@technobabble said:

@IRJ said:

@technobabble said:

If your business stops supporting a client, does the client normally have any documentation of their network, hardware inventory, etc?

I am not a MSP. I am an IT employee for a company

I am more curious in general do MSP or IT shops usually provide documentation for the client to keep. I have documentation for my clients, but I have never actually given my clients any documentation since it seems that none of the other "tech companies" have ever left anything behind. I would presume if a MSP was handling the office, they would get monthly documentation.

It really depends on the situation. If it's a polite, clean break, quite possibly. If it's on bad terms, possibly not. We make sure that they have proper access to administer their systems at any given time, so should something happen, they still have passwords, etc. Some clients like to keep their own documentation and get cross-trained as changes happen. Others don't care. If a customer requested documentation prior to ending service, we'd provide it along their guidelines.

@IRJ said:

@Dashrender said:

In the GPO for the servers, are you telling them to install the updates and wait for a reboot? or are you telling the servers to notify and allow the local user to decide when to install?

I'm guessing the former.

I am choosing "4 - Auto download and schedule the install" which downloads them and schedules the install in the early AM. Sometimes it reboots them automatically and sometimes it doesnt. I am not sure why that happens

Are users still logged in?

@Dashrender said:

@JaredBusch OK Good! I was sent to porn site last night after clicking on Scott's article - I thought my phone had an issue (infection) - glad to see it was more likely a problem with the blog.

Confirmed in my iPad. Could it be remnants of the compromise a couple months ago? I thought I purged out all the funky code.

As a hardcore gamer (not quite pro), if it's too immersive, it's difficult to play in extreme situations. VR would be a nightmare. On the plus side, it would reduce the obesity rate amongst gamers.

@Reid-Cooper said:

Very neat looking. Other than HP's it looks like they've gone for effect. HP's is the only one that looks particularly practical to work in.

I like the roomy aisles. I've been in too many places that barely meet the minimum for front rack clearance.

@alexntg said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@Joyfano said:

@scottalanmiller said:

I was wondering that too.

Meaning a Chelpee is a gay word of Selfie
Peace sir Darrel..

I don't think this phrase means what you think that it means.

I think it does.

Called it!

@Mike-Ralston said:

@scottalanmiller Really? I'm not a fan of their mainstream products, they're terrible. But the ones they actually put effort into, those turn out VERY well. Their TV's and handheld consoles are wonderful and reliable pieces of hardware. So far I've not found a peripheral that they've had a hand in that's bad.

It may be personal experience. I've always managed to wear out their products eerily early. The only exception was a refurb Trinitron monitor that I picked up in 2000. Stupid thing never died, and i wound up replacing it in 2007.

@technobabble said:

@alexntg Basically you go to Users and right click username and delete?

I disable the account for 30 days (some users in some environments have odd applications that have user-specific data or settings), then delete them after that. What I do is make an OU called Delete after (date), then just toast the OU when it's time during my monthly AD maintenance/cleanup cycle.

I did forget to mention earlier, if it's a local user profile and the termination is on the ugly side, I"ll just pull the hard drive and stick it on a shelf for litigation/forensic needs. At the same time, I'd zip up a copy of their RDS user profile and toss it on a NAS or other storage. Yes, I've had some doozies along the way: http://www.newstimes.com/policereports/article/Police-Woman-stole-from-Bethel-company-2740404.php

Another reason to go with Windows 8 - computers will aut0-reboot for updates after a few days.

Otherwise, you can set a deadline on the updates when you approve them, which will force reboot.

I leave the old profiles out there for a while. Once in a while (maybe a couple times a year, or if I'm running low on space, I'll go through and purge out profiles (or in a litigation-heavy enviornment archive them).

@GregoryHall said:

I also thought about the Outlook plugin allowing the end users to parse the archive, maybe you could export to PST and just writeup how to do it and have the minions perform your backup?

If it can present as a folder in Outlook, it could be copied to PST.

@scottalanmiller said:

@NetworkNerd said:

@NetworkNerd said:

@Dashrender said:

Back to the OP - I'm totally not surprised they want to charge a fee to ex filtrate that data - it might not be that simple and could possibly require a lot of time from one of their employees to make a copy onto a drive for you - even worse how is the data access (are they just a bunch of PSTs, one per person) when you get the drive full of data?

I believe it will be one PST for each mailbox.

Let me correct this statement. After talking with Mimecast, what they send us (should we choose to have them exgest the data if we were to leave) would be in EML format.

You could just store it as EML on your own.

That would be a nightmare. If a mailbox had 60,000 items in it, that'd result in 60,000 flat files. Across 100 uers, that's over 6 million little files to deal with. You lose the blob storage and easy searchability of a PST.

@Dominica said:

@Bill-Kindle said:

I'm a little confused, how is this thread not a nice conversation? I haven't seen any name calling, just lively debate......

On the contrary, Scott has repeatedly been called a narcissist. I would say that counts as name-calling. It's also, completely untrue, and an illustration of how little the name-caller actually knows Scott. Confident? Yes, and with plenty of justification for it, but not a narcissist. That's like calling a confident woman "bossy".

On another note, who knew that this topic was going to spark such heated debate? I feel a bit like I threw a match over my shoulder into a pool of gasoline.

At the least, it's put me off wanting to go on a cruise now.

