Highland MSP FAQs

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Managed Service Plan FAQs | General Questions | Hosted Exchange | Hosted SharePoint | Hosting Operations

Managed Service Plan FAQs

 

• What are Managed Services (AKA Maintenance Plan)?
• A basic package of services where every day, week, month we do various things that check, monitor and maintain your network to make sure you don’t get a virus, to make sure your backups are working properly and provide you with just the basic network support that you need with valuable remote support.
• Consider the analogy, if your network was a car, we’re talking about oil changes, making sure there’s gas in there, making sure the windshield wipers are working, the headlights are working, topping up fluids and there’s air in the tires. Basic stuff.

 

• What is Break/Fix?
• This is the model most people associate with Technical Support. In this model, when something stops working, a call is made and the IT engineer comes out and resolves the issue. A lot like a fireman waiting for a fire, the IT engineer is waiting for a network or computer to fail. With the newer managed services model, the engineer is trained to recognize problems at a very early stage. Computer systems rarely fail without some kind of warning that goes on weeks or months before it fails. An engineer trained to look for these warnings can fix the issue before there is a total system failure.

 

• What’s the purpose of a maintenance plan?
• To provide you with BUSINESS RESULTS: peace of mind reduced operating costs, speed up productivity, lower risk and to remove the complexity of managing IT issues.

 

• Why do I need a maintenance plan?
• The direct response to that question is How important is your data? You can’t just setup a network and ignore it. There are critical components and systems and activities that you want to make sure are functioning properly or it can spell disaster for your business. Here’s a common example,

 

• Outlook. Email’s working fine on the surface with no problems. However, the email data file that contains your Inbox, Sent Items, Contacts, Calendar and Tasks is growing out of control. The next time you go to use Outlook it will not launch or maybe it will start but you can’t send email or some of your mail is missing or you can no longer open Inbox subfolders. You are dead in the water. A corrupt Outlook data file is a common problem and disastrous on many levels; your work is stopped and there’s a good chance you’re not going to get any of your mail back. What is the financial cost of this happening? It would never have happened, had someone been monitoring your network.

 

• What’s included in Highland MSP’s managed service plan?
• A more detailed description our plans can be reviewed in our document, Our Plans Explained but here’s the basic outline;
• Patch management
• Firewall management
• Routine desktop maintenance
• Network monitoring including
• backups
• system logs
• disk space
• Exchange Server
• hardware changes
• file and folder security
• RAID status
• software installation
• Hardware and software auditing
• Spyware detection and removal
• UPS management
• Adding/removing users
• Helpdesk support and troubleshooting
• Quarterly and/or annual review
• Training
• Vendor liaison
• Installation of software updates
  
  
• What is not included in the plan?
• Any network, PCs, laptops or other peripheral equipment or hardware which are not included in the agreement and not on the inventory.
• Installation of a line-of-business application and support (may be integrated into an existing plan)
• Project work: the cost, including labor, of any new or additional hardware, replacement parts, and peripherals added to the network including necessary systems upgrades where agreed.
• Cost of repair or replacement of equipment due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control such as act of God, unauthorized software or hardware adversely affecting the network environment and damage to any hardware through misuse or malicious intent.
• Cost of repair or replacement, due to a failure to comply with the terms of the agreement.
• Servicing or maintenance (including consumables) of Printers or PDA’s, (this is a manufacturer’s responsibility).
• All items classed as consumables e.g. tape media from backups

 

• What is a VAR?
• Value Added Reseller. A company that takes a service or a feature, it could be hardware or software or both, and resells it as a complete “turn-key” solution. The term VAR is used interchangeably with Managed Service Provider. Both terms implicate the one who’s trusted to take care of the IT needs of small or medium-sized business. The value is born out of the relationship, the trust, the certifications, and the ability of the VAR/MSP to execute on the IT products and services it resells.

 

General Questions

• What is Cloud Computing?
• Technobabble for up there on the Internet (the cloud) there are some very cool tools available that allow you to access your own rented, and often free, software programs, virtual storage space and computing power on demand through the Internet. An a la cart of technological advances that you just pay for as you go so you don’t have to invest in servers and network infrastructures and people to support them. These advances will make your business more competitive because you’ll only have to pay for what you use, when you need it.
• It removes a lot of the pain of sourcing, purchasing and installing IT hardware and software when all you want to do is plug in and get working.
• FUTRURE ALERT! Everything that we think of as a computer today is really just a device that connects to the big computer that is the cloud. Whereby in future, when there’s enough bandwidth (connection speed), reliability, security etc, there won’t even be a notion of a cloud; it’ll just simply be like the power grid serving up electricity, we’ll be serving up data and applications to and from the cloud.

