[HN Gopher] Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting
___________________________________________________________________
Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting
Author : speckx
Score : 191 points
Date : 2025-07-31 15:24 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lazyadmin.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (lazyadmin.nl)
| carimura wrote:
| After many (many!) years I finally got around to my childhood
| dreams of building a home network rack, centered around the Unifi
| stack. I've got the new 10 gig switch, the dream machine SE, a
| bunch of cameras, and I've been very impressed with their stuff.
| The experience "just works" and feels like they take inspiration
| from Apple. The whole camera setup can be "closed" by shutting
| off outside access, this self-hosting option takes it all a step
| further for those who care deeply about privacy!
| whalesalad wrote:
| > feels like they take inspiration from Apple
|
| the founders are ex-Apple
| AlexandrB wrote:
| There's one big gotcha with Unifi cameras, where you have to
| cloud-connect your Unifi system if you want "AI" detections[1]
| (anything other than simple motion detection). I'm hoping they
| fix it some day[2], but for now I just have motion detection on
| my Unifi hardware. If this is a problem for you, make sure you
| understand the tradeoffs here before you commit to a Unifi
| system.
|
| [1]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1cifnut/unifi_pro...
|
| [2]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1dbyvan/home_assi...
| alt227 wrote:
| Still dont understand why this is such a big issue, and I
| have been reading threads about it for a year now.
|
| Just turn on cloud access, accept the t&cs and then turn it
| off again. If you are really scared then you can isolate that
| device in a vlan or DMZ temporarily.
|
| I run many commercial and residential networks, and this is
| definitely a non issue for me.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I stopped buying Ubiquiti when I reset my UDM Pro and took
| it to another house without internet access, and it refused
| to "activate" without an Internet Connection or a phone app
| connection. Seems they are more interested in selling a
| lifestyle rather than actual production network equipment.
| jeremywho wrote:
| What are you using instead?
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| OPNsense.
| alt227 wrote:
| Im not excusing Ubiquiti here, I agree thats pretty
| annoying.
|
| However a UDM pro is a router (as well as other things).
| The expectation is that it is connected to WAN.
|
| Unifi switches and access points etc do not have the same
| online requirement.
| greycol wrote:
| You can't actually configure the wan connection fully
| without internet connectivity (at least last i checked).
|
| This meant for instance if your WAN required VLAN like
| New Zealand you couldn't actually set it up without
| another router. Their fix is to add 1 more option to the
| WAN configuration options rather than the full suite of
| WAN configuration options you get once it's talked home.
|
| The partial fix does make it clear that the philosophy of
| "you must talk to the mothership" is a guiding one that
| ubiquiti sticks to.
| crimsontech wrote:
| I stopped buying them when I saw users posting on reddit
| that they were logging in to their systems and seeing
| other peoples camera feeds and networks.
|
| https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ubiquiti-
| user...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Having seen a few slippery slope situations like this over
| the years with IoT and other services, I'm simply not
| willing to make any concessions in that direction. I use a
| UDM Pro and turning on cloud access requires associating
| that hardware with a Unify cloud account. That's already
| undesirable if you want to safeguard privacy.
| alt227 wrote:
| Fair enough, the Unifi brand is a consumer/prosumer brand
| after all.
|
| I guess if you have strict privacy requirements then you
| would be looking more at enterprise gear anyway.
| cowpig wrote:
| Why does strict privacy requirements imply enterprise
| gear?
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Because the elites have decided that privacy is only
| applicable to businesses.
| alt227 wrote:
| Because it generally has much stricter firewalls, more
| granular policies, better/more comprehensive logging, no
| device phone home, and no requirements to sign up for
| online accounts. All of which make it all much more
| secure by default due to standard enterprise company
| requirements, and easier to customise to the users
| specific secure needs.
| supertrope wrote:
| Enterprises often have to pass audits and have regulatory
| compliance requirements. So no surveillance capitalism
| for them. Where enterprise tech vendors get you is
| licensing cost.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Will it still get automatic updates in case of security
| issues?
