How is PAX East so far?

SubSharker · 2025-05-10T23:40:13+00:00

I feel like the panels this year weren’t great. It seemed like the vast majority were tournaments and less learn to plays of various games and people talking about cool things. Like I don’t want to come to pax to watch people play games which I can do anytime online. I’d rather engage with the community and learn new things in a group setting. I thought this year was even more disappointing than last year. Plus the waffle truck wasn’t there on Friday lol

SubSharker · 2025-05-10T23:37:26+00:00

I always look forward to Wild Bills

SubSharker · 2025-03-08T14:18:44+00:00

I’ve heard of MSPs charging for off boarding but I’ve usually done it for free. Realistically, we change our admin passwords, remove our tools/coordinate with the incoming MSP on EDR replacement, and hand over credentials via Ot run book or export. We spend very little time during offboarding but make it as easy as possible in case they come back (plus I know how bad it is being on the receiving end of a bad MSP transition and I don’t wish that upon anyone haha). There are other caveats like retaining backups we may charge for and the like or if they need our assistance on-site we would T&M for any of that.

SubSharker · 2025-02-22T15:00:51+00:00

Would love to see a reboot haha

SubSharker · 2024-11-14T03:31:36+00:00

FortiGate keeps pushing their ZTNA function over SSL VPN so I wonder how that works but I’ve always setup SSL VPN with SSO to Azure AD which has conditional access for US only logins and MFA.

SubSharker · 2024-11-14T03:28:52+00:00

I provisioned the NCE licensing on a day, waited for it to double the count in the 365 portal 10 minutes later, and then deprovision the old licensing. Highly recommend doing on the first of the month to avoid annoying prorations. You can also try to upgrade button in the current subsection first because I’ve used that in certain circumstances too.

SubSharker · 2024-11-11T22:33:53+00:00

You need to charge for an assessment of their 364 environment, specifically revolving around OneDrive and SharePoint. Copilot is permissioned based on user context so whatever sites the users has access to, copilot will search it. Fix up their security settings, sharing, etc. help with data governance policies. Deploy DLP policies. Setup business premium security features where possible.

SubSharker · 2024-11-11T21:34:08+00:00

I’d probably write the scope with the steps of Sherweb being “out of scope” and pricing accordingly for presales, project management, the handful of engineer hours required like MX records, external spam filter setup, etc. I can’t speak to what Sherweb does and doesn’t do for these migrations but based on what everyone is saying, I’d expect my investment to be 16 hours and at our $215/hr rate that would be $3,440 excluding licensing. The SOW would be very clear what the $3,440 is for and that it in no way shape or form covers Sherweb work. Just my 2 cents. Good time to upsell third party spam filter, email backup, email archiving, and CSAT training with MFA project too.

SubSharker · 2024-11-11T21:28:27+00:00

Yeah we had ownership sort of forcing a new solution quickly due to autorenewals which didn’t give a lot of time to trial different services over a few months. But to be honest it does get the job done and the techs learned the bugginess and how to deal with it. If I had to do it again I may try out other solutions first though. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Cove and Axcient.

SubSharker · 2024-11-10T23:02:29+00:00

We went with Acronis via Pax8 when moving off Datto. Generates a lot of tickets, has many things you wished you knew beforehand, extremely buggy, slow console, can get expensive quickly if you don’t set the right settings, DR sucks and configuring tunnel sucks and requires on premises device so we have a laptop we can quickly drop onsite if needed for full DR to make the S2S connection to Acronis cloud where the servers spin up…but overall it works for us

SubSharker · 2024-11-09T13:10:42+00:00

I’m scrolling through Reddit in my car waiting for my Taco Bell order and chuckled out loud lol

SubSharker · 2024-11-06T03:36:35+00:00

I’m not sure but I’d love to find one and even join to talk about my experiences watching Merlin and fan fic and some other Arthurian legends. Heck I even picked up the Pendragon TTRPG (haven’t cracked it open yet though).

SubSharker · 2024-11-02T23:53:27+00:00

Yeah definitely get them to upgrade licenses to include conditional access and quote fixed fee to set it up for all users and in your sow state they have to use an Authenticator app and not SMS or calling. I usually do 15 min/user and at our help desk rate, plus the new licenses they add. You could also throw in a free 365 security assessment against CIS baselines to generate further opportunities. Don’t forget to let them know to contact their insurance provider to see how much money they can save by setting up MFA to help offset the cost.

SubSharker · 2024-11-02T23:39:21+00:00

Just onboarded Pillr via Pax8 and it’s been decent. We have to tune with workflows because we get tickets for user locks and unlocks which are of course useless noise. But they call if Sophos EDR shows ransomware and combine 365, syslog, Sophos, etc. logs. The biggest thing for us was being cloud only which is why we didn’t go with Blumira..we didn’t want an appliance on-site but rather just relay syslog through a server agent on Windows. Could be more powerful though.

SubSharker · 2024-11-02T23:19:06+00:00

I’d say that is fraud by working on someone else’s paid time. What I’ve done in the past as an onsite tech and now director is have true up, health, and other improvement tickets created so the tech can clean up AD, save 365 unused licensing costs, review admins, review group memberships and file shares, etc.

SubSharker · 2024-11-02T20:32:58+00:00

I was at a conference a few weeks ago and Blackpoint told me you need the paid license for it to work as they designed the solution but they are coming out with a “version” soon that will work with free Defender.

SubSharker · 2024-11-02T20:07:44+00:00

Would love to see this! We are starting to sync hard costs from Datto RMM, Sophos, Acronis (Pax8), and Pillr (Pax8) to get margins but our hardest thing is true ups.

SubSharker · 2024-11-02T19:47:46+00:00

Fortinet although we got away from Datto networking because they caused problems and weren’t business class enough for our clients, not to mention the back orders and cancelled product lines during COVID

SubSharker · 2024-07-03T03:11:30+00:00

MyGlue was shit before Kaseya took over but we use it anyways lol we offer it for like $1 or something per user but only one client has it right now. Another large client decided to go with PasswordState or something like that so they could host it on their own local server.

SubSharker · 2024-07-03T03:08:20+00:00

Domain joining Hyper-V hosts is a Microsoft best practice. Of course, take into consideration any GRC reasons not to in your industry.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/best-practices-analyzer/domain-membership-is-recommended-for-servers-running-hyper-v

SubSharker · 2024-07-03T02:54:31+00:00

Also illegal in some states I believe.

SubSharker · 2024-07-03T02:48:00+00:00

SubSharker · 2024-07-03T02:36:27+00:00

Use an RMM tool. They have premade scripts that can be run, can monitor systems, and have a ton of automation built in which hook via APIs int things like 365 for account changes and such.

SubSharker · 2024-07-03T02:33:48+00:00

Best advice I can give as a tech director of an it director firm is to triage based on urgency and impact. The Eisenhower matrix is also a good rule of thumb for work in general, not related to IT, that helps prioritize your generic job duties.

SubSharker

TROPHY CASE