People put too much hate on A+.

Sure if you've already been a bench tech for a few years it kind of doesn't mean much at that point, you've seen enough problems to be a good tech.

But for me, I owned like 2 computers before I got my first job as a tech, and they wanted A+ for the job. All of my study was purely for A+, with no experience at all. I remember reading those fat bastard 5 inch computer repair books all night trying to memorize power supply voltages for each pin, and IRQs and 802.x details. I burned through many highlighters and notebooks!

As a person with no real computer repair skills, all of that study was a huge foundation for me. It's not the A+ test or cert that teaches anything, it's how much study and experience you get/need to pass it in the first place. I actually failed the hardware part of the test at first due to all the friggin nonsense trivia questions.

Regardless, a person can be a "computer repair tech" purely by experience but not really know anything about how anything works or why. But you do gain a bit of an advantage with the book learning aspect too. It's nice to read up on how things work under the hood, and not simply know how to fix it.

Experience is great, book learning is great, but a mix of both is better still.

@scottalanmiller

I want to try NextCloud too so I'll either run side-by-side or I may have to give up Seafile if I can't fix the borked settings in the current version.

Here are some notes from setting up Seafile as a company file store and any gotchas I ran in to. This is in chronological order, as I'm taking notes while playing with it.

Server

Seafile version 5.1.3.
Ubuntu 14.04 VM on XenServer. I set up with 1 socket, 2 cores, 1GB RAM, and 16GB drive. All updates done before installing Seafile. I set up a static IP for networking.
The total amount of storage for our files is currently about 9GB which we keep on Box. I'm testing Seafile as a replacement for Box ultimately.

I used the installer script for Ubuntu as explained here: https://github.com/haiwen/seafile-server-installer

The install seemed to go well, no critical errors or anything. It left me with some post-install instructions such as "Run seafile-server-change-address to add your Seafile servers DNS name". I went ahead and ran this but the following screens were all German or some other alien language.

There are other instructions for working with NAT firewall and ports and email server and so forth.

There were instructions at the following link for getting an SSL certificate for Nginx. I believe the script already created a self-signed cert but I went ahead and generated one as explained anyway.
http://manual.seafile.com/deploy/https_with_nginx.html

I thought at this point everything was supposed to work, but it didn't. Opening the IP actually gave an Nginx error for "Bad Gateway". This means whatever Nginx is supposed to be proxying FOR ain't working.
Some quick searching turned up that there is an issue of the auto-installer not putting the config files in the correct folder. Gee great!
Read it here: https://github.com/seafile/seafile-server-installer/issues/81

These three config files:

/opt/seafile/ccnet/ccnet.conf
/opt/seafile/seafile-data/seafile.conf
/opt/seafile/seahub_settings.py

Needed to be moved into the folder /opt/seafile/conf/.

After moving the files, the server and web portal can be started with the following two commands (which previously failed before the configs were moved).

Start Seafile server:
./seafile.sh start

Start Seahub portal:
./seahub.sh start

When Seahub started (successfully) it prompted to create my admin user account which I did.

Now going back to the IP address in the browser, using port 8000 by default. For me internally this is 192.168.1.14:8000. I now got the login screen after accepting the self-signed cert. Yeah!

After logging in I created one library that I just called "Everyone". This is meant to be shared by every user in the company. We don't have many folders that wouldn't be, only the boss has a folder of two they won't share with everybody.

Desktop Tool

Next I downloaded their Windows Desktop sync tool. This thing looks like an old school chat app.

And finally, I dropped a folder from Box into my new Everyone folder to watch it sync up. This folder is a little over 6GB.

After the files were copied, it began indexing and syncing.

It also shows a status message in System Tray as files are uploaded.

The desktop tool has its own bandwidth monitor. This went anywhere from 3MB/s to 30MB at the top end. Some peaks as high as 50MB/s.

I was also watching Windows reporting on it (this is a Win7 Pro workstation).

Network utilization ranged from 3 or 4% to as high as 50% of the gigabit available.
When looking deeper into the Seafile process itself, it was pretty regularly set around 26MB/s, or just over 200Mb/s. This is an internal network after all.

