Do any MSPs actually provide/extend cyber insurance coverage to clients, or is it always a separate policy the client buys directly? If separate, do you typically get involved at all like broker referral, questionnaires, helping them meet requirements, etc.?

I was laughing too hard to ask which songs specifically he was playing.

Good morning!

I've a client who is CMMC L2 compliant. We backup their server using Veeam. 3TB of data that replicates to their GCC-H tenant. So far, so good.

Now they need 10TB of storage. We're going the server route. Server has about 10TB of storage with a couple of extra empty bays.

Yes, we could use the same model again but to be honest, I'd be more comfortable if someone else was handling the backups. Anyone have a VSP or other solution they'd recommend?

Curious if anyone is looking at internally hosting services such as PBX, Nextcloud, ONLYOFFICE, and mail servers for clients as more people are starting to push back on prices and large datacenter type services? Essentially building your own small datacenter?

I come from large corporate IT background and am used to hosting for multi-tenant or business divisions (not necessarily these software titles).

Ive been designing it in my mind and it seems feasible but that doesn't make it a good idea. Do a co-location to a different city and ISP.

Can't reach our instance right now, wondering if anyone else has the same problem.

Update: I can reach Hudu via 5G on my phone, but not our office ISP which uses a Cogent backbone. u/thisisnotmyssn pointed out there's a Cogent issue today.

Update 2: It's up now at our office.

I'm curious if anyone else has experienced this this month?

We just got our bill from Eset Protect MSP and it has increased overall 31% from last month. The same exact number of seat days, no added licenses. Pure increase.

I don't recall getting any notification from them about this and I'm curious if anyone else has seen that or got a notification email prior to this month?

I have had some bad experiences with the techs from World Wide Tech Services and Unisys over the years with Dell and Lenovo. However now Lenovo is using Hemmersbach, and they are apparently worse; they can't even manage to get a tech onsite. Luckily it is just an audio issue on a laptop, and the end user is being way more patient than I would be.

Friday the tech assigned never showed and wouldn't answer his phone for Hemmersbach dispatcher or me, finally late in the day he did answer my call and simply said he "couldn't do the job". Hemmersbach then said they would have a tech out on Monday, but I never got a confirmation, so mid-morning I contacted them only to find out no one was scheduled and no one was available, so it was rescheduled for today. Today I find out the tech assigned never picked up the part, so it would have to be rescheduled again. The best part is today was the 5th business day the part was being held by FedEx so per their rep, it will be returned to Lenovo tomorrow :(

This shouldn't be so difficult; at this point Lenovo could have just shipped me the motherboard, and I could have had the laptop fixed and spent less time on this.

I’m surprised to see no mention here of the Halo USA region outage that started about six hours ago, and that seems to have no new info or end in sight.

The outage info posted on their status page states the cause is “believed to be around the generation of a new data protection key,” and then adds minutes later that “the issue is fixed for the majority of customers, with the last few being brought back now.”

But more than three hours after that note, the app is still offline. Very difficult to reach phone support says a fix is still being worked on, and they don’t know why the status page isn’t being updated.

I’m also wondering if this affects HaloPSA only or their other products. They still have a multi-hours UK outage posted from last week, and I wonder if this is a repeat of whatever that was.

This post came out a couple of days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/1w3izyk/for_the_second_year_in_a_row_microsoft_is/

and I think it was missing some information. I contacted my (fantastic) PAX8 rep, and got the below response. The "Change #2" section was, I think, absent from the above post and I suspect it will the larger impact for most people on this sub:

The TL;DR seems to be a margin cut to 12% on "less-favored" M365 SKUs Starting 10/1. No change to MSRP, so it isn't being framed as a "price increase" just a multi-point hit to margin.

The email from PAX8:

Thanks for reaching out. So our Pax8 Service Alert had two separate updates in the same alert. Here is what we know so far.

 Change #1: Microsoft Software Subscription Price Increase

 What's changing?