| bisby wrote:
| https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/ai-key
|
| Even this only reviews "Smart Detections" and I have smart
| detections turned off on my Unifi cameras, because it enables
| cloud AI. Having the ability to have an AI key to process
| detections locally would be great.
|
| Also, having to buy extra hardware kinda stinks. Would love
| to be able to have a self hosted Unifi OS server that can do
| AI key abilities if the hardware supports it.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| If only the system would cope with power outages I would agree.
| My viewports refuse to reconnect to the cameras and need
| multiple forgets/adoptions to come back to life. The (wired)
| cameras themselves take hours before they show up again, except
| for the (WiFi) doorbell. During this period I can see the all
| online via the managed ubiquiti switches.
| Ultimatt wrote:
| Surely the expected solution for that is a UPS on the POE
| switch?
| alt227 wrote:
| I agree, not sure why you are being downvoted.
| vel0city wrote:
| It's not a solution, its kicking the can down the road.
| What happens with the UPS battery dies and the power
| comes back on? The cameras are still down for an
| unacceptable amount of time because of poor software.
|
| The cameras should reassociate almost immediately after
| regaining a connection. It shouldn't take hours for them
| to try and connect again. I won't fault the camera for
| going down when the power dies, I will fault it for not
| coming back immediately after the power comes back
| though!
| subscribed wrote:
| Ummm..... So the solution to cameras taking several hours
| to take back to life is to.... just to make sure the will
| never go offline?
|
| The UPS remark is such an non sequitur. Sure, it's prudent
| to have one but this doesn't make the bug go away.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| A UPS is not a solution for all power outages, just ones
| short enough to last the UPS uptime. The brains of the
| system is supposed to be the Cloud Key anyway which has its
| own built in "UPS" and seems to shut down gracefully if you
| kill power.
|
| The cameras and viewports should not be writing data at all
| after an initial configuration if designed properly and
| killing power should present no problems to any system with
| a read-only filesystem. As someone who designs systems like
| these it absolutely baffles me.
| supertrope wrote:
| Version 1 Cloud Keys would brick upon power loss.
| mohaine wrote:
| I've been using unfi protect/capture (I self hosted capture
| for a long time) for years and have never had a forgotten
| adoption any they almost never go down. I do have everything
| on UPS now but I never saw the issue before that either.
|
| That said I've only used the wired bullet cams so maybe other
| models are not so nice.
|
| Really the only downside I've seen is about 5ish years ago,
| all the bullet cams I bought would die after about .75 -> 3
| years. All died with the same issue and I had 100% failure
| rate with any bought during that time frame. Ubiquiti
| replaced the ones that died during the warranty period but
| most died just after that expired.
|
| The ones bought before or after that have been great so the
| issue was solved but I have a nice stack of dead ones that
| would work great as fake cameras, especially as their IR leds
| still light up.
| brentm wrote:
| Yea Ubiquiti is brutal after a power outage. I got a battery
| back up for my rack just to avoid post power outage down
| time.
| amluto wrote:
| My general impression is that it "Just Works" if you don't do
| anything remotely interesting with it.
|
| Want to create a VLAN with no Internet connectivity? Better
| test that it _actually_ has no Internet connectivity because
| the setting doesn't actually work.
|
| Want to use the firewall? Better test all the rules -- it's
| amazingly buggy.
|
| Want to change a WiFi setting without WiFi going down for a
| minute or two? Good luck -- UniFi doesn't seem to care about
| making it work.
|
| Want to find information (MAC, switch port, DHCP reservation,
| etc) about a device that uses the same MAC address on multiple
| VLANs? Good luck -- it looks like UniFi utterly flubbed either
| their database schema or whatever interface their front end
| uses to talk to their backend about it, and it's very, very
| broken.
|
| Want to find basically any setting based on online docs? Too
| bad -- they keep moving the settings and not updating the docs.
| stirlo wrote:
| This. They make excellent access points and their lite
| beam/air fibre products are great.
|
| But UniFi has serious limitations when it comes to anything
| beyond the basics. An off the self Asus all in one home
| router actually has more features and capabilities.