 

• What is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)?
• More technobabble for an increasingly popular way of renting and paying for software via monthly subscription for however many users you need at the time, thus scaling on demand as opposed to buying a “one-shot” software license at the outset for a set number of users. For example, Microsoft’s licensing structure can be incredibly complicated to navigate on your own whereas renting it from Highland MSP is incredibly simply by comparison because we’ve already dealt with all of that for you.
• Instead of installing and running software on your own computers, businesses open accounts with the SaaS provider like Highland MSP or Google Apps.
• Supporting software like Exchange Server internally can be a very costly and complex thing to do. What this means is the number of SaaS subscribers will continue to grow in future.

Hosted Exchange

• How does a Hosted Microsoft Exchange Solution work?
• Hosted Microsoft Exchange offered by Highland Hosting allows customers access to Microsoft’s newest business-class messaging platform without the purchase, implementation, or maintenance headaches of an in-sourced solution.
• Highland Hosting deploys Microsoft Exchange Server in our redundant, carrier-grade data center, and offers business-class e-mail as a hosted service via Microsoft Outlook 2007, the Web, or a mobile device.


• What version of Exchange do you host?
• Hosted Exchange 2007.

• What if I use Microsoft Outlook today? Why would I switch to Highland's hosted Exchange?
• Microsoft Outlook is the e-mail client that works with Microsoft Exchange, so a “switch” is not really required. Outlook is the client software that works with the Exchange e-mail server. Your users can take advantage of the familiar user interface of Outlook and now gain all the benefits of shared calendars, mobile e-mail, Outlook Web Access, continuous backups of the system, and more with Exchange Server.

 

• Can our customers access their e-mail with Outlook as well as POP3 clients?
• Yes. Highland Hosting supports access to Exchange accounts via the following technologies:
• Outlook Anywhere using Outlook 2007 with automatic configuration (installation media available via download)
• Entourage
• Secure POP3
• Secure IMAP
• Exchange ActiveSync on Windows Mobile, Palm, and iPhone devices
• Outlook Web Access
• Blackberry Enterprise Services (at an additional per-user charge)

 

• Because of security concerns, I have traditionally run Exchange on-premise. How secure is Highland Hosting’s Hosted Exchange?
• Highland Hosting’s Hosted Exchange Service is based on Exchange Server 2007, which offers a number of security enhancements over previous versions. Highland Hosting’s hosted Exchange also provides a steady stream of updates to virus and spam defenses to proactively defend against e-mail-borne threats.

 

• I have a lot of e-mail in my current system that I would like to maintain and use moving forward. Can you import old POP3-based e-mail?
• Yes. Highland Hosting can import your existing e-mail files—from POP3 systems, internal Exchange implementations, and even other hosted Exchange services.

 

• E-mail migrations have traditionally been very painful. What is involved in switching to your service? Do you have documentation for the migration?
• Highland Hosting understands the transition issues associated with Microsoft Exchange. We have developed and structured, proven migration process, and we provide detailed migration documentation. For most customers, the service can be implemented internally by walking through a few simple steps. For customers who would like help with the migration, Highland Hosting can provide professional services upon request. Click here to request more information.

 

• Does Highland Hosting’s Hosted Exchange Service work with my Palm Treo, iPhone 2.0, or Blackberry device?
• Yes, Highland Hosting supports mobile device synchronization through Microsoft ActiveSync. ActiveSync is automatically shipped with Windows Mobile devices; some versions of the Palm OS might need to be updated to include ActiveSync (click here for a link to the update). Blackberry devices are supported by Exchange Server 2007 for an additional monthly fee.

