@scottalanmiller said in Zoho Zillum - family oriented mail and cloud storage:

@Pete-S said in Zoho Zillum - family oriented mail and cloud storage:

Zillum consists of:

Zoho Mail - 25GB mail storage per account, calendars etc
Zoho Workdrive - 0.5TB / 1TB / 2TB of total team storage
Zoho Cliq - Slack like team chat
Zoho Vault - Zoho's team oriented password manager
Zoho Office - Zoho's office apps

Here's more info and pricing:
https://www.zoho.com/zillum

So for a family of four, that's $2.28/user/mo. And you get 25GB.

Enterprise is $3/user/mo. And you get 30GB.

But with enterprise you can mix and match by user. If you have users (teens, adults) who want the extra features, you pay the $3. If you only want email/cliq for the others, it's just $1. So if you don't want the office suite for everyone, you can save money with the business plan pretty easily. And get more storage. but I think you lose Vault.

What do you mean exactly by "Enterprise"? The only "Enterprise" I know is that some apps have an enterprise tier, for example Zoho Cliq. There is no Enterprise bundle that I know of.

Are you perhaps referring to the Zoho Workplace bundles? The "Standard" tier ($3/user/month) doesn't have much cloud storage and the "Professional" is double the price ($6/user/month) but it's the closest to Zillum features and storage.

@scottalanmiller said in Zoho Zillum - family oriented mail and cloud storage:

@Pete-S said in Zoho Zillum - family oriented mail and cloud storage:

@scottalanmiller said in Zoho Zillum - family oriented mail and cloud storage:

But there isn't much of a family price break.

Well, just the Workdrive Starter package is $2.5 per user normally, which is more than Zillum.

$3 is the total for all of those features. And check the four user pricing.

No, it's not. As I said you're looking at Zoho app tiers with a lot less features and storage.

@scottalanmiller said in Zoho Zillum - family oriented mail and cloud storage:

But there isn't much of a family price break.

Well, just the Workdrive Starter package is $2.5 per user normally, which is more than Zillum.

@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:

@Pete-S said in POTS line replacement:

@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:

We also have a call into our Security/Fire Alarm company on the costs of a replacement alarm system is and if it can work over cellular. We will then see which will have the best ROI depending on years of service.

It's highly unlikely that you need to replace the alarm system, as most commercial security systems can be expanded with different modules. Moving from POTS to IP or cellular is very common.

It's also very possible that your alarm system will not work over your AT&T ATA (POTS emulation). Some alarm systems don't use the same signaling as a modem or fax would.

I found the manual online and this is the section describing the transmitter itself.

"Digital Alarm Communicator/Transmitter
Two modular phone jacks allow easy connection to telephone lines. Modular jacks are labeled PH1 for Primary Phone Line and PH2 for
Secondary Phone Line. Two telephone line active red LEDs are provided as well as a green Kissoff LED. The integral digital communicator provides the following functions:
• Line Seizure: takes control of the phone lines disconnecting any premises phones
• Off/On Hook: performs on and off-hook status to the phone lines
• Listen for dial tone: 440 Hz tone typical in most networks
• Dialing the Central Station(s) number: default is Touch-Tone, programmable to rotary
• For tone burst or touchtone type formats: discern proper Ack and Kissoff tone(s). The frequency and time duration of the tone(s)
varies with the transmission format. The control panel will adjust accordingly.
• Communicate in the following formats:
Ademco Contact ID
SIA-DCS-8
SIA-DCS-20"

With regards to signaling, this is the only thing that stuck out to me.

It has for sure more capability than your typical ATA. For instance I've never seen line seizure, off/on hook and rotary dialing. It's likely that they use a specific codec optimized for tones and not talk as well.

With features like that I think it looks like they have been targeting alarm systems and other odd devices. I think there is a very good chance that it will work without problems. If you need it.

@scottalanmiller said in Zoho Zillum - family oriented mail and cloud storage:

For a family of four (or two, or six), it's basically the same price as the enterprise plan. And only if everyone in the family wants access to business tools (they do not.) Just Zoho Business email would be much cheaper for family members and you can have unlimited users.

Your pricing calculations are incorrect (see below) but if you only need mail obviously the bundle will be more expensive.