| alt227 wrote:
| > An off the self Asus all in one home router actually has
| more features and capabilities.
|
| This is just not true at all. I agree unifi can be buggy at
| times, and their super clean interface means they need to
| hide stuff all over the place, but I havent found any
| network configuration I couldnt do on Unifi yet.
|
| Care to elaborate on exactly which functions standard asus
| routers have over Ubiquiti gear?
| jtc331 wrote:
| VLAN with an id of 0 isn't possible on the new interface
| last I checked. Which, granted is a weird thing to do,
| but...
| JonathonW wrote:
| There are off-the-shelf all-in-one Asus home routers that
| do VLANs?
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Many Asus home routers advertise compatibility with
| and/or run OpenWRT internally, so yes to a certain
| reading.
|
| Here's a random example I found:
|
| https://www.asus.com/networking-iot-servers/modem-
| routers/al... | https://web.archive.org/web/2025070416185
| 2/https://www.asus....
| alt227 wrote:
| Installing a custom firmware on a router does not count
| as 'off-the-shelf' imo.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I'm not speaking hypothetically, as I have used VLANs on
| native stock Asus firmware.
|
| https://www.asus.com/us/support/faq/1049415/
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| yes, thos is quite rare thong. Could you describe the
| reason behind it?
| rsync wrote:
| Just to reiterate for those that missed it:
|
| If you change the _schedule_ of a WiFi network your _entire
| network_ (wired and everything) goes down for two minutes.
|
| Just a simple admin policy change... full network outage.
|
| Clown. College.
| amluto wrote:
| Eh, in my experience, if you disable the uplink monitor
| features aggressively enough (which is in a different place
| in different firmwares and currently seems to also require
| disabling all wireless uplink/"mesh" capability), then
| sometime more of the network will stay up. Maybe even the
| gateway will keep working too if you don't touch any
| gateway settings. Of course, if the gateway does decide to
| reboot, you're down for many minutes.
|
| It's real classy.
| krupan wrote:
| Constantly tweaking settings is not a use-case they have
| optimized for. Most of their customers are small IT shops
| that support small/medium sized businesses. They set up a
| network for a few doctors offices, law firms, etc. by
| clicking a few buttons in the controller's GUI once, and
| then remotely keep an eye on the networks with the
| controller software's remote management features.
| amluto wrote:
| If you set the thing to automatically optimize WiFi (the
| default!) it goes completely down for several minutes
| every day.
|
| I would not want to have to carefully optimize settings
| to get that third nine of uptime for a small business.
| outworlder wrote:
| Most people don't want to do anything 'interesting'. If you
| stray too far from the beaten path, I'd argue that you no
| longer need or something that "Just Works". You need
| something very configurable, which, by definition, will let
| you shoot yourself in the foot.
|
| My current setup is Mikrotik for wired and Ubiquity APs for
| wifi. Their wifi devices have great specs and are difficult
| to beat. Mikrotik has decent wifi devices but not only they
| have a footgun minefield - not exactly their fault since Wifi
| is _difficult_ to get right, so the more settings you expose,
| the worse it gets. Mikrotik also logs behind in features
| (they are still at wifi 6). It 's an odd combination of
| philosophies but seems to work, all the vlan logic is
| offloaded to Mikrotik. And so are firewalls, etc. Then the
| voodoo Wifi stuff gets handled by Ubiquiti.
|
| > Want to change a WiFi setting without WiFi going down for a
| minute or two? Good luck -- UniFi doesn't seem to care about
| making it work.
|
| I am with you on that. It's things like that that prevent
| adoption by larger businesses and contribute to the
| perception that they aren't a serious contender. I previously
| had an Aruba InstantOn setup(which is focused on SMB), and
| got really accustomed to being able to tweak (most) settings
| without any interruptions at all. I could even do things like
| change channel widths (in one direction) without losing
| connectivity. What was really surprising on Unifi is that I
| lost connection when I changed settings for a _different_
| SSID, for like a minute. That isn't really acceptable.