 

• How do you enforce global policy on Exchange mailboxes for items such as junk e-mail exclusions, archive settings, and send and receive intervals?
• Highland Hosting provides a variety of mechanisms to enforce different kinds of policies:
• Policies that can be controlled such as mailbox quota, whether or not a user has access to Outlook are controlled through the “Exchange Plan” chosen for each user in the “User Info” page of the self-service portal.
• Archive settings of Outlook cannot be centrally controlled. For customers interested in enforcing archiving (such as for the purpose of regulatory compliance), Highland Hosting offers Microsoft’s Exchange Hosted Archive service. Click here for more information on Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services.
• With the exception of POP, IMAP, and Entourage, all Exchange access methods we support send and retrieve new mail immediately. There is no need to set send/receive intervals. For POP, IMAP, and Entourage, we do not provide any means of centrally managing send/receive intervals.

 

• What are your send and receive intervals?
• With the exception of POP, IMAP, and Entourage, all Exchange access methods Highland Hosting supports send and retrieve new mail immediately; there is no need to set send/receive intervals. For POP, IMAP, and Entourage, Highland Hosting does not provide any means of centrally managing send/receive intervals.

 

• Why do I need a separate company GAL and not simply just look at the system GAL that is updated real time?
• When connected, Outlook users can look up recipients in either their private Global Access List (GAL) which is labeled “Global Address List,” which is updated in near-real-time, or the Offline Address Book, which is updated once per day and is identified as the customer’s name. The Offline Address Book is also available offline, and is the default address book displayed by Outlook.

 

• Can I prevent duplication of Blackberry contacts?
• Yes. Blackberry devices can be configured in two different ways: to either replace Blackberry contacts, or add to Blackberry contacts. You may experience duplicate contact information if this setting is set to add to. Similar behavior can be caused through the use of Blackberry desktop software.

 

• The download process for the local address book does not always work. Even when I clear the “Download changes since last send and receive” option.
• Distribution of Exchange Address Books depends on the Exchange e-mail autoconfiguration system. This system can be tested by using the procedure described in the following Microsoft TechNet article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397225(EXCHG.80,printer).aspx. If this test fails, you should contact support (support@highlandmsp.com).

 

• Is there an interface to view quarantine or other settings of the spam filtering services?
• Yes. Highland Hosting offers a service called “Customized Spam and Virus Filtering” for $3/user/month, which provides spam/virus/content filters and offers reports that can be customized on a self-service basis. If customers do not subscribe to this service, they will have anti virus and antispam protection, but no whitelists, blacklists, or other customizations.

 

• Are spam and virus filtering included in your hosted e-mail services?
• Yes. All Highland Hosting e-mail solutions include antivirus mechanisms on both the hub servers and mailbox servers, addressing spam whether it arrives from the outside world or from someone internally. We also employ retroactive virus scanning in the mailbox servers in order to catch items that may have been infected in the brief period between when a virus comes into existence and when signatures are available for it. All mail solutions also include antispam mechanisms on our firewall and on the hub servers. In addition, Outlook and Entourage users enjoy the benefits of their built-in antispam mechanisms.

 

• What happens to e-mail that has been spam filtered? Does it deliver it all anyway but mark it as spam in some way?
• Approximately 90% of the time e-mail that has been spam filtered is rejected prior to being allowed into our system. Therefore, most messages associated with suspicious attempted connections are not available for retrieval because they are rejected by our systems. Messages flagged as spam and routed to users’ junk mail folders are retrievable by those users. Subscribers of our “Customized Spam and Virus Filtering” service can create rules that compliment and/or override the standard measures that are built into our mail solutions.

 

• What happens when a real e-mail message is identified as spam and is blocked? Can users configure safe senders in Outlook to prevent incoming messages from being blocked by the spam filters?
• Yes. Highland Hosting offers a service called “Customized Spam and Virus Filtering” for $3/user/month, which provides spam/virus/content filters and offers reports that can be customized on a self-service basis. If customers do not subscribe to this service, they will have basic anti virus and antispam protection, but no whitelists, blacklists, or other customizations.

 

• What backup and restore services for Exchange do you provide in your basic price? Is the restore capable at a file level?
• All services are backed up by continuous backup systems that provide the ability to restore to within the last 15 minutes. In addition to Exchange and SharePoint backups, Highland Hosting provides three week deleted item retention, which can be accessed by users on a self-service basis.

 

• Can I buy additional backup services?
• Yes. Highland Hosting offers an Exchange Hosted Archiving service, which maintains an indefinite, on-line journalized archive that is suitable for corporate legal discovery requirements.