@ShaunS said:

Ok, and the deep scans are nice and light too? Its the full system scans where we run into real issues with Kaspersky after V6, and all other vendors we have tried so far.
Emails coming through from our google accounts are usually fine, its those that come in through our web hosting company that give us grief. They offer a mail AV product from McAfee on the server, but want something like $10 per email address which is just not worth it when our on-premise AV filters incoming mails. If we have to purchase something different to do that task alongside Webroot on the endpoint, that would increase our current cost dramatically ( The listed price for Webroot is already quite a jump from what it cost to renew last time with Kaspersky).

Full scans aren't even noticeable. It doesn't even hiccup a bit on my business system, and on my home system it doesn't impact my gaming at all.

@Nic said:

@alexntg said:

@Nic said:

@Carnival-Boy said:

@Gabi said:

Back to topic. I found Web Root customer service shocking, but might be different now.

+1

In a good way? You should probably give it another shot now, since we went through the big revamp 3 years ago. Webroot got rid of a lot of the dead wood at that time, so CS and support are better now.

When was the change from SpySweeper with Antivirus to WSA?

About 3 years ago - Webroot bought Prevx in 2010, so that's when it started.

In that case, if anyone hasn't tried Webroot since then, they'd be in for an incredibly pleasant shock. I ran Webroot with Antivirus back in 2008, and was not impressed, but can't speak highly enough about the current product.

@Nic said:

@Carnival-Boy said:

@Gabi said:

Back to topic. I found Web Root customer service shocking, but might be different now.

+1

In a good way? You should probably give it another shot now, since we went through the big revamp 3 years ago. Webroot got rid of a lot of the dead wood at that time, so CS and support are better now.

When was the change from SpySweeper with Antivirus to WSA?

@NetworkNerd said:

@NetworkNerd said:

@Dashrender said:

Back to the OP - I'm totally not surprised they want to charge a fee to ex filtrate that data - it might not be that simple and could possibly require a lot of time from one of their employees to make a copy onto a drive for you - even worse how is the data access (are they just a bunch of PSTs, one per person) when you get the drive full of data?

I believe it will be one PST for each mailbox.

Let me correct this statement. After talking with Mimecast, what they send us (should we choose to have them exgest the data if we were to leave) would be in EML format.

It sounds like you'd be hanging onto Mimecast until your retention period expires.

@technobabble said:

@alexntg We stayed in Blue Ridge. Nice town, loved the countryside. Because of the weather, we missed out on tubing!

Nice area. I used to live about an hour from there.

@scottalanmiller said:

@PSX_Defector said:

@scottalanmiller said:

If you are lone IT or a CEO...... Are you really saying that they aren't that important?

Yes. Ultimately, yes.

CEOs do no work. A CEO could go missing or die and an organization will still function. See August Bush IV, who was too busy letting chicks die in his bed than to run the organization, yet attracted and safely had a merger with InBev.

A lone IT guy will either stay a lone IT guy burned out by the entire situation or does as I did make the entire environment hum to remove the need for the person. It's infinitely unhealthy to be in the former, and infinitely boring in the latter.

A paraphrase of the safety credo from AT&T would fit best. No service is so critical and no service so important that we cannot take the time and find a backup for your position.

You need to work in the SMB for a while. Only working for large shops gives a skewed view of the world. You have very different priorities from a lot of people. Nothing wrong with that. But you give up a ton over ideas like this.

I get more vacation time, more flexible hours and higher pay because I'm willing to be more flexible. Say it my way, it sounds like you are the one addicted to work.

Even in the SMB, there's someone to cover for vacation. There's no change during that period, just maintaining the status quo. One doesn't expect a full duplication of manpower, but for every job, there should be someone who can cover by poking the other person's stuff with a stick. If I'm on vacation, I don't expect anyone to do any ground-up system designs without me, but I'm sure that someone would be able to reset a stuck VM or fail over to a backup host in my absence. I've seen CEOs take vacation and delegate key authority to others for the duration. In the lone IT guy situation, if they have an on-call MSP or even cross-train another employee for the basics. When I was a lone IT guy, I had one of the customer service reps cross-trained to be able to reset passwords, etc. I'd have a spare computer ready to go, so that if one died while I was away, they could swap it out and carry on.

In larger businesses, there are processes and controls in place to deal with this. Smaller publicly traded firms are held to SOX, which implements many of these controls. In the manufacturing world, enterprise customers often want these controls in place prior to doing business.

@technobabble said:

@Hubtech said:

Maybe we are doing what we want to be doing. Maybe everybody is different? I dont hire a "goon" because I like the relationship I have with my clients, and i'm still looking for someone who will maintain the quality of service I provide.

As an other one man shop, I get it. Hire someone else, I would love to, but sometimes the reason a one man shop is a one man shop is because there is not enough work to pay two men.

Anyway, I am looking forward to time off. Last year I got 3 days out of town after Christmas and a week in the mountains of Georgia. The first was very relaxing for me. I could quickly and easily check emails, support tickets a few times a day. I even took 5 minutes to answer a frantic business client's question. Now the cabin in the GA mountains, well that sucked since we had no phone, no text, email etc. 14 of us using 128kb wireless connection. I didn't even have Sprint service. By the 3rd day, I didn't worry as we left the cabin daily for excursions and 5 miles down the road, everyone's phones and tablets went off at the same time showing us what we missed.

Next vacation I am hoping that I have better coverage not just for work, but I was also a week with Netflix. I could live without the social networks and luckily I was able to DL my Kindle books while in town or I would have gone crazy.

Northwest GA?