|
| They still do a lot of things right though, and it shouldn't
| be too difficult to get their act together. The devices are
| pretty decent and at a surprisingly low price point.
| subscribed wrote:
| But unifi is trying to position at the prosumer segment.
|
| And we have things like indeed no WiFi (all networks down)
| if you dare to change WiFi settings, or mdns having a hard
| limit of five networks because the underlying Perl script
| is 10 or 15 years old.
| kingnothing wrote:
| I took a hybrid approach -- Unifi for everything except the
| firewall, and a Firewalla for that. I'm overall quite happy
| with it, although you won't get a single pane of glass for
| management.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| This was absolutely my experience. I ended up tearing it all
| out and selling it on eBay.
|
| I run OPNsense now with a Ruckus standalone AP, and it has
| been bulletproof.
| psyclobe wrote:
| Idk about you but I'm rocking a site to site link to my
| parents house, I have vlans for each segment in my home
| network (iot, priv etc) with full ipv6 routing and custom
| filtered dns over https with full network name resolution for
| all dhcp clients by their hostname on my local subnet
| domain...
|
| I have complete control over my kids network access, can
| block specific types of traffic by app type or time based
| rules. I have high visibility into my WiFi setup and
| everything is on prem and self hosted and integrated with
| home assistant...
| petepete wrote:
| I did this in 2023 and my experience has been the same. Had 0
| problems other than Sonos being, well, Sonos.
|
| Recently set up CCTV at my parents' with a Cloud Gateway Max,
| set up a site to site VPN in 3 clicks and now I can support
| remotely and their Sony smart TV can see my Jellyfin server.
| donmcronald wrote:
| IIRC some Sonos issues are related to STP. AFAIK it's, like
| you said, Sonos being Sonos. Lol.
| petepete wrote:
| Yeah, that was exactly it. Unifi have a special page in
| their docs for dealing with Sonos.
|
| https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/18930473041047-Best-
| Pr...
|
| I ended up connecting everything with a wired connection
| and disabling WiFi. Thankfully I have cat6 to every room so
| it wasn't an inconvenience.
|
| It's worked perfectly since.
| bc569a80a344f9c wrote:
| How could a Sonos device possibly interact with spanning
| tree? Are there Sonos devices that act as bridges?
| Polizeiposaune wrote:
| Most of their devices act as bridges; some of the newer
| ones don't. Some have multiple ethernet ports, and
| anything that has both an ethernet port and is part of
| their "sonosnet" mutant-wifi will bridge between sonosnet
| and their ethernet port(s) with spanning tree using
| classic (pre-RSTP) link costs.
|
| If you're not careful you can end up with the "best" path
| between two switches going over the sonos-to-sonos wifi.
| anotherhue wrote:
| I am more interested in your childhood than your network at
| this point.
| kwanbix wrote:
| I really love my Dream Machine. Super reliable. What I don't
| like that much is their UI. It is super weirdly done. It is not
| natural to use, at least if like me, you use it once every 6
| months or more.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I like the way they do VLANs. It's easy enough that it can be
| managed by people that don't understand all the low level
| terminology.
| millzlane wrote:
| It would be cool if they brought back the self-hosted security
| camera solution UniFi Protect.
| alt227 wrote:
| Im pretty sure it never went away?
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| I think he means self-hosted on your own hardware, rather
| than requiring their Unifi Protect appliances. You used to be
| able to with their old Unifi Video .
|
| Unofficially (and therefore not supported), you can just take
| their binaries and run it on your own hardware. But since
| they only support their own hardware and it's arm64 hardware,
| you only get arm64 binaries:
| https://github.com/dciancu/unifi-protect-unvr-docker-arm64
|
| With them adding generic onvif camera support, I might try it
| again because the other options aren't amazing either.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| What is the advantage of using this over existing OSS solutions?
| w0m wrote:
| are there OSS solutions for controlling/configuring unify
| hardware?
| outworlder wrote:
| There are not.
| Saris wrote:
| This looks to be an executable that deploys podman containers for
| you, that is bizarre, and makes me question why it's called Unifi
| 'OS'?
