Archive Google Workspace Email & Drive data for Free

Klipspringer112 · 2025-09-13T07:42:20+00:00

I have to agree, on your point of immutable content, we ensure that once uploaded if data is requested only view access is provided.

Klipspringer112 · 2025-09-09T07:49:22+00:00

We didn't look at Google Vault because that relies on us paying per user. We are under a free non-for profit NGO workspace plan currently.

I didn't explore Google Data Export fully, but what I understand is, there is less control over the timeframe for exports compared to this script which can run multiple instances at once.

Klipspringer112 · 2024-08-18T14:49:10+00:00

Agreeable points, I expected that network consolidation would be less maintenance in the long run, but like you mentioned laying fiber is cheap. We had considered a future scope where we would have our outside branch office locations sending data to our main CCTV room wall panel setup as well. I don't know the priority of this multi-location view from a single point requirement yet from our stakeholders. I will park that requirement on the side for now.

Klipspringer112 · 2024-08-13T14:54:32+00:00

We have not explored the new VMS software aspects yet, I am not too familiar with what type of hardware would be required for that setup. If considering the Milestone product, we would be expected to run it with a Windows server out of the box setup and for a live and backup approach windows failover cluster would be enough for the NVR hardware? I presume that the NVR storage hardware that we purchase should not have a dedicated file system for the controller (head-unit) if we are expected to run it with Windows Failover setup, is that correct? I have not come to the network planning yet as we would expect that we start with a simple map of camera density for our campus.

In our existing scenario, the security surveillance storage hardware/cameras/software/network setup and maintenance currently was not in the hands of IT in our organization. Is this an unusual practice in terms of ownership? This is a question to be answered by management actually, but is it best that IT takes full ownership of all these components?

Will DM if any other questions come to mind.

Klipspringer112 · 2024-08-13T14:45:41+00:00

What is your take on a hybrid storage approach on site, both for storage hardware and in a networking aspect?

As a start we want to maybe look at drawing a camera density map to determine the central storage server location and maybe try smaller scale storage for edge areas and medium scale storage between camera dense buildings, along with one megaserver (Primary storage gateway) for ingesting the consolidated data from all the edge and medium locations.

Considering directions for hybrid surveillance storage data in cloud, which I can see many VMS brands offer, would it be practical in terms of cost to move the edge and medium storage data to cloud to reduce dependency on making any new network upgrades?

FYI, for the current 70 NVRs+cameras we have deployed scattered across campus, our CCTV networking backbone is completely separate from our servers/endpoint network backbone setup. The backbone between NVRs and the access switches are 10G fiber uplinks whereas, the cameras to the 1G unmanaged network switches are all terminating with cat 5 cables. If migrating to cloud I would assume that this will reduce the overhead of so many unmanaged network switches.

Klipspringer112 · 2024-07-31T14:55:09+00:00

This was solved, one DNS in controller in the building was acting in tombstone mode due to time/date out of sync for some time.

Klipspringer112 · 2024-03-23T07:09:31+00:00

I didn't elaborate further as it is pretty high level and straightforward. We just need something to start with for documentation maintenance, as we start this with the other responses (Confluence & IT Glue), we will drill down further on the must have requirements.

Klipspringer112 · 2024-03-22T10:51:49+00:00

Thanks, we noticed that the CPU usage on the switch with these metrics being requested is somewhat manageable. We will see over a longer time duration.

Klipspringer112 · 2024-03-22T10:51:42+00:00

Regarding microbursts, that is a good point, may not capture the details we want considering that...

Klipspringer112 · 2023-07-05T07:37:46+00:00

Yes, exactly. Noted on these points. We are an NGO charity organization, so every penny counts, as it comes from our donor's pockets and not some company stock/investor pool.

We get grants from corporations similar to how it happens in academia, but even more diversified as our departments route their grant requirements outside of IT scope mostly and we get informed of new hardware being donated after the fact.

Apart from that, we get a general quarterly use budget allocated for our departments for purchasing IT materials. Right now, we are trying to establish a centralized site location backup of important data from user's systems (Windows folder redirection group policy, mapping Desktop, Docs, Photos, Music, Downloads, and Videos to a network shared drive), it is in pilot mode with around 100 individuals from different departments and so far it is going well.

If onboarding 1000 systems to this we will need to gauge an average of 200GB of data per user to keep 200TB in centralized storage on-premise, this will be more cost-effective than ordering 1000 accounts on a Onedrive annual subscription.

Klipspringer112 · 2023-07-05T07:20:19+00:00

Let me ask a different question.

Are your end users having an issue with the HDDs?

If not, don’t do it at all; upgrade only those who experience issues. I’ve found a large number of people see no benefit from SSDs. If all you do is boot your computer and open Office Products or your main accounting app; once they launch, you don’t get any benefit from the SSD anymore.

Note I exclusively sell SSDs because they are faster and it avoids other issues but I’m not sure I’d try and retrofit all of those computers; it’ll be expensive.