As a test for bandwidth over the Internet I compared with Box sync. Box uploaded at about 1.9Mbs when I stuck a video in there. I then did a video upload test from another computer into this office and it was chugging along at 4.8Mbs. Very informal "test" but Seafile did perform better. This was the same ISP but two locations. Both ISP packages were 50Mbps or higher plans. Box was just slower to upload in this instance.

I also needed to open port 8000 and 8082 in the router of course. If you intend to use SSL then 443 should be opened too, I'll deal with that later.

One nifty feature of the desktop client is that you can selectively sync any given library, but other libraries are still visible as "cloud" libraries and it uses an internal file browser and a cache folder to let you browse cloud libraries without having to open a browser tab.

You can also set a sync interval timer (in seconds) if you only want it to sync every so often instead of constant monitoring.

Sharing

In our company we rarely share anything, but as far as my experience with every other sync tool I've used, I still want a good feature set.

One nice thing about Dropbox is that the System Tray tool actually shows the files that were most recently uploaded, and lets you grab a share link right from there. No other sync tool has been this convenient. Sadly, Seafile does not show you most recently uploaded files.

If I right-click a file in Windows Explorer, I get three options:

1. Get download link.
2. Get internal link.
3. File history.

Before I could share files I needed to update my domain name. The server was setup with just "seafile" as the hostname but in my case I needed a FQDN in order for share links to work. I created a subdomain and pointed the IP to the office. Just seafile.ourdomain.c-m is what I used.

I had all kinds of trouble making the domains work, and sorting our all the types of share links as well as the web interface.
The domain needed to be updated in the Nginx config and also the ccnet.conf file. There is a setting called SERVICE_URL and this is essentially what is prefixed to share URLs when they are created. I also had to change FILE_SERVER_ROOT to use my domain as well.
Even after all the settings were right, it still wouldn't work and my share links would time out. They say to run with fastcgi for production so I tried that by starting the server with ./seahub.sh start-fastcgi.

Even then it just wasn't working. Hitting refresh in the desktop client would do this:

If Nginx wasn't working, nothing would load. If Nginx worked by seahub had an issue, there would be a 50x Gateway type error. If I use the seahub internal server (not fastcgi) the web interface would work but not share links or uploads/downloads from the browser. I had a feeling something else must have been skipped with the auto-installer.

I'm stopping for now as I have to keep troubleshooting the browser-based uploading and downloading and why fastcgi seems broken. It's probably just something skipped in the auto-installer, maybe somebody else had these issues. I can't seem to get around it, something is broken with the seafile server and how it uses fastcgi and SSL, etc.

More to come if I figure it out.

In summary, I like the desktop client and it looks like I can even sign in with multiple accounts which is nice if I'm part of multiple servers. I do wish it would show a short list of most recently uploaded files so I can quickly get a share link.
I also like that the right-click share menu gives you a quick checkbox to get a direct download link versus a web page view.
The "internal" links can use a protocol so it actually opens the file directly in your local file system. This type of link is nice for texting/emailing links because it just opens from their local machines without creating an actual share link.

The local sync versus cloud folders are nice, and I can browse cloud folders without needing to use the browser.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

You can, but only in cases where the VAR opportunity doesn't exist. So, for example, if you sell Vultr, you can't be VAR-free in any case where recommending Vultr is possible.

But if there is already an assumption that there are to be no affiliate sales, i.e. it's a consulting gig.

If someone wants me to consult about webhosts and affiliates aren't allowed, does my having affiliate products (even when I know it won't be commission sales) still affect things?

See it isn't just the presence of the affiliate, it's the actual application of whether they are allowed for the job or not. If I affiliate for lemonade and consult on soft drinks but they say no affiliate products, I don't see how it's still affecting me, there is no more monetary potential.

Seems to me that all we're saying here is that what we're AFTER is unbiased, objective consulting, which cannot be so with any potential of monetary gain from a vendor. So then to remove bias, the ONLY thing needed is remove potential for monetary gain by saying up front they don't want to deal with commission sales and/or will acquire all products themselves or through another service.