| mwpmaybe wrote:
| Yes, a virtual appliance or system image a la Home Assistant OS
| would seem like a better fit...
| Saris wrote:
| Or just a docker-compose file, since it's already in
| container format.
| izacus wrote:
| That would make it impossible to deploy it next to other
| services on an existing machine... why would you want less
| flexibility?
| dns_snek wrote:
| When did it become impossible to run a VM next to other
| services on an existing machine? As they said, Home
| Assistant OS works great with that setup and it's rock
| solid in my experience.
| mtillman wrote:
| Recently switched from a UDM Pro Max to a Firewalla Gold Pro and
| couldn't be happier about the move. Software that works >
| software that has everything but requires magic to get checkboxes
| to adhere to a save state-this is a common issue with UniFi
| Network options. They need far better QA before I recommend
| anyone use them as an OS.
|
| 1 of numerous examples:
| https://community.ui.com/questions/Device-Static-IP-Not-Savi...
| tiffanyh wrote:
| What issues did you encounter when using Unifi?
|
| From what I've seen, Unifi seems like the closest to an "Apple-
| like" experience - especially given how much more robust their
| capabilities are compared to most other providers.
| j45 wrote:
| That was definitely the case. It's not always the case
| anymore.
| covercash wrote:
| The idea that Ubiquiti pushes out buggy software as
| production-ready and that we're all their beta testers is a
| pretty common meme on their subreddit.
| e40 wrote:
| You can easily turn off automatic updates. I check the
| forum before I update. Haven't had any issues for 10+
| years.
| elteto wrote:
| Same, never had an issue. And I also skip the latest
| couple of minor versions most of the time unless there's
| a security bugfix. Gives the updates time to bake.
| p_ing wrote:
| You're correct, but the running gag is that every version
| released as production is a beta.
|
| It's been awhile since I used Unifi, but regardless of
| the label they put on their binaries, things felt like
| beta. That doesn't mean I had issues per se, or things I
| couldn't work around. But it may be missing things,
| _almost certainly_ missing promised features, rough
| around the edges, etc.
| e40 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not super happy with their release process.
| That's why I look at the forums before I update. And I
| don't update very often, probably 1-2 a year.
|
| A neighbor has a bunch of Unifi devices and he just has
| his on autoupdate and never has issues. I definitely am
| scared to give them that much control.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| I hear this talked about in the past but is it still true
| today?
|
| I've at least never experienced it (and I stick to the
| Stable/Release channel).
|
| I have 4 AP, 9 cameras, NVR and Dream Machine - I guess I
| got lucky over the 2.5 years I've had Unifi.
| gh02t wrote:
| In my experience they got a lot better in the last 2-3
| years with reliability and polish. I never really had any
| problems prior to that myself, but I know they definitely
| did used to have a much more deserved reputation for
| buggy releases.
| donmcronald wrote:
| The v8 firmware for the U7 Pro APs has been a mess.
| readmodifywrite wrote:
| Having used Unifi for 10+ years, they really have
| improved their firmware/software by quite a lot.
| kevstev wrote:
| I bought a UDM about two years ago, and it was a real
| mess for about 6 months. It was hanging every few weeks
| which required a hard reboot- which was shocking, because
| this was my first attempt at upgrading my network to more
| expensive and capable stuff, and for the previous 20
| years, had _never_ had an issue with my network equipment
| hanging or rebooting. They were going to RMA my UDM, but
| then they had me install a special release as a last try,
| and it worked, and everything has worked well since then.
|
| That said though, do I really need these features? The
| biggest draw was having a proper AP to put on my ceiling
| instead of my old google wifi pucks. The upgrade from
| wifi 5 to 6e was not noticeable in any way. I spent 3x
| the money and really have nothing tangible to show for it
| aside from a cool UI to log into, which was never
| necessary prior because everything Just Worked.