 

• What support do you provide for provisioning Exchange?
• Exchange can be provisioned on a self-service basis by Highland Hosting or customer administrators through our automated self-service Web portal. The portal’s Graphical User Interface and high level of automation greatly simplifies the provisioning process. Highland Hosting can also provide deployment and migration support on a time and materials basis.

 

• When I send meeting requests, they only list my name, but no meeting or comment details. Can this be fixed?
• Yes. By default, the details and comments listed in the meeting request are deleted when the resource accepts the request. Please note that this is a feature you can enable through the Outlook Web Access (OWA) interface:
• Log in to OWA using an account that belongs to the “Managers” group (that is, the group with full access to the resource mailboxes).
• Use the "Open Other Mailbox" feature to open the Resource Mailbox:

 

• To open another mailbox:
• Click your name in the upper-right corner of the window to open the Open Other Mailbox dialog box.
• Enter the name or alias of the mailbox that you want to open.
• If more than one match is found, Outlook Web Access displays a list of possible matches.
• Click the name of the mailbox that you want to open.
• When the mailbox opens in a new window, Select Options, Resource Settings.
• Under the Resource Privacy options section, you will find several options to configure under the subsection “Always delete the following when sent to this resource.”  Deselect the items that are currently stripped from your meeting invitations.

Hosted Sharepoint

 

• How do you ensure security of hosted documents? What procedures are in place to assure prospects that documents cannot be accessed by others?
• Like each of our hosted products, SharePoint takes advantage of an Active Directory structure shared at the end customer level. Members of the directory are each assigned a role and SharePoint automatically provides role-based security and single sign-on authentication. In addition, individual files and directories can be given specific security attributes. In addition, Highland Hosting’s data center is protected by four layers of card-access barriers, 24x7 video surveillance at all entry points and on each isle of the raised floor area, plus 24x7 professional physical security staff. Individual equipment cabinets are locked and not accessible to maintenance staff.

 

• Is provisioning of new clients a manual or automated process? If manual, who performs this task?
• Automated. Highland Hosting provides a self-service Web portal that allows customer administrators to provision new services.

 

• What backup and restore services for SharePoint sites do you provide in your basic price?
• All services are backed up by continuous backup systems that provide the ability to restore to within the last 15 minutes. In addition to Exchange and SharePoint backups, Highland Hosting provide three week deleted item retention, which can be accessed by users on a self-service basis.

 

• Will my SharePoint development team have sufficient access to create and deploy custom Web parts?
• Yes. Custom Web parts can be uploaded to a site collection’s Web Part Gallery through the “Site Settings” user interface built into SharePoint. In addition, all of the following SharePoint Web services can be accessed, with designated customer users granted Site Administrator access:

 

• Administration Web Service (This Web service is used for creating and configuring new site collections. For customers with private SharePoint servers, this Web service can be made directly accessible. For customers using the shared Windows
• SharePoint Services infrastructure, Highland Hosting provides alternative APIs that provide equivalent functionality without bypassing our provisioning infrastructure. The self-service portal also provides a UI for these functions.)
• Alerts Web Service
• Authentication Web Service
• Copy Web Service
• Document Workspace Web Service
• Forms Web Service
• Imaging Web Service
• List Data Retrieval Web Service
• Lists Web Service
• Meetings Web Service
• People Web Service
• Permissions Web Service
• SharePoint Directory Management Web Service
• Site Data Web Service
• Sites Web Service
• Search Web Service
• Users and Groups Web Service
• Versions Web Service
• Views Web Service
• Web Part Pages Web Service
• Webs Web Service

 

• What controls, if any, can be managed for SharePoint clients?
• Highland Hosting’s self-service Web portal allows customer administrators to control how many site collections customers create, their overall storage quota, and which users have access to SharePoint site collections. Access can be controlled on a more granular basis through SharePoint.

 

General Operations

 

• Is there a free trial that we can offer our customers without incurring any additional charges?
• Yes. Our standard multi-tenant services such as Exchange, customer relationship management (CRM), and SharePoint all provide a free trial period that covers:
• The first partial month (if any)
• The first full month Highland Hosting begins invoicing at the start of the second full month of service.

