MSP Removes Good Hyper-V to Install Older, Bad Setup
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@brandon220 you have the ability to sit your friend down and discuss how he's being screwed over.
If he trust you to work on his environment, and you're actually friends he should take what you say to heart and fire this MSP.
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@brandon220 said in MSP Removes Good Hyper-V to Install Older, Bad Setup:
I think the main item they handle is the exchange server. They set it up originally.
Is the MSP who talked them into on-premises email too? Not that there aren't cases for it, but there are no cases where on-premises email and an incompetent MSP go together.
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@DustinB3403 said in MSP Removes Good Hyper-V to Install Older, Bad Setup:
If he trust you to work on his environment, and you're actually friends he should take what you say to heart and fire this MSP.
Show him the thread, get him involved here. Might be a discussion he needs to see some industry response to and not just one guy that he might trust but think might be going against the flow.
He might not realize that this MSP is seriously not doing basic best practices and is screwing him in "we don't even have to see the environment to know this" kind of ways. Basic competence is being missed and major red flags in spots that we don't know for sure about.
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@DustinB3403 We are long time friends and he trusts me completely. I have helped their company over the years and made great changes for them. In fact, one of the "higher up" managers had him call me last Friday to thank me for some of the changes I recommended and implemented. He said it has saved them money and avoided constant issues they were having prior to the changes. Craziest part is that while I was there making the changes for the better is exactly when said MSP was remotely creating more issues. They were on speaker in the server room for hours and hours and I heard every word.
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@brandon220 said in MSP Removes Good Hyper-V to Install Older, Bad Setup:
@DustinB3403 We are long time friends and he trusts me completely. I have helped their company over the years and made great changes for them. In fact, one of the "higher up" managers had him call me last Friday to thank me for some of the changes I recommended and implemented. He said it has saved them money and avoided constant issues they were having prior to the changes. Craziest part is that while I was there making the changes for the better is exactly when said MSP was remotely creating more issues. They were on speaker in the server room for hours and hours and I heard every word.
So they trust you completely, but trust the MSP screwing them more? Something seems amiss.
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@scottalanmiller said in MSP Removes Good Hyper-V to Install Older, Bad Setup:
So they trust you completely, but trust the MSP screwing them more? Something seems amiss.
I was just about to say that.
If the business and your friend trust you entirely, why are they allowing the MSP to crash the ship?
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@scottalanmiller Yes, going by strictly memory though - they were running Exchange 2010 on bare metal (2008 server) and migrated to 2013 on bare metal again but with 2012. No VM for the email. I honestly don't believe there are backups for the Exchange either. If there are, I don't know about it - and I know their network very well for not being employed by them.
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@brandon220 said in MSP Removes Good Hyper-V to Install Older, Bad Setup:
@scottalanmiller Yes, going by strictly memory though - they were running Exchange 2010 on bare metal (2008 server) and migrated to 2013 on bare metal again but with 2012. No VM for the email. I honestly don't believe there are backups for the Exchange either. If there are, I don't know about it - and I know their network very well for not being employed by them.
Any idea why they are not hosted? Or off of Exchange?
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@DustinB3403 They were there on recommendation from another company. I try to avoid touching their mail server because it is very fragile. To put it in worse perspective - they were set up as a workgroup with approximately 100 users until 2011 when I came in and migrated everything to a domain on New Years Eve. You would have to see it to believe it.
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I am slowly weaning them off of the MSP. I do way more now than before. Really, all that is left for them to manage is the mail server. I am afraid to "get in the middle" until it is migrated to one of the hosts as a VM.
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@brandon220 Are you charging for any of this?
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@brandon220 said in MSP Removes Good Hyper-V to Install Older, Bad Setup:
@DustinB3403 They were there on recommendation from another company. I try to avoid touching their mail server because it is very fragile. To put it in worse perspective - they were set up as a workgroup with approximately 100 users until 2011 when I came in and migrated everything to a domain on New Years Eve. You would have to see it to believe it.
So they at least fired THAT company?
Bring in @Texkonc or @Minion-Queen, they do email migrations. One weekend and all is fixed.
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@brandon220 said in MSP Removes Good Hyper-V to Install Older, Bad Setup:
I am slowly weaning them off of the MSP. I do way more now than before. Really, all that is left for them to manage is the mail server. I am afraid to "get in the middle" until it is migrated to one of the hosts as a VM.
Don't even do that, go straight to Office 365 unless there is a tremendously good reason that they can't.
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@Breffni-Potter Of course. I don't worry about not getting paid. I get a check in the mail 2 days after I submit an invoice.
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@scottalanmiller Someone has them convinced that on-prem is better. I've never had an in-depth discussion about it. I'll have to look and see how many accounts they have.
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My support margins for support on prem versus cloud, is triple. Yes, triple the income for persuading a client to use on prem solutions.
You get to maintain all the software
You get to maintain the physical stuff when it breaks
You get to migrate/upgrade/replaceSo many ways of making money whilst screwing the client.
Yes, someone has convinced them on prem is better and is laughing all the way to the bank.
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@brandon220 said in MSP Removes Good Hyper-V to Install Older, Bad Setup:
@scottalanmiller Someone has them convinced that on-prem is better. I've never had an in-depth discussion about it. I'll have to look and see how many accounts they have.
I assume that that someone is someone who was then paid to manage that on-prem system. Basically the salesman said that the expensive option was better because.... margins.
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@Breffni-Potter said in MSP Removes Good Hyper-V to Install Older, Bad Setup:
My support margins for support on prem versus cloud, is triple. Yes, triple the income for persuading a client to use on prem solutions.
You get to maintain all the software
You get to maintain the physical stuff when it breaks
You get to migrate/upgrade/replaceSo many ways of making money whilst screwing the client.
Yes, someone has convinced them on prem is better and is laughing all the way to the bank.
This is where even non-VAR MSPs can easily get dishonest. You don't have to be the one selling the Exchange license to be the one cashing the checks from the support of it. Crippling the customer with complex systems that require loads of support is the one fear that companies have from both internal IT and MSPs.
No way to fully protect against that other than to heavily vet recommendations that significantly favour the MSP versus saving the customer money.
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I'd get in there and talk Office 365. Work up some example prices and lay out some risks.