|
| Also- this may be my fault for not reading the fine
| print, but the IDS stuff on the UDM only works at
| 600mbps, and I have a gigabit connection. People in Unifi
| forums will tell me I am the idiot for assuming that, but
| it has gigabit ports, its 2023... I just ass/u/me/d that
| everything would work without issue at line speed and
| wouldn't have to read the spec sheet like a lawyer.
|
| Anyway, its fine in the end. I would never buy anything
| cutting edge from them again, I want anything to bake for
| at least 6 months after release, which is usually how
| long it takes for their "shipping" stuff to become
| actually available anyway. I will stop whining now :)
| izacus wrote:
| I haven't found that to be the case on Stable channel.
|
| (I do notice people on forums love to use Early Access
| update channel where... YMMV).
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I couldn't get my Elgato Key Light Air (or whatever its
| called) to work on my Unifi network - something was amiss
| with the WLAN settings that others reported was specific to
| unifi.
|
| I didn't like how they stopped supporting on-prem Unifi Video
| server, and only allow you to use it with a hardware
| appliance now.
|
| They moved beyond "just build good product" and into unwanted
| cloud services and closed ecosystem.
|
| If this is a re-opening of some of their self-hosting, then
| great. They're back to par, I guess?
| favorited wrote:
| > Elgato Key Light Air (or whatever its called) to work on
| my Unifi network
|
| I also have struggled with this, and spent many hours
| bashing my head against a specific setting in PFSense that
| requires a plugin to enable.
|
| Then, I thought to try updating the firmware on my Unifi
| WiFi AP, and have had (almost) no problems ever since. It
| has taught me to think twice about spending $100+ on a
| piece of niche electronics that can only be controlled if
| it is compatible with your WiFi...
| anon7000 wrote:
| Might be better, but it's 4x the cost. Firewalla Gold SE at
| $509, vs UniFi Cloud Gateway Ultra at $129. In my experience,
| the software does work fine. Works way better out of the box
| than most routers I've used.
| ac29 wrote:
| Yeah I use an OpenWRT router that cost ~$125 and should have
| just about all of the capability of the $500 Firewalla
| hyperbovine wrote:
| $889 for a SOHO router? Who is this aimed at?
| pnw wrote:
| A minor UI bug versus not patching multiple security
| vulnerabilities?
|
| https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/44144642...
| mmastrac wrote:
| This is full circle. You used to be able to host the unifi stack
| on anything that would run Java. Glad to see them returning to
| their roots!
| bobbob1921 wrote:
| I may be misunderstanding this, but as I recall originally the
| only way to run unifi was to have self hosted it through an app
| on a Windows machine on your network, then it went to the cloud,
| then cloud only, and now it seems to be coming back to self
| hosted? Good if so. (UniFi is their app/system to configure your
| ubiquiti network devices and to gather stats from them, it really
| did change the networking industry for such a low cost product at
| the time)
| natebc wrote:
| There was the little cloud key thing that they had for a while
| and then there's a version 2 of that.
|
| There's also been a container version for quite a while too.
|
| Gen 1 cloud key: https://dl.ubnt.com/qsg/UC-CK/UC-CK_EN.html
|
| Gen 2 cloud key https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/uck-g2
|
| Container from linuxserver.io
| https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-unifi-network-applicat...
| taubek wrote:
| Last time I used it (some 8 months ago) there was Windows app
| and mobile app.
|
| In order to configure, check what was going on I needed to run
| app on my Windows computer. I was looking into using docker or
| something like that, but I switched to another vendor.
| buran77 wrote:
| UniFi OS Server is similar to the old self hosted solution (the
| controller) except it can run more of the applications. I used
| to self host some years ago and only the Network was available.
| Now the OS supports InnerSpace and Identity too.
| myelin wrote:
| The self-hosted app never went away; I've been running it for
| the last 8 years or so, first on a MacBook Pro, then a
| Raspberry Pi, and now a repurposed HP T620 thin client.
|
| They promote their cloud controller pretty strongly, followed
| by the Cloud Key, which is their own preinstalled self hosting
| setup, but the self-hosted UniFi Network server has stuck
| around. (It changed names a couple of times; it was the "UniFi
| Controller", then "UniFi Network Application", and now "UniFi
| Network Server".)