All I'm trying to get to in this debate is where I can happily use an affiliate product where appropriate while maintaining full credibility as an objective, unbiased, consultant. It is absolutely not the case that my having affiliate products deep in the toolbox somewhere, ALWAYS affects decisions. All that is required is the understanding that purchases won't be made through me for a particular type of job. This removes monetary potential, and thus bias.

The second half of the debate revolves around how forthcoming I am about potentially offering these products and at what point in the hiring process they are mentioned.

Situation 1: Someone blasts out a quick question of "who is a good webhost". And me, not being paid for such advice, simply toss out a nice product from my affiliate bucket. I think of this like a person doing a google search and just buying the first thing in the ads that come up. That's all they seem to want. The ad may as well be my own. After all the product is used, vetted, and perfect good for what it is.

Situation 2: Company wants central backups and NAS evaluated and solutions recommended, they
will use their own VAR that they have an account with for tech purchases. My affiliate stuff wouldn't matter, it can't benefit me anyway.

Situation 3: Smallfry job they just want stuff "to work" and have no care in the world what I recommend or who I want to buy as long as it fits in budget and works. They may even just hand me a company credit card and the keys to the kingdom and say "make it happen by the time I return on Monday". I may just buy the affiliate stuff (if appropriate for solution) just because of the situation. Is there bias here? Probably, but acting as a VAR here is also what they asked for. A solution only.
It's like if I gave the Best But guy a credit card and said "put a big flat screen in my living room, don't spend more than $1500". Well of course they will get the best they can within budget as there are really no particular requirements except that it acts like a TV reasonably well. Why would they try to skimp on quality/size/whatever when the budget has been clearly defined?

What I DON'T want to happen, is see situation 2 client running for the hills due to the ways in which I may work with situation 1 and 3. There shouldn't be any reason why situation 2 can't fully trust me.

If there is, well it has to be considered then.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

If I am a one-man-shop and my market is essentially residential clients to small businesses, they hire me to assess needs but also buy stuff, implement, and do all the labor. Sometimes the job is "help me Obi wan Kenobi" and they don't really know what they need, but other times they are more specific and ask for specific things.

Right, that market has no consulting, it's a VAR-only market. I don't think that anyone would disagree there.

My point is that the distinction is on a per-client or per-job basis. When Minion says she could never trust to hire anyone who had affiliate products, it's a blanket statement. What if the job has nothing to do with any of those products? Or what if there is a prior assumption that those won't/can't be used in the first place?

This is why I said 1200 posts ago you were throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You can't make distinctions at the per-job level? One job is pure sales, pure VAR, pure affiliate links as free advice? While another job is more "serious" consulting where none of that applies?

I'm just curious then. Does a little leaven leaven the whole lump? Or can an independent like me do a little of this and a little of the other?

@Minion-Queen said in Testing Out Comodo One RMM and Helpdesk:

There is NOTHING that is actually great out there.

Dang. You'd think this is exactly what RMM/MSP software is supposed to be doing!

So then what are the core features you need?

Ticketing system but not focused on "internal" org? So like "public" tickets?? Or just ticketing "internally" to NTG but for all your outside clients and NOT public?
Does something like Freshdesk do this? Their tickets are more public though.

RMM specifically? So specifically you require remote control and monitoring? But you use Screenconnect already, are you wanting to replace it?
For remote monitoring could you use any sort of small daemon tool? Something like Glances: https://nicolargo.github.io/glances/
It just needs Python and is cross platform.

Do you need full asset management across all customers along with the monitoring? So ticketing plus remote control plus remote monitoring plus asset management? What about the email and CRM parts of it? Probably need a connection there too.

Can a person find ANY program which has all this in one package? Certainly complicated.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

If you've ever attempted to use the affiliate program, I think you can't be sure that you were not influenced.

This is just lizard-brain talk.

The question is, how did I come to recommend a particular solution? Does it fulfill all the needs of the client with room to grow, and within budget?

Only I can know the conversation in my head, and whether "gee this commission would be really nice right now" was part of that conversation.

What's funny is this conversation is just like trying to convince an addicted person that they are in fact addicted:
me: "Bob you are addicted to beer".
bob: "no I'm not!"
me: "you drink 20 cans a day"
bob: "I just like it, doesn't mean I'm addicted"
me: "so then stop drinking, if you're not addicted"
bob: "I don't have to stop, I'm not addicted, I just like it"
me: "If you can't stop, then you're addicted"
bob: "I could stop if I wanted, but I don't want to"
me: "so you're addicted"
bob: "no!"
...........

