Connecting The Dots Seeing things past it's face value

Labtech the Kaseya killer?

Labtech is so far the only winner of my Challenge.

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!

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.

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?

Illogical Decisions

OK here is my rant for today.

Why is it that companies spend 50-80 thousand dollars for a solution that can cost them 5000.00? When a company contacts us because they are poor or need a solution that will not break their piggy bank, we spend several hours helping them without charge then they make a decision like this just because the other company comes in with suits. This is the most unrespectable thing that can happen in my book.

Case in point.
VMware Vs Citrix Xen.
Proove to me that VMware is better than XEN, I can guarentee that this arrogant company they call VMWare will NOT have anything that Xen cannot do, and not break the bank.

I think we are going to start charging High prices because I am tired of working my butt off building cost effective solutions for people to find out they would buy a higher priced solution in the end.

More on Face Tagging.

I just found out that Google Picasa 3.5 (new) has the long awaited face tagging. I have just downloaded it, going to give it a try.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYO2uhrIZJ4

Email Security FUN facts.

So this morning I got fed up. As some of you know I was at the Xchange event in DC this year. I registered this event using kcarlson.xchangereg@telosit.com due to the fact I wanted to see how much junk/unsolicied email I get from this. Naturally Address on the Fly is the best thing since butter.

Funny when I was at the event they printed on just about every material my email address (above) Whew! I thought as I know where this can go. Xchange has companies like ourselves go into these Board room sessions to learn about Vendors, and the products they sell. After this board room session you are to place a label on the survey (contact info with the above address). No harm done... Right??

So today my inbox was filled with 20 messages when I first opened. It took me about 3-5 seconds to realize each message was junk. So if you calculate 3x15 (3 seconds x 15 junk messages) you get 45 seconds of time wasted... Seems like there is no harm here. 45 seconds big deal... Well now this is just this morning.

Lets take the total number of messages that have been sent to this address: 126 now do the math, I have wasted 6.25 Minutes of time on this... LOL laughing now as even that number seems minor. The point I am trying to make here is that this is just 1 Address I created on the fly out of the 251 addresses I have created. I turned this address off today, as I was tired of deleting the same old communication (Webinar... come see us) thus saving my time not having to deal with these again.

Here is something more meaningful, I have had 2864 Messages this year that were reflected (spam). These messages were never sent to my inbox for my 3 seconds/message to delete.
This totals to 143 Minutes I have saved myself in time not dealing with the garbage.

On our website www.telosit.com I have posted a section on the lower right of the site that shows the TOTAL number of junk messges reflected for all our customers. I have taken it to the next level and compaired this to the average salary in the United states, and calculated the dollars companies have saved in not dealing with JUNK.

If you are interested in some of the features described here in this blog. Contact TelosIT for a quote on email security.

Photo Face Tagging

A few blogs ago I was complaining that we are missing a PC version of a decent program that does Auto Face Tagging. Adobe, Picasa, MSFT Photo program, all missed the boat.

I came across MediaShow 5 from Cyberlink this program does an excellent job of Photo Face Tagging, So far I have tagged about 85 People out of 30,000 Pictures.

MediaShow 5 analyzes these photos and groups them based on the likelihood of the face, then you click on the name or add a name to the grouping. Sometimes you will have faces of others you just uncheck them and move on. Every so often when you have tagged a good chunk of people you click on the Regroup button to have it Regroup the faces and reduce the number of groups by merging them.

Don't get me wrong, this still takes allot of time to update. Especially if you have over 30,000 photos. However it seems very accurate and the time is decreased as your tagging photos.

Back to the Virtual Drawing Board.

As a Primary at TelosIT, I choose to use Virtual Iron 3 years ago due to the price, and their dedication to the Small Business market. I do not regret this decision as many customers benefited from the VMWare Like functions at a fraction of the cost.

However that day is now over as Oracle Bought out Virtual Iron and Virtually Killed it.
Truth is Oracle in my opinion will make the product much better, however that does not help me in the current situation as we need a hypervisor NOW not later. Oracles Answer is Oracle VM, although its free and has similar functionality like everything else, I dont see anyone using it. This concerns me, and perhaps this is why Oracle Killed Virtual Iron. (we shall see)

I purchased a lab to test all the Hypervisor products (very good deal as well).
The first test is still XEN based like Virtual Iron and I know many people who use it.
Citrix XEN. I must say the product is really nice.

Citrix Xen:
Free with: Xen Motion, Centralized management, Nice Gui, Very easy install on the hosts.
My Lab consists of: 2 Dell Precision 390's with 8 GB Ram Each, 4 GIG Nics. Dell PowerEdge SC 1420 with 4-1TB Sata Disks, and 4 GB Ram with Windows 2008 and DataCore San Melody iSCSI target software installed. I have 2 Gig Switches for Multipathing testing.
Will be adding another DataCore San Melody Server and doing Synchronous mirroring for True HA.

I have been able so far to do everything I was able to do with Virtual Iron with XEN, with the exception of HA. This means I have to buy XEN Essentials to have hardware failover of Virtual Machines.

So far so good... I will keep updating my findings.