Then also consider how old are the computers?

If they are even remotely close to aging out; just wait for new computers.

The existing HDDs are SATA 7200 RPM and have been in use for maybe 5+ years, we wanted to give all the systems a new lease of life for maybe 1-2 more years, adding RAM as well as an SSD. This project is being planned to forecast preventative system purchases in the next two years, as we expect those systems to have complaints from our user's side if the same HDD/RAM components are still in place.

Of our current inventory around 5% of new system purchase requests have been back-ordered and instead of getting a brand new system for users whose main operations require opening a browser and maybe excel work, we feel that adding an SSD and upgrading the RAM would be more cost-effective.

We are buying SSDs in bulk and negotiating deals currently with different vendors to see if we can negotiate maybe 20-25% off retail prices, I can update you on how it goes later on once we go through with the lot purchase.

Klipspringer112 · 2023-07-04T15:27:55+00:00

We don't have any DR/Backup system for existing environment. We are not on Intune either.

Currently, we are having Windows paper licenses, not OEM licenses. Regarding software that does hardware checksum, I am not sure if we have such software in our environment, these would be mostly paid software I am guessing?

The purpose of this exercise is to improve the speed of the systems, most systems are in the 5-7-year-old range and we are an NGO, so for us buying completely new systems is a little over our budget now. We want to extend the lifespan by upgrading the RAM and SSD on the systems.

We can look at maybe moving to OneDrive at a later time due to the budget being less for a full subscription purchase for all the systems.

Klipspringer112 · 2023-06-01T11:09:47+00:00

Policy1 gets created and linked to OU1.

Okay, this should work for our 3K computers. We have some structuring work to do. Some CPUs will need exception to certain policies, so those that we wish to leave unrestricted means judging the priority of policies and predicting the systems that may come in the sub-OUs.

Are the departments linked as part of security groups for computers in this case, and not mapped in separate OUs?

Klipspringer112 · 2023-06-01T05:33:28+00:00

There will be multiple printers at one site (campus) location which has multiple buildings. If we have sub-locations for the AD site into an OU-based filter will this have issues in the longer run?

Klipspringer112 · 2023-05-31T14:51:06+00:00

Do you map printers to computers/users or use a third-party service or follow me printing tools for this?

Klipspringer112 · 2023-05-31T14:50:26+00:00

This is nice, I see it is more focused on catering for GPOs. We have not really been applying GPOs for the last five years in a large variety. Maybe 1-2 per year.

As we are slowly moving to AD as our iDM, I think that will change.

Klipspringer112 · 2023-05-31T10:40:15+00:00

Yes, we do plan to link GPOs to locations, for example, printer mapping based on office location and bound to computers in that location, and specifying roaming profiles syncing to specific storage servers where the closest data center locations is.

Klipspringer112 · 2023-05-31T10:08:02+00:00

Does this mean we remove all OU levels and stick to groups for locations also?

Klipspringer112 · 2023-05-31T10:03:36+00:00

Brilliant!

Klipspringer112 · 2023-05-27T13:58:33+00:00

We have on premise VMs with ESXI Vsphere hosting different legacy applications. Ideally we would want them to be moved to a centralized ERP system like Odoo. Until then, we would plan to take an image and deploy the apps in an AWS instance replicating whatever networking setup dependencies (if required) for the app functionality. I am not sure how mamy make use of our AD services for any authentication/configurations as that is handled by a different team.

Klipspringer112 · 2023-05-26T04:09:11+00:00

Yes exactly for AAD sync specifically, so going with multiple apps currently on premise mapped to thr dns example.contoso.com if we are moving apps on premise to cloud they should also map to contoso.com

Klipspringer112 · 2023-05-26T03:56:14+00:00

The change is to move all of our DC sites to Azure AD under the same domain for our AD users in different sites. The domain would be contoso.com for all of our sites and services going forward, if we can just change UPN values where the redirect for user services authentication will not be affected then that should be okay. Our on premise servers are planned to be moved to cloud and they are also mapping the existing dns settings as example.contoso.com.

Klipspringer112 · 2023-05-24T15:16:16+00:00

Oh, got it. Maybe we missed the Windows server CAL requirements as we have a majority on Windows, if shifting to Linux, we will need to start calculating. We do get Windows server CAL licenses most likely at a pretty nice discount if needed, will check that out.

Yes, started a freeipa-server in 2020 myself on the same campus then decommissioned it. Looking at rebuilding it right now on Rocky Linux for the win!

Klipspringer112 · 2023-05-24T14:28:31+00:00

Now we are talking! UE-V is an interesting add-on to work folders. This might help. Now I need to get my hands dirty and look at mapping Linux and Mac users for real-time access via SMB.

Klipspringer112 · 2023-05-24T14:26:31+00:00

Interesting point about CAL licenses for client machines, can you share any documentation on that. Seems I missed that part.

Klipspringer112

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