The version of Zillum's bundled services has no exact business package equivalent when it comes to features and storage. I haven't found the exact features listed but from what I can see having access to the highest tier of all Zoho packages:

• Bundled Mail is between Mail Lite 10GB and Mail Premium.
• Bundled Workdrive is the Starter package but with different amount of storage.
• Bundled Cliq is between Free and Enterprise package.
• Bundled Vault is between Standard and Professional package.
• Bundled Office is the same and doesn't come in different packages.

I think these are collaboration tools more than pure business apps like say Zoho CRM or Zoho Project. We are going to use all of them in our family (windows, linux, chromebook & android devices).

Zillum also has it's own unified app/site so it's easier to move between Mail, Workdrive, Cliq etc.

Zoho has a new-ish package for families called Zillum.

There are three package sizes (up to 3, 5 and 10 accounts) each with a different amount of storage.

Price turns out to be about $2/user/month - it's not free but with Zoho you're not the product. And it's lower than comparable Zoho business package.

I signed up for the family but haven't rolled it out yet. But it works pretty much exactly as the business apps.

I got a couple of domains setup (you can have multiple) so they can have both serious email addresses ([email protected]) and throwaway type accounts ([email protected]).

Zillum consists of:

• Zoho Mail - 25GB mail storage per account, calendars etc
• Zoho Workdrive - 0.5TB / 1TB / 2TB of total team storage
• Zoho Cliq - Slack like team chat
• Zoho Vault - Zoho's team oriented password manager
• Zoho Office - Zoho's office apps

Here's more info and pricing:
https://www.zoho.com/zillum

@scottalanmiller said in POTS line replacement:

@Pete-S said in POTS line replacement:

@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:

We also have a call into our Security/Fire Alarm company on the costs of a replacement alarm system is and if it can work over cellular. We will then see which will have the best ROI depending on years of service.

It's highly unlikely that you need to replace the alarm system, as most commercial security systems can be expanded with different modules. Moving from POTS to IP or cellular is very common.

It's also very possible that your alarm system will not work over your AT&T ATA (POTS emulation). Some alarm systems don't use the same signaling as a modem or fax would.

Right, if POTS is a REQUIREMENT, that means that nothing else should work or else it was a false requirement (e.g. not a requirement at all.) If it requires POTS, that means it is using artefacts of the POTS system and not the phone line itself to do its job (this is common, not weird) such as detecting voltage on the line to determine if the line is active. A POTS replacement system generates that voltage locally and the system thinks it is up even if it is not.

There is actually more to it than that. But I do not believe that POTS is a requirement.

The one thing to keep in mind though is that fire alarms are regulated by code. NFPA 72 for example. So it's not your typical IT communication problem.

@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:

Our POTS line pricing was bumped again

Everything that involves POTS will increase in price exponentially as the companies are trying to get rid of their copper installations.

That will include ATAs as well as they will become more and more legacy, less and less common and more expensive to support.

So I believe the best option is to move away completely from POTS to something current as soon as possible - instead of trying to limp along another year.

@pmoncho said in POTS line replacement:

We also have a call into our Security/Fire Alarm company on the costs of a replacement alarm system is and if it can work over cellular. We will then see which will have the best ROI depending on years of service.

It's highly unlikely that you need to replace the alarm system, as most commercial security systems can be expanded with different modules. Moving from POTS to IP or cellular is very common.

It's also very possible that your alarm system will not work over your AT&T ATA (POTS emulation). Some alarm systems don't use the same signaling as a modem or fax would.

@scottalanmiller said in rDNS PTR records - why?:

They are rarely important. The only major use of them is as one additional layer of spam protection, but a VERY minor one.

Where you see them used a lot is things like a traceroute. That's what allows you to identify the hops along the route.

Okay, so if you're sending email directly from your own IPs or setting up your own BGP routers then you need to think about reverse DNS. In all other cases you can just ignore it?

I should really know the answer to this I guess but...what is the purpose of the reverse DNS pointer records?

I know how they work (IP to FQDN), but when do you need one and for what? And what happens if you don't have it?

@PhlipElder said in Mikrotik software firewall/router?:

@Pete-S said in Mikrotik software firewall/router?:

Does anyone have experience with Mikrotik's software firewall/routers?
Or any opinion on their products in general, especially for business use?

I used to think they were some kind of garage company but it turns out they're a billion dollar company.

We worked with them quite a bit at a site. Clunky, difficult, and not the most stable at that time.

Have they improved? Not sure, but IMNSHO, there's better products out there for the same or slightly higher pricing.