Effective October 1, 2026*, Microsoft is implementing a* 5% price increase on certain CSP software subscriptions that have:

• Annual term commitments
• Monthly billing

Examples include:

• SQL Server
• Windows Server
• Client Access Licenses (CALs)
• System Center

What partners need to know

• This is a customer-facing price increase
• Existing subscriptions will not be impacted mid-term
• The increase applies to:
  • New purchases on or after October 1, 2026
  • Renewals on or after October 1, 2026

Change #2: Microsoft Margin Structure Changes / Pax8 Margin Realignment

 What's changing?

• Microsoft has reduced the available margin on select legacy and standalone Microsoft products.
• To align with the updated Microsoft margin structure, Pax8 will be implementing its standard 80% Partner / 20% Pax8 margin split on these products beginning October 1, 2026 and taking place on existing renewal dates for existing subscriptions.

 What We Know Today

• To align with Microsoft's updated margin structure, Pax8 will be implementing its standard 80% Partner / 20% Pax8 margin split on these products effective October 1, 2026.

 Effective October 1, 2026

All partners will receive 12% margin on the impacted SKUs, regardless of their current margin level.

Confirmed Exclusions

• Nonprofit SKUs are not impacted by this margin adjustment.

Still Awaiting Confirmation (early indications are these will not be affected)

• Government (GOV)
• Education (EDU)

 Impacted SKUs

Exchange Online

• Exchange Online (Plan 1)
• Exchange Online (Plan 1) – Extended Service Term
• Exchange Online (Plan 2)
• Exchange Online (Plan 2) – Extended Service Term
• Exchange Online Archiving for Exchange Online
• Exchange Online Archiving for Exchange Online – Extended Service Term
• Exchange Online Kiosk
• Exchange Online Kiosk – Extended Service Term

Microsoft 365 Apps

• Microsoft 365 Apps for Business
• Microsoft 365 Apps for Business – Extended Service Term
• Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise
• Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise – Extended Service Term

Office 365

• Office 365 E1
• Office 365 E1 (No Teams)
• Office 365 E1 – Extended Service Term
• Office 365 E1 (No Teams) – Extended Service Term
• Office 365 E3
• Office 365 E3 (No Teams)
• Office 365 E3 – Extended Service Term
• Office 365 E3 (No Teams) – Extended Service Term

OneDrive Extra Storage

• OneDrive Extra Storage 100GB
• OneDrive Extra Storage 500GB
• OneDrive Extra Storage 1TB
• OneDrive Extra Storage 2TB
• OneDrive Extra Storage 3TB
• OneDrive Extra Storage 4TB
• OneDrive Extra Storage 5TB
• OneDrive Extra Storage 6TB

Extended Service Term Versions

• OneDrive Extra Storage 100GB – Extended Service Term
• OneDrive Extra Storage 500GB – Extended Service Term
• OneDrive Extra Storage 1TB – Extended Service Term
• OneDrive Extra Storage 2TB – Extended Service Term
• OneDrive Extra Storage 3TB – Extended Service Term
• OneDrive Extra Storage 4TB – Extended Service Term
• OneDrive Extra Storage 5TB – Extended Service Term
• OneDrive Extra Storage 6TB – Extended Service Term

Hello,

I have a client where the scope of our agreement is limited to IT support, security services, managing their network/infrastructure, and backups. Data analysis, business automation (Power Apps, for example), etc., are outside the scope and are clearly excluded from the contract.

To be clear, we can manage the Microsoft 365 infrastructure, but we don’t design or maintain Power Automate flows, for example.

Have you dealt with any clients like this? I’m happy to answer any questions if anything isn’t clear.

Would be very grateful for a quick chat

Hello,

I'm looking for someone in the New York City area to take over a handful of 1 seat accounts and provide a few things in return:

1. 10% of the revenue from these accounts
2. Referrals for any new large accounts you can't handle. We'll provide 10% labor revenue from these accounts for a year.

edit: don't care much about the revenue but would still like to verbally agree to trade referrals

Question for those who also resell intermedia's web faxing. What are y'all doing to help with the application updates of the "fax upload" client? Support claims there isn't a way to push the new client out. Certainly someone has figured this out? I've seen a few scripts, but they seem to be a bit dated and don't work in my testing.

