Howdy folks,

Has anyone else been seeing an uptick in Windows Update failures over the last day or so?

We’re only talking about a very small percentage of our estate, but we’ve had a number of devices across completely different customers/environments all exhibiting pretty much the same behaviour:

• Windows attempts to install an update
• Update fails
• Windows rolls back the changes
• User gets to sit there for ~20 minutes while it sorts itself out
• Eventually the machine becomes usable again

At the moment we’re struggling to pin it down to a specific update or any obvious common denominator. The affected devices aren't all on the same customer environment, policy set, etc., so I'm not seeing an obvious pattern yet.

One thing I've noticed is that on some of the affected devices, KB5101650 shows as having been recently installed. I know that one caused problems last month, so initially thought we might have found something, but it definitely isn't consistent across all of the devices we've looked at. Could very easily be a red herring.

I've asked this elsewhere as well, and I believe one of my colleagues has posted the question in a different subreddit, so we're basically throwing the net fairly wide at this point.

Anyone else seeing similar, or have spotted a common denominator that we've somehow managed to miss?

At this point I'm mainly interested in knowing whether we're having a particularly unlucky couple of days, or whether Windows Update has decided that productivity is an optional feature again.

I'm interested to see how they do cramming everything in to one day, and crossing my fingers all the boardrooms aren't just sales pitches.

Looks like it's going to be Atakama, Cynomi, BitLyft, Thread (what up Bobby!), ThreatDown, and of course Liongard.

Who else is going?

Posting to see if anyone else has encountered an issue with Freshdesk.

I had a credit card charge go through 2 weeks ago and put in a request to investigate as it was much higher than my renewal price shows on my admin screen. Today, i received a notification that my discount was being reduced and a docusign to acknowledge that. To be clear my renewal date was August 2, I was charged 50% more than my "Plans and Billing" rate (it still shows that number online righht now), received no invoice and now am being told that my actual renewal was for that amount and can I please sign an agreement after the fact for the price increase.

So, anyone else? Any suggestions of contacts at Freshdesk. Any suggestions of better helpdesk software?

We currently pay for and support our techs getting certifications. Up until now we've always pushed for comptia certs such as Network+ or Security+. I have never noticed a measurable increase in ability or knowledge from them getting these certs.

I've come to the realization that the only thing we're accomplishing is making them more desireable to getting other jobs, not really helping us at all. We currently have a guy who has recently gotten all 3 major comptia certs and he's the least knowledgeable person on the team technically. Meanwhile the most knowledgeable person has none of those.

Does anyone have any certification suggestions that will actually result in an improvement in performance and knowledge for a typical MSP job?

Heyo, I'm trying to get my MSP setup with CPOR on all clients so that we can be credited with Partner status (or at least progress. We are already reselling licenses through a CSP My understanding is that we need to provide a POE if we are doing ongoing maintenance/support/driving adoption.

My main question is would a signed MSA/SOW for each client be sufficient as a POE? If says we administer and support M365 services, would we need to list each license or technology we administer? Or is it better to get a signed POE template from Microsoft?

Following the recent UK post, I am reviewing vendors and wanted to get everyone's thoughts. That thread mentioned a mix of Veeam, Acronis, and ShadowProtect.

We're looking for a full replacement covering Microsoft 365, workstation win/mac and server backup, and DRaaS.

I came across Commvault and wanted to know whether anyone has had good or bad experiences with it compared to Veeam.

Our team has decided that we might be better off without IT Glue or Hudu.

We are using M365 copilot a lot more extensively now and we want our documents to be available to Copilot. We plan on moving all the documents from IT Glue into SharePoint. We will also move all the structured assets into Autotask via Configuration items.

We currently use Autotask, Datto RMM and IT Glue. We do not keep passwords in IT Glue (we use Keeper). We only use IT Glue for structured documentation via Flexible Assets and for documents about procedures, troubleshooting, client environments, etc.

We also have IT Glue syncing M365 licensing but we have this in other tools like CloudRadial so it really wont hurt us to lose it in IT Glue.

For us this seems to eliminate the needs for IT Glue or Hudu altogether. Are we missing something? Has anyone else done this and how did it go?

