Say you have monitor sets that monitor the CPU of a workstation.
Currently: You have to rely on your RMM to inform you that the workstation is running on High CPU... SO WHAT. Now you spend 20-30 min remoting into the machine because of High CPU, you may not get in) then trying to run task manager... bla bla you know the story.

What Kaseya SHOULD do: (and actually I have it working on my system)
You should run a script that runs a program to check what task is running and send this info back to you, but here is the next issue... what if you already know that 3DStudio Max may use 100% CPUfor a long time... You would like to create a table in SQL of Trusted APPS, and blacklisted APPS. Based on this info you can DO something like:
Hello User, we notice your running FISH screen saver and it is reccomended that we shut this off as it causes your machine to run HOT and could fail your Cooling Fans sooner. Would you like us to turn this off for you? YES NO.

WOW what have we done here ladies and Gents? We have Proactivly taken care of something.

But with the recent hot fixes Kaseya has stripped out the commands that allow me to do this.
And I know there are a bunch of people doing this, WARNING. K6 will whipe all that hard work you spent in differentiating your company.

The Arguement is this from what I understand of it:
We have to close this cause loop hole as it could be too powerful for the IT companies to use.
So paraphrasing this means you would open up pandoras box having this power, EEEHHum.
Here is my Arguement:
IF you own Kaseya you have already opened up Pandora's box. Here is how:
Scripting by itself is scarry if you dont use it right.
Case in point... if you dont know that a machine (your about to run a delete all contents of this directory script) that is currently not logged in with a user, your script will assume the account of SYSTEM. System's home directory folks is c:\windows\system, you run this script and you will delete all contents of the system directory.... here is the scarry thing, you will do this on ALL machines you manage.

GUYS this is why I choose Kaseya as an RMM solution... NOBODY can do this today, and why I am willing to look for someone who can. Kaseya is shutting the doors on my being an innovator, when that happens I need to find somthing else, and is why I have thrown the challenge for all RMM tools. Show me that you can do this sort of thing and I will be interested in knowing more about your product...

People who work for Kaseya should know that Kaseya is the Innovators Toolbox, when you do things like this you kill the innovators.

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6Oct/096

Who’s up for Challenge?

I don't know what it is about the MSP industry today, but everyone is trying to make a buck on the MSP businesses, 300 a month here, 3000 for that, 250 for this. By the time we add up what we spend on running the business there is little profit to be made.

Kaseya upsets me again. Here is my problem with this software package and just about every other package out there. They do not have the HEART of the MSP in mind, they only care about how much money we are lining their pockets with. With that being said here is what I mean about it (1 Example of several I have):

1. We (and just about every other person using this platform out there) have this issue where a monitor set decides to go rogue, IE stops monitoring. When the customer calls us telling us that the server is running slow is the only time we realize OH look at that how wonderful, Kaseya is not monitoring my stuff again... Why am I paying this exorbant amount of money again for this?

2. When you create a support ticket you will spend at least 2-3 maybe even days trying to help Tech Support fix it, therefore costing you more out of pocket.

This might be a minor rant to some but I have been using this software for may years now, and some of you know I worked for this company until they started ignoring my messages... They know that these issues exist but they decide there is no money to be made on fixing this issue so they focus on what does bring in money. This is very frusterating to me because they could be the BEST in all areas of IT Automation. Zenith, LPI, N-Able all FAIL in my eyes in this area.

Serously I am shocked WHY isnt there a software solution that competes with Kaseya costs less and does everything that Kaseya does today but 100% better. I would like to challenge the MSP Platform industry with this... I want to see the response. Who whats to build something and kill the competition?

Filed under: Uncategorized 6 Comments

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