Lack of stability doesn't sound good because that is the most important IMO.

What brand are you thinking of? I have tried to look at the low budget business market but haven't found any other brand that have a complete line-up. Ubiquity for example, only have a small subset of the routers that Mikrotik have and no software router.

@dmacf10 said in Mikrotik software firewall/router?:

@Pete-S I use the RB2011, RB3011 primarily for routing and I use the Cloudswitch PoE switches for switching.

Thanks, I will for sure check them out.

@dmacf10 said in Mikrotik software firewall/router?:

I run my entire data center and many of my clients on MikroTik switches and routers. I've been using them for years. I was introduced to them about twelve years ago when I started working at a small ISP that ran their entire operation using MikroTik. I've had almost zero issues with them. Highly recommended.

That's great! Is there some model that you specifically use or recommend?

Does anyone have experience with Mikrotik's software firewall/routers?
Or any opinion on their products in general, especially for business use?

I used to think they were some kind of garage company but it turns out they're a billion dollar company.

@scottalanmiller said in Does block level sync exist?:

@Pete-S said in Does block level sync exist?:

@scottalanmiller said in Does block level sync exist?:

@Pete-S said in Does block level sync exist?:

@scottalanmiller said in Does block level sync exist?:

Duplicati

What is Duplicati? It sound like something you install locally on each server that will send backups to NAS/cloud/wherever. Is that correct?

Yup, it's backup software. Does both image and file based. Can send to local, remote, or cloud destinations. It's an agent, so it installs ON Windows, MacOS or Linux.

How do you keep track of all the backups if you have hundreds of duplicati installations running? There are no central backup server or UI right? All installations are independent of each other?

Ah, excellent question. So there is no central server, that is correct. All installations are independent, also correct. But they are open source and have some APIs and messaging options. That's great when you have one or two. But with hundreds (like we will have once the conversion is done) you need something more.

Thankfully there is a non-open source Duplicati monitoring service that we are using that is cheap and does just that. It does NOT control them, only monitors. But honestly, that's perfect. It is so easy to use MeshCentral to hop on and manage the instances when they need something. The central system just tells us that all is well or not. So while Duplicati ITSELF doesn't do that, third party tools do and that's what we are doing now.

Also talking about building our own open source solution to do that for reasons of integration into other things (namely helpdesk) but that hasn't gone very far since the other solution is cheap and working.

Great, thanks for clarifying. I often find myself looking at a product amazed at how badly they manage to explain what it's for and how it works. But you summed it up nicely.

@WrCombs said in Email auto CC:

Can someone help me understand GSuite email admin stuff??
Customer opened ticket to add her as a CC on another employees emails - we set up the rule yesterday and tested - worked fine from my understanding but ticket was reopened with the notes that when the employee who is copied emails send an email to the other employee from the email that is supposed to be cc'd on all incoming emails - there is no response /cc notification - My thought is because its coming from email that is supposed to be CC'd it's not sending the CC to prevent loop back emails - but I dont know much about it.

anyone have any insight?

Contact google support instead. They are there to help you and they should know how it is suppose to work and what settings to check if it doesn't. And they can probably see things in your account that you can't.

@scottalanmiller said in Does block level sync exist?:

@Pete-S said in Does block level sync exist?:

@scottalanmiller said in Does block level sync exist?:

Duplicati

What is Duplicati? It sound like something you install locally on each server that will send backups to NAS/cloud/wherever. Is that correct?

Yup, it's backup software. Does both image and file based. Can send to local, remote, or cloud destinations. It's an agent, so it installs ON Windows, MacOS or Linux.

How do you keep track of all the backups if you have hundreds of duplicati installations running? There are no central backup server or UI right? All installations are independent of each other?

@scottalanmiller said in Does block level sync exist?:

Duplicati

What is Duplicati? It sound like something you install locally on each server that will send backups to NAS/cloud/wherever. Is that correct?

@garak0410 said in Camera Server Can't Ping Network Device:

My unrealistic management said to get this up tonight but I only have access to the camera server which is not pinging the TREE device. So will work with what I've got for now.

You may need to bring out the big guns.

Install wireshark on the camera server and record the network traffic to see what really happens.

If you've never used wireshark before, it will be a good opportunity to learn.

To me the symptoms does sound like a misconfigured subnet mask or something lacking a default gateway somewhere, as @scottalanmiller mentioned. But it could be something else too.