A new MSP customer signs. Sales hands over a CSV with 84 devices, vague vendor info, a couple of admin credentials, and a contract start date in seven days. The goal is to land Monday with inventory imported, devices discovered and fingerprinted, configs backed up, monitoring up, the customer’s runbook drafted, and the on-call team briefed.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://altostrat.io/docs/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Systems involved
| System | Role |
|---|---|
| Studio inventory | Bulk host import and folder structure. |
| SNMP, LLDP, CDP | Auto-discovery of vendor, model, OS, neighbors. |
| Studio diagrams | Topology drawn from inventory + neighbor data. |
| Configuration backup repo | Pull initial configs to S3-backed storage. |
| Zabbix or LibreNMS | Apply monitoring templates to each device class. |
| ConnectWise PSA | Customer record, contract, and contact tree. |
| NetBox or Device42 | Source of truth for circuits, IPs, and racks. |
Slack #cust-acme-corp | Team briefing channel. |
| Loom-style shared session | Walk the team through the new environment. |
Walkthrough
Import the CSV into a customer folder
Create a
Customers / ACME Corp folder. Paste or import the CSV. Studio creates one host per row, attaches placeholder protocols, and flags rows missing required fields.Attach Keychain credentials by folder
Create one Keychain entry per credential the customer provided. Set the entry on the folder so every host inherits it. Per-host overrides are added later for the few exceptions.
Run device fingerprinting
From the folder context menu, run
Detect device on every host. Studio reads SSH banners, runs vendor-safe probes, and fills vendor, OS, and version into the inventory. The handful that fail get reviewed by hand.Discover topology with LLDP and CDP
Copilot runs LLDP and CDP discovery from each switch. The neighbor table feeds an autogenerated network diagram with sites, edges, distribution, and access tiers.
Pull initial configuration backups
A
Initial config backup procedure runs against each network device, captures the running and startup config, and stores it in the customer’s S3 backup bucket with a timestamped filename and a SHA hash.Apply monitoring templates
Through the Zabbix (or LibreNMS) connector, Copilot applies the right template per detected vendor and class — Cisco edge, MikroTik access, Linux server, ESXi host, MikroTik AP. Triggers and thresholds are reviewed for the customer’s tolerance.
Create the customer runbook
Promote the discovery + backup work into a
Customer health check procedure for ACME, parameterized with site code. Save memories: Internet provider, business hours, after-hours contacts, change windows, customer-specific quirks.Wire up PSA and CMDB
Sync devices and contacts into ConnectWise PSA. Push the topology and IP plan into NetBox so circuit IDs, racks, and prefixes are documented from day one.
Where Studio earns its keep
- 84 devices go from a CSV to fingerprinted, monitored, backed up, and documented in hours, not days.
- The diagram, the monitoring config, the backup repository, and the PSA all reference the same inventory, so there is one source of truth from the first day.
- The recorded shared-session briefing is the on-boarding artifact every future on-call engineer can play back.
- The customer runbook procedure is reusable across customers — change the site code and the structure stays the same.
Related
Hosts and credentials
Folder structure, bulk import, and Keychain inheritance.
Network diagrams
Generate the topology from inventory and discovery output.