Google Cloud Migration Part3

Continuing from Part 1 I had a change of heart…

I decided I really wanted my wild-card mail boxes (it’s a great way to manage spam) and I also noticed Cloudflare had launched their inbound mail relay service. The new plan is

• Inbound mail goes to Cloudflare who redirect it to whoever it’s for gmail account
• The gmail accounts are set up with an alias and a SMTP server (AWS SES) for gidley.co.uk to allow sending of emails from my domain
• Wildcards are resolved by cloudflare and set to a suitable mailbox

Cloudflare Setup

The email features of Cloudflare are in beta, but they seem pretty easy to get onto. While I was on I moved many of my domains over to Cloudflare as their DNS registrar is cheaper than most.

Google Cloud Migration Part2

Continuing from Part 1 the next task is to migrate email archives from Google Workspace email to the destination.

I decided to

• Use iCloud as the new primary domain
• Use Outlook.com as a backup for my old archive I split it like this as I have email going back a long time and frankly searching them is becomming a hassle.

Migrating a Mailbox

Migrating the mailbox is pretty straight forward - I decided to use imapsync running on a ‘free’ Google cloud instance. Using the cloud for this has the benefit of lots of bandwidth and being able to leave it running.

Google Cloud Migration

I’ve been a user of Google Workspace for ‘gidley.co.uk’ email for me and my family pretty much since it launched. At launch it was ‘free’ for small users and over the decade I’ve been using it they have slowly moved it over to a paid service putting us ’legacy’ users on a special (still free) plan. Google have finally decided it’s time to stop us freeloaders… so it’s time to migrate. It’s been a great service, but I guess the free lunch has to end eventually.

Google Pixel - Initial Review

I ordered a Google Pixel when they were released as I needed a new personal Android phone and generally the Nexus line has been very good, so I thought I’d try the Pixel.

Some initial comments

• It looks nice, it compares well to my (work) iPhone 6 from a looks point of view
• The finger print reader is great, so far much more accurate and quick than my iphone one which seems to be getting slower and slower
• The USB cable ‘port your phone’ thing didn’t work at all with my old Android Phone (A Moto X). Instead I had to do it via the cloud
• It’s really quick - both apps and data seem faster that my old phone. Data is a bit odd as am in same place with same signal, but it does seem faster (good job I have unlimited data)
• The camera is very good (as reported), it won’t be replacing my DSLR for ‘good’ shots, but for quick shots it’s very good.

Overall it looks like a nice phone, I’ll have to use it for a few weeks to see how good it really is!