Posts made by krisleslie

A lot of people will be dumping Ubnt NVR products (just the nvr side). Synology NAS just specifically for NVR is appearing to be the better offer for smb deployments up to 100 cameras.

@scottalanmiller It's pretty mature now. The feature set is minimal but works fine compared to some other options I've played with. If they added a few more features it would be golden.

@travisdh1 so I figured out he is working for an out of town MSP. I don't see their product line they support but I assume it's SOPHOS. Like I said before, if I'm going to deal with a local MSP I already have one in place aligned with the goals not only I but my director would have in mind since they actually come talk to you and plan before telling you they wanna rip out everything for a project that doesn't make any sense.

For those unaware, I work at a small non-profit. Our Saas app and basically finance app (Quickbooks) pretty much run the entire workload. 0 need for a VPN outside of goals that would align with IT directly. If we gonna do a VPN what sense would it make to do that without using our current NEW equipment before plunking down on another set of hardware? We are one cough away from another outbreak of COVID. We would be spending $ on a project no one in house would need since all our work already has been successfully deployed remotely for students and staff.

@scottalanmiller there is suppose to be a new USG being made since I think they are switching the cpu/chipset over for the entire product line. But honestly, until reviews are back and tested I'm holding funds. Just turning on the traffic analysis makes me cringe since it's not able to handle it without losing too much speed.

@travisdh1 said in Router/firewall recommendations for small branch office:

stick with Ubiquiti where you're not paying the backshe

The problem is he either was fired or let go from his previous job. So he eventually got a new job. I don't "know" if he works for Sophos because honestly in Alabama they really don't have a huge presence since any small to medium businesses I know don't even touch their stuff. I know Sophos well. I also got a taste of them about 10 years ago and decided to never go back also!

@travisdh1 see here is the thing, I actually have a relationship with a local MSP. "IF" I were to take on projects I don't want to deal with, I would rather deal with them. This contractor is not of my suggestion, he is just a guy that happened to be the son of one of our managers, who is no longer employed here. Case in point, if I say let's do a,b,c, if I blink and go to sleep, I come into an office where x,y,z is done with no sign-off or explanation or feedback. It's largely a leadership and an internal political problem I'm dealing with. One month things are good or relatively good and next time you look some outlandish project comes with no one knowing where it started from.

Just for an idea of my trust level for him, it's only in the direction of him installing cabling and hardware and basic administration. He has botched every installation of AD nor didn't know what virtualization was. However after he botched a site to site vpn setup prior 3 times which he actually never reported to me nor my management, it let me know were dealing with someone who worries about getting hours and checks not getting work done, also not being accountable. I'm not a network engineer (yet). But I can pretty much handle what was been thrown our way or find someone (read MSP) that can. So for him to not even start by using what we have in place showed me these are marketing tactics (thanks @scottalanmiller for teaching me their ways years ago lol) are being used to force his way into something and we pay for it and then he will roll around with fat check.

The only logical benefit I see would be connecting our servers and for AD, but keep in mind, in the proposal his "goof-ups" for AD aren't mentioned. I'm not an AD god, but even I know if you put the wrong dns settings in, you break AD. For the most part, 95% of our staff and students use SaaS apps or services to accomplish work and training. That 5% is like really just for the people in IT and finance and 1 small team for a project. We use Intuit Quickbooks. Honestly because I hate QB, I'm considering just moving to a hosted plan and take it off-prem. File servers are really only being used by IT for software distribution and backup. We do run a few servers for RDP usage but the people that need to use it, are IN office and can remote in.

Is that a vette?

I have the 2nd and 3rd one along with some other models. They work as advertised. I really like how Samsung and HPE have made some excellent chromebooks without breaking the bank.

Scott, the 3rd party guy now wants to talk about doing site to site vpn on Sophos hardware. We still at 3 offices. Any point or benefit to even doing this? Keep in mind only 5-7 people in the entire company need to remote into anything which they effectively can do now. Honestly this "3rd party" is becoming more of a sales guy for untested solutions to lace his pockets.

LOL my first thought was, dummy we already have edge routers in place, we can use that to do site to site but there is almost no benefit at our size unless its just to have the sites talking to each other. I can do that with Zero Tier (just not pretty with AD).

Ok @scottalanmiller now I see why you were saying your heavily on MeshCommander. I like it actually, it just needs an interface change and add reporting and more exports of data and it would really be the open-source champ. The remote tool works but possibly needs a few options added. It's very similar to how Google built Chrome Remote Desktop which basically works out of the box also.

@scottalanmiller can this be used while on XCP-NG host?

While I don't think it's that basic, I do agree. But I think what should be done is establish a set of procedures to run (preferably from terminal) because honestly Windows Servers take more to manage than Linux and I'm a Linoobbb. A few commands updates the os and packages lol. Backups are super easy also if you have a good tool. I personally use TurnKey Linux as it has a backup backend built in straight to AWS. I fire and forget.

Think of it like this. The same way Windows Server gives you like a simple list of tasks to accomplish when you first boot, treat Linux the same way. That could be possibly automated to the point you may only have to check up on your routines to make sure they complete fine. I haven't had enough time but I have gotten my feet wet with Ansible. If you have processes that you are doing across a fleet, any automation takes your human hands off it.

So the questions you should probably ask are what commands are needed to run to establish the website and setup email. Get that down first. You could potentially bash script it. After that you could potentially automate it even further with Ansible or one of the other options!

@openit I like WebMin and Cockpit but that's about it. I've seen more control panels than I want to see with hosting. I think Scott might be right, less is more.

@scottalanmiller dude that place is shutdown now! #blamecorona

@krzykat there is nothing stopping you from installing Chrome OS. I do it to devices that are beefy. Nothing like having Quad core cpu, 16 GB of RAM and a decent ssd. It really takes the pain off of my base device since I basically remote into stuff all day. They are planning on including Steam soon so that will improve the gaming but you can game already on them from Android store.

Valid point

@black3dynamite yea I'm more intune with wanting to have the ability to push it to Amazon or Azure or some other cloud vendor. Have to tip my hat, Synology does it out the box.

@scottalanmiller you are 100% correct I would be back in the same issue. I actually can say I lived that life. When my nas went through a phase it wasn't supported and didn't get updates, their support sent me to the wolves. I eventually got it to work after 1-2 years after they pushed a firmware update unexpectedly. That left me feeling like yea, I would rather just deal with a server, vm and storage from Window. If something breaks, to some degree I can just spin up another vm and continue working. I don't have a 2nd Synology nas so that in itself is a point of failure.

@JaredBusch said in iOS Sip Client?:

Scott had me using Zoiper for years. Paid and free work as advertised. What issue do you get?

@scottalanmiller Hey Scotty! Yes, I know you meant the NAS OS (that we can install) vs Vendor + Hardware/Software/Support Stack. Gotcha we on same page!

I honestly wish Synology would make a Linux distro their stuff is sexy can't lie. But I think what I was referring to is really the "niche" market of people doing Synology OS (the open-source version) that is basically the same thing as loading FreeNAS. I haven't done it but was thinking of tinkering with it at home for sh*ts & giggles. Same with FreeNAS. But at work I started off with Synology, and honestly after all the learning and listening from you Scott over the years, it's like I kinda don't even need Synology I would rather just have another server with a proper virtualization stack. The only thing I'm missing out on is really the remote backup features from XCP-NG. I would probably like to send a feature request for them to maybe consider using like Amazon or Azure as a backup point. But I recall MSP360 can do the heavy lifting.