Look, I've said my piece. This conversation has run its course. I believe I'm plenty objective and even if there was the "slightest chance" of the "smallest amount of bias", it's inconsequential in small-fry work like I do. No job has ever been over some hundreds in labor charges. Even if the bias toward an affiliate product were 1%, the products are still great! I have lots of bias toward my favorite products already, with or without potential affiliate links.

I only ever sign up for affiliates because I already approved and like the solutions. And not only that, but I sign up in order to put the ads on my websites, not specifically for client work. But at the end of the day if a solution comes down to one of the things I advertise, I may offer the link, I may not. Half the time the job doesn't need such a product. And half the time I do use the product, I don't both with the affiliate. This keeps me honest enough.

@Minion-Queen said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

As an IT pro who from time to time has to reach out to other IT Pro's and MSP's to cover for a client need. I do ask what products do you resell and why? Chances are I would not hire you to work with any of my customers. In my experience any IT Pro that also resells things is biased period. No exceptions at any time.

I think we're reaching the crux of the issue at this point, at least from my perspective. Maybe others.

If I am a one-man-shop and my market is essentially residential clients to small businesses, they hire me to assess needs but also buy stuff, implement, and do all the labor. Sometimes the job is "help me Obi wan Kenobi" and they don't really know what they need, but other times they are more specific and ask for specific things.

Regardless, the point is that the work is client-directed.

My challenge to your statement is that affiliate products are side issue, they may even apply to the current job whatsoever. If I happen to go to someone's house to install a new printer, my affiliate webhost doesn't mean anything, it doesn't enter the equation at all.
An affiliate for Dell servers doesn't affect anything for a client wanting a website.
An affiliate for webhosts doesn't affect someone wanting a home NAS.
Or in the case of your example hiring for unbiased consulting, then it's simply a matter of saying "this is consulting, no affiliate products will be used" and then so be it.

Once again, in other words, ONE job might allow for the possibility of using an affiliate link IF they want to. While any other job may be understood not to.

Unless of course the argument is that affiliate products absolutely affect bias even when they don't apply to the job or can even be used??
Remember, nobody gets commission for "recommending" something or even if the client buys it. There is only the possibility of commission if they specifically use a special link which is disclosed.

You make it sound as though even the presence of affiliate products which may not even apply for a job, AND even if it's understood that there is no commissions, that they are still unavoidable biased and unreliable.

I get it that you all feel this way, I'm sure it's based on experience and seeing it first hand. I just ask that you have a little more faith in humanity
I'll ask Scott to stop applying false motives to myself or others. I believe fully in my simple work ethics and morals to do right by the clients and still give objective solutions. He may not ever agree, but that's on him, not me, I don't accept his accusations of being biased, whether absolute or relative or whatever a potential commission might be.

So where do these other services fit into the discussion?
Hard to keep track of what is RMM, versus ticketing, versus asset tracking, versus remote control and monitoring, reporting, etc etc.

Any general comments across these others?

http://www.landesk.com/

https://www.continuum.net/products/rmm-software/remote-monitoring-and-management

http://www.n-able.com/products/n-central

https://www.manageengine.com/

http://www.gfi.com/

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

It's obvious people already in IT have all these strong thoughts on the subject,

This has absolutely nothing to do with IT, though. It's about basic business understanding. If a business owner doesn't know this already - that's a business heading for failure. This is super, ultra basic common business sense. You HAVE to know how your partners are aligned and who works for you and who works against you.

Well it comes back to trust I suppose.
If I hire a "consultant" to come figure out my home security, part of me already understands they will likely have only a few common vendors, and maybe they get commissions and maybe not. It isn't so much the commission I care about, it's whether they are actually doing what's right for me at the end of the day.

I also "trust" that if they have some favorite vendors, it's because THEY are the experts, and thus THOSE vendors are particularly good ones, and the company is particular trained on using them.

Any decent company would do right by the customer. If they are this utterly persuaded to jack up their customers for some commissions, I agree the business won't last long. Or they will develop a bad reputation, or whatever else.

