What Are You Doing Right Now
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Trying to replicate RDP issues some of our offshore folks are having with RDP, SecureLink, and Citrix streamed servers. . . joy.
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@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Just got the dreaded M$ call for our every other year audit. At least the new online form was only about 15 minutes of work because nothing has changed since our last one. It was claiming I have -32 licenses for Server 2019 which I don't even have installed?? oh well.
Hmm.. I will be interested in this new process. I just got the email this morning for mine; however, they said fill out the attached deployment summary and didn't attach anything. :man_shrugging:
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@donaldlandru said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Just got the dreaded M$ call for our every other year audit. At least the new online form was only about 15 minutes of work because nothing has changed since our last one. It was claiming I have -32 licenses for Server 2019 which I don't even have installed?? oh well.
Hmm.. I will be interested in this new process. I just got the email this morning for mine; however, they said fill out the attached deployment summary and didn't attach anything. :man_shrugging:
Sounds like they put as much care into audits as they do into patch testing.
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@RojoLoco LOL! If these audits were conducted by Microsoft proper I would agree with you. They farm them out to their vendors, N3 in my case, who only care about making sure you buy something... Not sure how I will appease the knee biters this time, probably buy a few extra Windows server CALs or something.. everything desktop is Microsoft 365 E3 now.
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@donaldlandru said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Just got the dreaded M$ call for our every other year audit. At least the new online form was only about 15 minutes of work because nothing has changed since our last one. It was claiming I have -32 licenses for Server 2019 which I don't even have installed?? oh well.
Hmm.. I will be interested in this new process. I just got the email this morning for mine; however, they said fill out the attached deployment summary and didn't attach anything. :man_shrugging:
Mine was a link to Microsoft Insight
All of my volume license info and Office 365 stuff was already loaded. Basically just have to fill out how many computers and servers use whatever OSes. I don't have any SQL licenses or anything like that, but I'd imagine they would have been preloaded if I did.
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@donaldlandru said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@RojoLoco LOL! If these audits were conducted by Microsoft proper I would agree with you. They farm them out to their vendors, N3 in my case, who only care about making sure you buy something... Not sure how I will appease the knee biters this time, probably buy a few extra Windows server CALs or something.. everything desktop is Microsoft 365 E3 now.
Last time they recommended that I buy something and I just told the guy that I disagreed with him that was the end of it. The entire thing is apparently voluntary
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@donaldlandru said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@RojoLoco LOL! If these audits were conducted by Microsoft proper I would agree with you. They farm them out to their vendors, N3 in my case, who only care about making sure you buy something... Not sure how I will appease the knee biters this time, probably buy a few extra Windows server CALs or something.. everything desktop is Microsoft 365 E3 now.
Don't believe the hype! A 3rd party seller of software doing a MS audit sounds like a huge bit of vendor fuckery. If MS really does farm out their audits, then they are every bit as crooked as any other sales dicks.
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@bnrstnr well that sounds a heck of a lot easier. Yes the whole process is voluntary and they really are just bottom feeders, but I play along.. small insurance policy to spend the few hours every 18-24 months. I assume you ignore them enough Microsoft will take notice.
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@RojoLoco said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@donaldlandru said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@RojoLoco LOL! If these audits were conducted by Microsoft proper I would agree with you. They farm them out to their vendors, N3 in my case, who only care about making sure you buy something... Not sure how I will appease the knee biters this time, probably buy a few extra Windows server CALs or something.. everything desktop is Microsoft 365 E3 now.
Don't believe the hype! A 3rd party seller of software doing a MS audit sounds like a huge bit of vendor fuckery. If MS really does farm out their audits, then they are every bit as crooked as any other sales dicks.
If you have never seen one of these this is their spiel, they have the v-*@microsoft.com emails which confirms they are “legit” vendors
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@donaldlandru makes me wonder how many of these my boss has totally ignored, because his email is on all the MS licensing stuff.
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@donaldlandru said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Just got the dreaded M$ call for our every other year audit. At least the new online form was only about 15 minutes of work because nothing has changed since our last one. It was claiming I have -32 licenses for Server 2019 which I don't even have installed?? oh well.
Hmm.. I will be interested in this new process. I just got the email this morning for mine; however, they said fill out the attached deployment summary and didn't attach anything. :man_shrugging:
SAM audits are not exactly legit. They are scams that private companies pay to run under the guise of being MS affiliated. Still a scam.
