3. Set Up Tools

We’ll make the case that you just need these few essential tools (and one process) to get started with your first client, and be able to deliver value easily.

1. CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

As CRM is a tool where you store information about prospects and clients, including contact details, communication history, and sales opportunities. When a salesperson calls you and remembers your dogs name and favorite baseball team, that’s because they have a detailed record for you in their CRM that includes all of the contact that you’ve had over time.

For your use case, you want to prospect certain companies (covered in 5. Assess Local Market), and keep track of who you talked to, when, what was discussed, and what the follow-up actions are. If they said “I’m going on vacation to Aruba next week, let’s talk when I get back”, you want to make sure you remember to follow up after their vacation. Below are two great tools that are free-tier and/or self-hosted:

• EspoCRM -  Self-Hosted open source, self-hosted, lightweight, functional.

• HubSpot -  SaaS free tier available (up to 2 users), easy to use, integrates with many tools.

2. PSA (Professional Service Automation)

The CRM was for tracking leads and prospective customers, but once you have a paying client, there is quite a bit of information that you need to track about them. For example, you need to track:

• What services they are paying you for
• When their billing cycle is
• What devices you are managing for them
• Tickets that you have worked on for them
• Time logs for billable hours
• Documentation about their environment

This should not be a folder called “ABC Plumbing” with a bunch of random .txt files in it. In modern day there are rich platforms that are purpose-built for exactly this. We recommend:

• ITFlow -  Self-Hosted open source, self-hosted, lightweight, functional.

3. RMM (Remote Management & Access)

An RMM platform gives you visibility into your clients’ networks and devices, and allows you to remotely manage and troubleshoot them. This is essential for an MSP, as it allows you to provide proactive maintenance and support, rather than just reacting to issues as they arise. It can also save you the trip out to the client’s location for simple issues.

Use one:

• Tactical RMM  Self-Hosted (self-hosted, open source)
• MeshCentral  Self-Hosted (simple remote access)
• RustDesk  Self-Hosted -or-  SaaS (peer-to-peer remote control)

4. Backup Strategy

Backups are the easist to overlook, but the most dangerous to forget. A company without good backups is one ransomware attack away from going out of business - literally. Having no backups can be a company-ending event.

So, if you are the IT staff for this company, it’s on you to develop and maintain a rock-solid backup strategy. This translates to:

1. Regular, automated backups of all critical data (files, databases, system images)
2. Offsite backups (cloud or physical location) - following the “3-2-1 Rule”
3. Regular testing of backups to ensure data integrity and restorability. On the day of the outage is not the day to “try out” your backup system. It should be tested monthly at a minimum.

Recommended Backup Tools

There are unlimited ways to back up data, but the difficulty is you’ll often need to backup different operating systems, plus you need off-site storage. So, here is an opinionated stack that works well for small businesses:

• Windows Workstations: - use Kopia to compress, encrypt and deduplicate backups to a NAS.
• Windows Servers: - use Kopia to compress, encrypt and deduplicate backups to a NAS.
• macOS Workstations: - use Kopia to compress, encrypt and deduplicate backups to a NAS.
• Linux Servers: - use Kopia to compress, encrypt and deduplicate backups to a NAS.

With the backups on the NAS, the next step it to get them off-site. The easiest way is to use a cloud storage provider. Here are some good options:

With this in place, you now have 3 copies (workstation, NAS, and cloud), on 2 different media (local disk and cloud), with 1 copy off-site (cloud). You are following the 3-2-1 Rule.

Retention Policy

The last piece of this is just the retention policy. For small businesses, we recommend:

^*Some regulations may require longer retention periods.

Other key steps:

• Automate deletion of old backups based on this policy
• Test restores monthly
• Document the backup and restore process clearly
• Train relevant staff on the backup and restore process
• Regularly review and update the backup strategy as needed
• Ensure compliance with any relevant data protection regulations (like the 3 years above, maybe need to be 7 or 10 depending on your jurisdiction)
• Monitor backup jobs for failures and address issues promptly

5. Ventoy

The last tool is not a business tool, but a personal productivity tool for you as the MSP operator. When you are working on client sites, you will often need to boot from USB drives to do OS installs, diagnostics, virus scans, etc. Instead of carrying around a dozen different USB drives, each with a different tool on it, use Ventoy.

If you haven’t used this before, you may not realize just how useful this can be - far beyond just Operating System installs.

Below are some invaluable tools for an MSP field engineer to have to troubleshoot a wide variety of issues, all available on a single, bootable Ventoy USB drive:

1. Windows 10/11 Installation Media - for OS installs and repairs.
2. Hiren’s BootCD PE - a comprehensive suite of diagnostic and repair tools.
3. MemTest86 - for testing RAM for errors.
4. Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) - a collection of system diagnostic tools.
5. Kali Linux - for security assessments and penetration testing.
6. GParted Live - for disk partitioning and management.
7. Clonezilla Live - for disk cloning and imaging.
8. SystemRescueCD - for system rescue and recovery.
9. DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke) - for secure data wiping.
10. Parted Magic - for disk partitioning, data recovery, and secure erasure.
11. Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) - for password resets, virus scanning, and file recovery.