So it comes back to "trust" regarding the ML ads angle as well. You say the ads are not "advice" but that's not what I was saying anyway. I was saying I trust that the vendors within the ads are vetted enough to where I can believe they are at least good companies and have quality products. Not that ML is "recommending" or "advising" on their use. But simply that they are good, or approved of, if you will.

I would trust ML to not run ads for "Curtis IT Services" just because he paid a lot.

There are only two options then.

Option 1) ML knows something about technology and to some degree would not run ads that promote known-bad products.

Option 2) ML knows something about technology and shows ads for crap stuff on purpose for the money.

Either way, option 1 I can reasonably trust the ads here show decent tech products. Option 2 hurts ML's very reputation as a knowledgeable tech community.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

I have no idea what you are talking about. Implementation is a standard part of consulting. The attempt to totally separate them isn't useful here and is just cloudying the waters.

What? Seems like this is exactly what we've been going around about. The pure consultant only provides "recommendations" about what to do, and wouldn't normally be involved in the actual implementation in order to avoid all bias.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

I thought only Sith cared about absolutes

The path to the dark side is a slippery one.
Arguments lead to fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

I don't think that anyone can say that they only look at the absolute.

Hello. My name is Zack.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

Saying that only $10K sounds like real money to you can't be the case.

Unless affiliate income is not the business model and thus not required to stay afloat.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

The problem is just getting you to be happy with what the name of doing sales means... that you are a VAR. Actually, in that case, you are not a VAR, just a reseller.

My problem is apply VAR to my entire life and business after such a recommendation.

To the point, that specific job was a VAR role. But it could very well be 20 minutes later I take a consulting job where I apply a totally different tactic and role that is not a VAR type.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

If you are paid to consult on a project and one piece of that project is picking a cloud host. How many minutes did you bill for that decision versus how much were you compensated by Vultr?

To be fair, I've never been paid to be a pure consultant. If it's understood what that means and that's what the client is after, it changes the whole conversation. If a consultant is NOT the implementer, then commissions and affiliates don't mean anything anyway.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

It's trivial in absolute terms ($5 or $10) but it is non-trivial in relative terms (20%, maybe 50% of the pay for that one decision.)

Only the absolute matters to me. $10 isn't much. $10,000 sounds like real money. If somebody sends me an email out of the blue "hey who is good webhost for a blog?" then out will pop my affiliate link, I have no problem with it.

@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

That situation you're talking about might be a one off, so they MIGHT need that. But most SMBs don't. Most SMBs aren't based in tech, they need email, some data storage for spreadsheets/documents, etc and a CRM. Those things don't require the services of AWS or Azure in most cases.
You can't look at a single case and suddenly assume that's the norm.

Of course.

Company I work for still doesn't have CRM. I've never been able to figure out how to properly integrate it to all our relevant services. In the end, CRM would just mean a ton of manual labor updating records with no real automation.

If your company happens to have paid Github accounts, you can try Gitter which is free and create private channels/groups.
Gitter is pretty cool by default but on free Github accounts your essentially in public chat.

Slack now has audio too.

Not saying you shouldn't try Skype, I haven't used it in a couple years, I just never liked it. It was like an app that didn't know what it wanted to be when it grew up, so it was very clunky at any particular feature. Mediocre voice, mediocre chat, etc.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

Why must one be a VAR before they can have some favorite tools in the toolbox? Or pull out some "common" options when a particular need comes up?

Having a solution that you are paid to favour (or accept money for favouring) or exchanges money in any way... makes you a VAR.

The favoured solution bit is totally wrong and something you added. Favouring a solution doesn't have anything to do with it. A consultant can favour a solution and not be a VAR. A VAR can have all solutions available and have no favourites. The two are unrelated.

They may be unrelated but it's the motive behind it that you twist against my words.

"You must be a VAR when the solutions you favour pay you to favour them"

Except that I already favored them for years, then I decided to sign up, nobody made me. I get it, you are using the absolute definition behind the terms, but I don't like the way you handle the motivations and underlying relationship with the vendor with the language you use.