Just tell them you aren't interested and that's it. There is zero reason to do it.
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@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@donaldlandru said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@RojoLoco LOL! If these audits were conducted by Microsoft proper I would agree with you. They farm them out to their vendors, N3 in my case, who only care about making sure you buy something... Not sure how I will appease the knee biters this time, probably buy a few extra Windows server CALs or something.. everything desktop is Microsoft 365 E3 now.
Last time they recommended that I buy something and I just told the guy that I disagreed with him that was the end of it. The entire thing is apparently voluntary
It IS voluntary and a total scam. The SAM audits have no idea about licensing, they are sales companies calling and faking audits to just sell you random licensing.
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@donaldlandru said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@bnrstnr well that sounds a heck of a lot easier. Yes the whole process is voluntary and they really are just bottom feeders, but I play along.. small insurance policy to spend the few hours every 18-24 months. I assume you ignore them enough Microsoft will take notice.
I think the other way around. MS knows that competent shops will send them away. Keep doing SAM audits and you get put on MS' radar as low hanging fruit. And the SAM audit people have no authority, but report your stuff to MS. So I expect that doing a SAM audit gets you more likely in trouble than not.
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@RojoLoco said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@donaldlandru makes me wonder how many of these my boss has totally ignored, because his email is on all the MS licensing stuff.
These get sent to me from customers and the SAM people hate getting my calls ... "oh sorry, but we know what this is and that you aren't official and don't know the licensing and we do, so we aren't doing this... click"
Once you are up front and tell them that you knwo what's up, they go away. They aren't looking for shops that are knowledgeable, that's how they'd get themselves sued. They literally only want people who are just going to play along and do what they are told.
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I broke @romo's VDI instance and I'm trying to fix it before he catches on.
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Actually wait, he's logged in. It's not broken. What did he do?
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@RojoLoco said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@donaldlandru makes me wonder how many of these my boss has totally ignored, because his email is on all the MS licensing stuff.
These get sent to me from customers and the SAM people hate getting my calls ... "oh sorry, but we know what this is and that you aren't official and don't know the licensing and we do, so we aren't doing this... click"
Once you are up front and tell them that you knwo what's up, they go away. They aren't looking for shops that are knowledgeable, that's how they'd get themselves sued. They literally only want people who are just going to play along and do what they are told.
I had no problem playing along before, but I never really thought about it. It's like talking to the police, it can never help you.
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@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@RojoLoco said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@donaldlandru makes me wonder how many of these my boss has totally ignored, because his email is on all the MS licensing stuff.
These get sent to me from customers and the SAM people hate getting my calls ... "oh sorry, but we know what this is and that you aren't official and don't know the licensing and we do, so we aren't doing this... click"
Once you are up front and tell them that you knwo what's up, they go away. They aren't looking for shops that are knowledgeable, that's how they'd get themselves sued. They literally only want people who are just going to play along and do what they are told.
I had no problem playing along before, but I never really thought about it. It's like talking to the police, it can never help you.
This may be the best answer, the other thing they do want you to believe is that you have to true up your licensing through them. Don’t ever do that. You have so many better options, in our case I buy things through our regular var and send them a copy of the receipt. I’ve never bought anything we don’t need, that would be fiscally irresponsible, just maybe a month earlier than needed.
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About to be on a call about Cisco AMP.
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@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@donaldlandru said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@bnrstnr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Just got the dreaded M$ call for our every other year audit. At least the new online form was only about 15 minutes of work because nothing has changed since our last one. It was claiming I have -32 licenses for Server 2019 which I don't even have installed?? oh well.
Hmm.. I will be interested in this new process. I just got the email this morning for mine; however, they said fill out the attached deployment summary and didn't attach anything. :man_shrugging:
Mine was a link to Microsoft Insight
All of my volume license info and Office 365 stuff was already loaded. Basically just have to fill out how many computers and servers use whatever OSes. I don't have any SQL licenses or anything like that, but I'd imagine they would have been preloaded if I did.
Hmm.. That site looks shady as hell. Not even owned by Microsoft. If I had to guess the third part vendor that did your audit was https://www.insight.com/en_US/buy/partner/microsoft.html