 

• How do you ensure uptime?
• Ensuring uptime begins with working closely with Microsoft to develop best practices for hosting Microsoft applications, and then applying those best practices in production.
• Our production systems are comprised exclusively of premium manufacturer hardware and software with extensive use of redundancy. All systems are monitored 24x7 for performance, load, and reliability by individuals with extensive experience hosting Microsoft-based technology.

 

• Do you provide multiple distributed servers over diverse data centers?
• Yes. Business continuance solutions are available with services distributed across data centers throughout North America. All solutions utilize data centers with redundant commercial power and network connections, as well as redundant power generation and distribution systems internally.

 

• Do you provide data backup?
• Yes. Highland Hosting provides continuous data backup with recovery points every 15 minutes. Exchange and SharePoint solutions provide for two weeks of user-initiated restores of deleted files.

 

• What's your guaranteed uptime?
• Highland Hosting guarantees 99.99% uptime.

 

• What's the penalty if you don't meet your uptime?
• Highland Hosting provides service credits prorating three (3) times the total number of outage minutes on a monthly basis.

 

• How do you resolve performance issues?
• Performance issues are resolved before becoming apparent to customers whenever possible. Unanticipated performance issues can be addressed immediately through the deployment of additional hardware from on-site inventory, and/or reconfiguration by on-staff engineers. Our team has hundreds of years of combined experience and works closely with Microsoft Premier Support.

 

• During outages, what's your guarantee for restoring services?
• Outages, like performance issues, are resolved quickly and effectively through the deployment of additional hardware from on-site inventory, and/or reconfiguration by on-staff engineers with hundreds of years of combined experience, and/or consultation with Microsoft Premier Support.

 

• When are your maintenance windows?
• From 22:00 to 24:00 Pacific Time on the second Tuesday of every month. By conducting this regular maintenance, Highland Hosting is typically able to apply Microsoft security patches within 24 hours of their release.

 

• How do you ensure data privacy?
• Highland Hosting’s solutions scrupulously follow the guidance provided by the manufacturer to ensure data privacy in hosted configurations. This guidance varies from application to application.

 

• What's your policy for data and server security?
• All solutions are hosted in facilities with entrances and computer rooms visually monitored on a 24x7 basis. Physical access to the data center requires passing through two secure entryways, and access to equipment requires passage through an additional secure barrier.

 

• What encryption strength can we use for our data transmission and storage?
• All hosted solutions require access through a minimum of 128-bit encryption.

 

• Do you provide dedicated or shared servers for each service?
• Yes. Dedicated servers and hybrid solutions are also available depending on client requirements. Unless otherwise specified, Highland Hosting’s solutions are deployed on shared servers according to the software manufacturers’ guidelines.

 

• If in the future we needed to, how would we migrate off of Highland's system?
• Highland Hosting’s agreements specifically guarantee your ownership and access to your data, regardless of the circumstance. The same techniques that can be used to easily migrate data to our service can be used in reverse if customers choose to discontinue service.

 

• What's our recourse if you go out of business? What happens to our data and the application we were renting?
• Highland Hosting’s agreements specifically guarantee your ownership and access to your data, regardless of the circumstance. The same techniques that can be used to easily migrate data to our service can be used in reverse if for any reason Highland Hosting is unable to continue offering services. All application software is either owned by customers or provided on a monthly rental basis by us. Unless otherwise stated in a specific service description, this rental software is always a currently-supported and commercially available version of the application that can be purchased independently, or rented through another hosting company.

 

• If we need customization of the application as a service, can we do that?
• Yes. Customization varies from application to application. In cases such as Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 where customization can be performed directly through the application’s user interface, there is no additional charge for such customization.

 

• Can I or must I obtain certificates through Highland Hosting for use with Highland Hosting services?
• Highland Hosting doesn’t “sell” certificates in the retail sense. Instead, we obtain certificates on our customer’s behalf so that services we sell can be brought online quickly and cost-effectively. These site certificates are known to work well with our application and firewall architectures, as well as the client devices supported by our services. Because relatively few certificate vendors were well-established by the time Microsoft started shipping Windows Mobile 5.0—still the most common mobile device operating system used by our customers—and because using other vendors can involve error-prone installations of chained certificates, our choice of certificate vendors is very limited. We have chosen Entrust because their certificates are easy to install across all the types of server and network devices we employ, and because we have never experienced a problem with them being recognized by all of the client devices we support.