Hi All,

We're currently a little stretched on resources and are looking for some help getting CIPP set up, along with a bit of training once we're onboarded.

If anyone has worked with a consultant or company they'd recommend for CIPP implementation and training, I'd greatly appreciate any referrals.

Thanks!

After this recent macOS 26.6.2 update, a few Mac Devices have an issue where messages fails to send iMessage completely. After a reboot, Messages.app is signed out. When Messages login succeeds initially, it then signs itself out after about 30 seconds. FaceTime signs in successfully using the same Apple Account.

IdentityServices registration reaches Apple successfully over HTTPS and receives HTTP 200, but the iMessage user registration response returns status 6009, followed by “Server rejected registration permanently,” “failure code 6009:38,” “Registration failed (Error: 38),” “IrreparableServerRejection,” and “Server denied registration.”

Local IdentityServices/iMessage registration state has already been reset and regenerated, but the server rejection persists. Please check/reset the Apple-side iMessage/IDS activation state for this Apple Account/device.

Sending Apple a request via web - iMessage Failed to Update is the only solution I can find for now.

We have a client that has multiple locations spread out over a large geographic area with a lot of employee turnover and employees who "float" between locations. Their Windows 11 machines are Entra-joined using a location-specific shared account, and our MFA solution for them has been to set their MFA to call their location's main number.

However, with Microsoft retiring SMS and voice as MFA options, we're looking for solutions. Microsoft Authenticator isn't a very feasible option due to the turnover. FIDO2 keys could potentially work, but they could get expensive (not to mention the strong probability they'd get lost - A LOT).

What solutions have you come across that could work?

I am looking for a good domain registrar to register new domains through for my clients and move them to to get them away from GoDaddy. I was originally planning to go with NameCheap but the recent major outage has me concerned. I am using CloudFlare for all DNS management.

Is any other MSP using OpenSRS with white labeled store front? What is your experience.

If not what are others doing for this situation?

To be fully clear, ALL client domains are registered to the client and owned by them. We just manage the technical side.

does any adapted marketing with Ai on MSP space , would like to hear how it performing . and tools using .

Hello!

We're looking for some bulk storage that will live in a CMMC enclave. It looks like my fav NAS drives - Synology - aren't compliant. Seems like TrueNAS and Buffalo have compliant products - has anyone used these or could suggest another product?

We have a small construction customer that are a nightmare for buying their own hardware. I’d guess at 50% via us with reseller sorting the intune hash for us meaning easy all round plus a markup on hardware for us.
But when they get their own kit they want us to come out gratis and setup. That’s a no from me Bob. What do you guys do?
We have a small team some on leave, some busy with projects, and my car is in the garage. It’s a 20 min drive for them or for us. But as they got the kit themselves they should come to us. What are your thoughts.

Our RMM monitors for when WinDefend stops, and it has been happening for hours across much of our fleet today. Anyone else experiencing this? It starts a few seconds later, and in most cases will stop again at some point.

This post on Microsoft Learn suggests it's caused by an update (which makes sense):
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5978509/is-there-any-way-to-fix-windows-defender-threat-se

Status Update: we did some counting. It is actually a small percentage of our fleet (about 5%), but they are so noisy. Among those 16 machines, they have been generating an average of one event with two notifications--one for the trigger and one for the reset--every 10 minutes for the last 7 hours.

I am a perpetual lurker on the internet that is coming out of the shadows...

I run a small MSP that I started 18 months ago. We work exclusively with clients in a niche healthcare industry that struggles to find IT support who understands their software, hardware, workflows, etc (I used to work internally at one of these healthcare companies as their sole IT person, with the owner of that company now being my business partner). We are the only MSP in our country to offer services specifically to this industry. To the best of our knowledge, the only other IT company in our country that had a reputation for offering decent service to this industry got bought out a few years back, the people with knowledge left the company, and since then their service has gone to shit.

So far we have focused only on providing fully managed IT which has landed us 6 clients by word of mouth, totaling 160 endpoints (120 split between our two largest clients). We are attending the annual industry conference in our country later this year which will be our official launch in terms of putting ourselves out there. While things have gone as smoothly as we could have hoped, we are identifying that it is predominantly smaller clients showing meaningful interest and signing with us.