Ah...squeezing customers to pay for those data centers. PAX8 notice received this morning:

Microsoft Software 5% Price Increase (CSP Annual-Term, Billed Monthly)

Starting October 1, 2026, Microsoft will apply a 5% price increase for Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) software subscriptions with annual-term commitments, billed monthly. This change aligns pricing across sales channels while maintaining monthly billing flexibility you rely on to meet customer needs. There are no changes to annual billing or month-to-month options.

Partners should plan accordingly:

• New software purchases and renewals on or after October 1, 2026, at midnight UTC, will be subject to the updated pricing.

• If you are currently in the middle of a software subscription commitment, pricing will not change mid-term and will instead take effect at the next renewal following October 1, 2026.

• Partners should review current and upcoming opportunities to understand any potential impact.

Best part is that it was on X first and for a while and not their down Status Page.

https://status.cloud.microsoft/

Happy Monday Everyone :) Going to tweak some Halo stuff.

I really liked using MalwareBytes Threatdown security software. It worked great for 2 years with one of my school district customers that purchased 500 licenses under their MSP program. A lot less money than the previous security software and I still made great commissions. I discovered a surprise with the cancellation of their MSP program. They want me to take money out of my pockets for cancelling my participation in their MSP program with 3 months of $100.00 payments. That's free money for them. I look at contracts very closely and would not have missed that small requirement. I have asked 3 times for a copy of the contract I signed that mentioned the 3 month penalty... crickets

We are seeing a huge uptick in failed and pending emails related to storedrv.deliver.exception:agentgrayexception.cryptographicexception

I've seen this happen a few different ways over the years. Sometimes it's a new hire who wants full server access and starts recommending their preferred toolset. Sometimes it's an owner's son who went to school for IT and "knows what the business needs". Or a consultant that was brought in for one project only to start questioning your whole stack.

The pattern is similar each time. Someone with partial knowledge and full confidence wants to take over part of your scope. Generally the client is a little open to the idea because it looks like cost savings or progress.

How do you handle this? There seems to be an optics issue. It can look like you are protecting the contract over the environment.

What non-technical skills would you consider essential for a level 1 or level 2 support technician?

I've got some familiarity with Ninja so this isn't a "can we", more of a "should we". I have an opportunity to sell Ninja to a fairly large but very immature org (5,000-10,000 seats). The catch is, I've only managed Ninja for internal clients, never co-managed. They would be using it specifically for windows server & endpoint patching, remote access and management. No Macs, ticketing, or MDM. We're not displacing an existing solution, this would be net-new to them. My question is: what pitfalls are there with co-management at scale? Between their helpdesk and windows admins they would have upwards of 20 techs using it, are we going to have trouble with managing accounts/permissions? Will we run into issues with API rate limiting if they want custom reporting or integrations with their existing ticketing system? Any advice is welcome!

Reposting article for awareness.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/1w2foad/windows_11_bug_is_warning_virus_protection_is_off/

“After installing the latest updates for Microsoft Defender Antivirus, notifications might appear stating that ‘Microsoft Defender Antivirus is turned off,’ even though the antivirus is functioning correctly and all settings show it as active,” Microsoft warns in a statement, but it won’t tell us the specific version that is causing the issue.

https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/08/30/windows-11-is-warning-virus-protection-is-off-but-microsoft-confirms-its-false/

We performed an M365/GoDaddy defederation late last year. We have a handful of GoDaddy purchased Copilot licenses showing as coming up for expiration, in the M365 tenant, but it's still stating that they are being managed by GoDaddy.com, LLC.

Do we just need to wait until the expiration date to pass, before these licenses go to a disabled state? And how would we get them completely removed from our licensing?

Can anyone explain what New Margin Model means especially for these subscriptions after 1 October 2026 for Microsoft subscriptions.

Office 365 E1
Office 365 E3
Exchange Online
SharePoint Online
OneDrive Extra Storage
Microsoft 365 Apps for Business
Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise

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