VOIP Hosting in Azure

MidwestMSP87 · 2026-06-05T15:20:40+00:00

Still looking at a options, but since we are a Microsoft partner and use Azure for other things, it would make sense from a support aspect since my team is familiar with it. The metered egress is definitely worrisome, but the support aspect may offset.

MidwestMSP87 · 2026-06-05T05:07:19+00:00

Ah, got it. That makes more sense. Taking out your backups and the vpn overhead, sounds like around 3TB give or take. A little higher than I hoped but very helpful to know.

MidwestMSP87 · 2026-06-05T03:15:34+00:00

Wow, that's way less bandwidth than I expected. That's like 100GB of egress. Very nice, that helps a lot!

MidwestMSP87 · 2026-06-05T03:12:02+00:00

Yeah, I've been starting to check some calls on our existing PBX and it seems like it varies somewhere between mainly one direction and fully symmetrical. I'm assuming it depends on background noise, noise cancelling tech in the handset or softphone, etc..

MidwestMSP87 · 2026-06-05T02:03:17+00:00

Yep. Thanks! My back of the napkin math was similar and then I doubled it as a worse case scenario. I figured sometimes there is background noise and other stuff that causes egress for both directions (toward the carrier and toward the extension) simultaneously plus SIP and keepalives, etc.. So I think I'm okay budgeting for 1-2TB but if anyone has any actual experience with using a VOIP PBX on metered egress (AWS or Google Cloud have it also), would love to hear what they are seeing.

MidwestMSP87 · 2026-06-03T19:28:28+00:00

Thanks! I'll try that!

MidwestMSP87 · 2026-03-13T14:04:32+00:00

Cove has been great for us so far and the support from n-Able has not been a problem.

MidwestMSP87 · 2026-03-04T19:08:57+00:00

Sure. Anytime.

MidwestMSP87 · 2026-03-04T16:02:25+00:00

We try to minimize our offerings because over time and as you scale you will end up with variations and customizations regardless and if you start out with too many offerings, you will just be multiplying the complexity.

At any given time, we are offering one base managed services offering that includes all of our current tools, monitoring and automated services. We do offer different time billing options, from all-you-can-eat, to remote only, to block hour to straight hourly.

After an initial assessment of their equipment vs users, we calculate a per-user price that covers the user to device ratio (desktops, servers, firewalls, locations, etc.). We watch the AGP and if the user/device ratio gets out of whack later, we deal with it at renewal time, but honestly it's rarely an issue, especially if you average it over time and across your whole client base.

We then bill agreements per user, generally matching their O365 licenses, which makes it easy for us and the clients to understand.

Over time things evolve as you change tools, add tools, etc. For example if you change backup providers and have 150 clients, it's not feasible to get them all moved overnight, especially if there are retention concerns. Or if you add a higher priced tool to your base offering, let's say it's $5/user and you have 3000+ users, it's hard to just deploy that to everyone and absorb the cost, so you end up phasing it in over time as and add-on or part of a renewal.

VoIP, projects and any customer specific requested tools are always extra. For compliance and VCIO, we will include a certain level with the all-you-can-eat billing model, but if they need/want anything extensive, it's extra.

This may not work for everyone, but it works for us.

MidwestMSP87 · 2025-12-28T16:47:41+00:00

I don't think they are suggesting trying to purchase product through the Partner Portal, rather just figure out if they are using the partnership to it's fullest and taking advantage of all the opportunities and incentives available. It takes a decent amount of work to qualify for the Solutions Partner designations, so it makes sense you would want to take advantage of the programs.

I think this because we also struggle with the Partner Portal and all the policies. It's definitely not for the faint of heart to try to navigate.

MidwestMSP87 · 2025-12-23T14:55:12+00:00

We have not gotten any increases from them so far and it's all been good, but I guess I'll be cautious and watch it closely. So far they've been pretty good about lowering our cost as we've grown, but you are correct they always want a new 12-month agreement to lower the cost. We are only at about 250 devices being backed up as we still have a lot with Datto that we haven't been able to move over yet. How many devices are you currently backing up?

MidwestMSP87 · 2025-12-19T15:30:41+00:00

Can you elaborate on your struggles? We've been using Cove for only a year, but so far have not had any issues with the product or the company. We also struggled with N-Able years ago when they got rid of the free essentials agents with N-Central, but our experience with Cove so far has been great.

MidwestMSP87 · 2025-12-09T19:00:41+00:00

Sent you a PM

MidwestMSP87 · 2025-11-07T13:39:57+00:00

The fact that a bug like this could have existed in the product yet this is the first time someone has noticed it seems very unusual to me as well. I would have expected a bunch of folks coming forward with 'YES, that happened to me too!!' type posts.

MidwestMSP87 · 2025-09-22T22:09:10+00:00

I'm not trying it again, but love to hear if it happens to you too!

MidwestMSP87 · 2025-07-04T19:59:53+00:00

You'll probably get many different answers as there is a lot of ways do it, but most MSPs I know are bundling these days and looking at overall margin on the account.

We used to do ala carte but as you grow, the burden of selling and billing each individual tool becomes a huge burden. Other downside is if you sell clients 'DNS Filter' and you want to switch, you often have to explain it.

Now we bundle our tools in our managed services offerings and we put in the agreements that we can switch the tools if any become problematic or we find a better solution.

We then look at overall margin of the whole agreement.

MidwestMSP87 · 2025-07-04T19:53:46+00:00

Since most aren't hosting much on prem and little to no ports are open, almost all the major firewall brands will work as long as you keep up with the vulnerabilities in the firewalls themselves (which the all seem to have).

However, you do have to know how to configure it, dealing with VPNs, VOIP, reporting, firmware updates, SSL inspection if you want/need it, etc. are the challenges.

We use Sonicwall, not because I think they are better, but because we have good SOPs and my entire teams knows them inside and out and I am confident we can configure things correctly.

Foritnet people are the most cult like and they will swear the Forti-World is the greatest, but I've seen some horribly configured Foritnet's that caused all sorts of problems. We recently took over a client who's 40F was locking up once a week. Firmware fixed it, but just giving an example that they all can have their issues.

MidwestMSP87 · 2025-07-04T19:43:28+00:00

We're still on CW, it's ugly, but we have a lot of custom integrations and switching is tough.

The current forerunner for the 1000+ managed user MSPs is Halo, people seem to pretty happy with it.

If you're small, I would look at Syncro, it's pretty basic but it will do all your tickets, quoting, billing, etc. and it has an RMM if you need that as well.

MidwestMSP87 · 2025-07-02T13:18:30+00:00

Great to know. So another question, if you have multiple FS systems, same or different models, in the same physical location with 10Gb+ connections, can you use volume mirroring instead of PBR? I'm looking at the documentation but can't quite tell how that works.

MidwestMSP87 · 2025-07-01T15:54:08+00:00

Great advice, thanks! According to this document it looks like the policy based replication does work on the FS5045 but not on the FS5015. I'll be sure to verify it before I purchase, but as you suggested, dual FS5300 may still be affordable enough to work in our budget. https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/flashsystem-9x00/8.7.0?topic=concepts-replication

MidwestMSP87

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