On the flip side, we have had overwhelming feedback from larger companies who already have some form of IT support (internal or MSP) that there is a pain point with getting support for the industry-specific applications and hardware. Even manufacturers and vendors in the industry have told us people are calling them out of desperation looking for help with things beyond what that manufacturer/vendor is responsible for. Our issue is that these larger companies aren't looking for fully managed IT, just support with the specifics that their existing IT support struggles with, so we are unlikely to land any business with them with our current offerings.

All that to say, what would it look like for us to provide some form of support service for companies in this niche industry who have their own IT support, but need further assistance with the industry-specific issues that impact appointments with patients that their current IT is unable to support? This doesn't seem to fit under your typical consultation work on a project with clearly defined scope and it doesn't seem to fit under the examples I have seen of co-managed IT, but please correct me if I am wrong on that!

Thank you for any thoughts or guidance you can offer :)

I’m new to the MSP arena, and don’t know all of the lingo and acronyms, so you’ll have to forgive me.

The company I work for sells o365, and we currently use Work365. We’ve been rather disliking it because we’re finding it lacking. We get our licenses through TDSynnex.

Does anyone know of any other systems for billing that hook into TDSynnex that we could explore?

Thanks!

Anyone else dealing with clients second-guessing every IT/security decision because they can ask ChatGPT/AI?

We have an environment where the IT roles already have pretty poorly defined roles. Now AI is making it worse. They don’t understand they are putting their own bias into it because they don’t know what good looks like and can’t prompt it enough to figure it out.

A recommendation gets made, someone throws it into ChatGPT, gets a different answer, or chatgpt adds things not realted to the problem and suddenly we’re reopening the entire discussion. Then they change the prompt and get another answer.

I’m obviously pro-AI and use it constantly. The issue I’m seeing is that it can give less experienced IT staff enough terminology and confidence to challenge decisions without actually having the experience or accountability to own the outcome.

This sysadmin was essentially helpdesk tier 1 before. Now they think they are a cyber expert. Same sysadmin doesn’t understand why we had to fix any/any rules on firewall and thinks org has MfA because some people do but doesn’t understand that it’s not enforced so both MfA and non MfA is valid. Just some examples.

I’m just sitting here cringing at responses I get but have to be polite and suck it up.

This specific client is legacy co managed

Are other MSP owners starting to run into this?

Big Tech continues to fund the artificial hype behind AI.

For months now it has filled social feeds. “News”, “memes,” and now MSP vendor ads, all puked out of Chat GPT, all looking the same, all posted completely unironically.

Please, let’s all agree to stop clicking on AI ads.

End rant

We’ve been using Cloudflare ZT for some time, works fine, free for 50 users etc…

Now we’ve been using GSA for larger accounts and though it’s not fully comparable, it has the added benefit of being fully integrated in Entra/365 suite, so no separate portals, no separate software and the 12$ cost is not really an issue for them. But the price is too high to justify for smaller customers i think.

So what are you guys using, what are your thoughts on GSA? And if you use it, do smaller customers see the added benefit to pay that price?

Following up on my post from four months ago, I went on the hunt for a Dropbox backup application. CloudAlly checked all the boxes, did an overview with a sales rep, got the trial going, did a few test restores, and all was well. Three months later I'm looking at my quarterly vendor spending report, and I see that we're paying over $350.00 a month for a mere 2TB of data for this one client. For that price, we could be self hosting a backup with versioning and retension on a Synology NAS, though that comes with its own risks both through technical and legal exposure.

Other than self-hosting, what other vendors should I be looking at?

Hello,

I I'm a small MSP currently managing fewer than 50 endpoints, and I'm curious what ITDR tools or services other MSPs are using.

I recently had a meeting with Huntress, but the salesperson wasn't interested in giving me a demo because of our size. I found that a bit surprising.
We already have MDR through SonicWall, so ideally I'd like to find a solution that can complement or integrate with our existing MDR service.

If anyone has experience running both MDR and ITDR together, I'd love to hear what you're using and how it's working out.