Being "paid to favor them" is NOT the motivation. It might be true in reality as something that happens, but it does NOT have to mean that this is the technician's primary motivations or the reason why they favor the thing in the first place. It does mean in the least that the commission changes the way they work for the client one iota. It does not HAVE to mean that, not logically, not at all.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

Is AWS the uncommon choice for building a cluster of app servers? Is Azure uncommon when they want offsite management of AD?

In the SMB space, absolutely. Neither of these are even on the radar for proper SMB solution sets. Not that neither is ever an option, but pretty much that the SMB space even knows these names is because of VARs pushing big commission products instead of looking at customer needs. These are not products that have any purpose in the normal SMB ecosystem.

If you are looking at the enterprise, then this category is common, but only AWS is super common. There are many providers and you could never use one without a good knowledge of its limitations and features.

I think this is not true any more. Grabbing an Azure box for $20 a month or whatever the "pay as you go" comes out to, can be quite handy.
The AWS ecosystem where you can grab all kinds of servers/services that are all managed under one account is easier than not for some applications.

I think of a friend of mine who is the tech/web guy in a small business in the video/tutorial/courseware market. About, I dunno, 6 or 8 employees. They still work out of the boss's house or the bakery at the mall.
They have moved almost their entire infrastructure to AWS because they can do everything from complete video transcoding to website hosting to video/courseware hosting to server/NAS backups to you name it, all under one roof with wicked fast backend network speeds. It makes it easy to cluster any given service and do round-robin ad-hoc scaling. By using block storage he can now scale micro-servers from a few to a few dozen in minutes to handle any load, and then this scaling can happen automatically.

Obviously they still needed my tech friend to manage it all day, but previous solutions cost more, had to work from many different vendors, had slow transfer speeds between them, etc etc. Moving everything to AWS has simplified management and costs are much lower.

@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

@BRRABill said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:

I still cannot get past you don't question what your customers really need. And yes, I do know what they need.

Because if they don't ask for advice (and aren't on a peer review forum) it's not polite or warranted to give it. If they are looking to avoid advice, why force it on them? Once in a VAR role, just giving unrequested advice doesn't help you and can only make the customer unhappy. No one wins.

I understand this point fully. But at the end of the day when they "find out" that YOUR solution wasn't "really" fixing what they "thought" they wanted. Who gets the blame? Of course they blame you. You become a "bad" company to avoid because they do things that "don't work" and cost a lot of money.

Your whole team needs to be aware of the changes and important things can't simply be yelling around the office any more.

You need more than one-on-one chat. Your whole company should already be using some kind of chat, if used for nothing more than "heading to lunch" or "I'll be gone tomorrow" type messages. We only used our Skype for stuff like collecting lunch orders for example, but at least it's there.
Slack has the ability to just "be there" with everybody even if not used much. It can be handy for passing files, screenshots, links, groups and DMs.

If Slack is too heavy and email is too whatever and phone texting is too cumbersome, and Skype is too "meh". Then you need something that fits in the middle, like Telegram or What's App.
Telegram is chat but you have desktop, web, and phone clients that can be used. It's not as "big" as Skype or Slack but not as cumbersome as just texting. Plus you don't have the message longevity limits like Slack does. Messages are also encrypted.

Trello is really a project-based tool, which can still come in handy for historical purposed. Put meeting notes there, roadmaps, idea boards, upcoming sales information, whatever. Your remote guy can easily take part in projects via Trello and communications via Telegram, Slack, or Skype, and then of course email.

Your remote guy should have access to the other employees as far as chat, so I wouldn't stick with one-on-one messaging. You never know.

Take a look at Telegram's features and compare to Skype and Slack and even Freshdesk. But chat/messaging tools are not the same category as Trello, that's project management and is compared to tools like Producteev and Asana or even Basecamp.

Lastly, you don't have "control" over the remote person's hours and time per se, so you have to change focus to tasks or goals and benchmarks and projects.
Don't think "how do I know how many hours he works"; think "is he getting work done that satisfies employment."
In other words, is he getting satisfactory work done in reasonable time, versus trying to time track which is only a measurement of time, not work. You might even consider going salaried since time-tracking makes less sense with a remote worker. Unless their job is heavily based on particular hours "doing stuff".

Good luck!