| colechristensen wrote:
| This is what is confusing about this announcement, is
| anything actually newly available or is this a rename of the
| existing thing I've been doing in a container for years?
| LostSoulUniFi wrote:
| This is the first time UniFi OS can be self hosted, before
| you were able to use UniFi Network Application (Server),
| however this never included features like Teleport,
| Identity, Cybersecure subscription and many other features
| that require UniFi OS.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| And my experience with the cloud key was freaking awful.
|
| Terrible little underpowered device that frequently wouldn't
| come back up after losing power.
|
| I switched to Aruba because of the cloud key and haven't
| looked back.
| eddieroger wrote:
| I had the same problems with the Gen 1. The Gen 2 added a
| battery and shutdown on powerless, and never had a single
| problem with it.
| izacus wrote:
| Lately they luckly built the console into their router
| products - UniFi Express, UniFi Cloud Gateways and Dream
| Machines all have the console builtin and act as controllers.
| e40 wrote:
| The UDM pro has the controller built in. Others have mentioned
| the Cloud Key, of which there are two versions. The controller
| software runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. I used to run it in
| docker on Linux. For years. Quite easy to manage.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I run it on FreeBSD arm64 very successfully also.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > then it went to the cloud, then cloud only, and now it seems
| to be coming back to self hosted
|
| It never went cloud-only. You could always self-host.
|
| They've had different versions of cloud hosted offerings over
| the years. A few companies have also offered their own cloud
| hosted instances.
| grosswait wrote:
| It has always been self hosted as an option. I can't speak to
| any Windows versions, but I've always run on Debian.
| gh02t wrote:
| You've always been able to fully self host their core network
| controller, and not just on Windows. Linux has always been the
| preferred platform to host it on. However, the other more
| specialized apps in their ecosystem like their NVR software,
| etc was not self hostable independent of their controller
| hardware.
|
| Right now it looks like UniFi OS server doesn't do anything the
| prior self hosted stack does already. Presumably though they
| are planning to roll out some of the other parts that currently
| aren't in the fully self hosted stack.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| There was a lot of drama around Ubiquity a few years back. Happy
| to see the company is still alive and the indicator that they're
| coming back around to self hosting. All the hardware I bought a
| decade ago is still running fine (without any of the cloud
| software) and it looks like their newer stuff would be worth the
| upgrade (10gb everywhere, easily, at last).
| s0ss wrote:
| As far as I can see, they still flirt with vendor lock in. None
| of their cameras supported ONVIF when I researched this
| previously. Nice hardware, lame software choices, IMO.
| Catbert59 wrote:
| They support ONVIF now in their backend.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| > They support ONVIF now in their backend.
|
| Got a link? I'm curious about which profile(s) and does
| this mean that it's still proprietary between the NVR and
| camera but from the NVR I can get an onvif profile
| compatible feed?
| wnevets wrote:
| > There was a lot of drama around Ubiquity a few years back
|
| I've noticed a lot less Ubiquiti hate comments on HN since that
| one employee got arrested.
| nkotov wrote:
| Love Ubiquiti devices. Easy to manage in environments who don't
| have strict requirements.
| Aurornis wrote:
| You could always self-host UniFi Network.
| https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012282453-Self-Host...
|
| This launches with UniFi Network and UniFi InnerSpace, which is a
| deployment visualization tool. I assume they'll add more of the
| applications to UniFi OS in the future
| j45 wrote:
| This reminds me of the types of applications that are installed
| on the Ubquiti Dream Machine Pro.
|
| Ubiquiti has a pretty smooth setup that works well together,
| the recent years of reliability issues, updates, and data
| security issues however has been enough to stop buying Ubiquiti
| and protect it with other gear such as NetGate firewalls.
|
| The Dream Machine Pro had lost some critical advanced
| configurability from the ui and command line compared to it's
| predecessor, leaving a lot of users in no man's land. Some of
| it has been resolved from what I can tell. I own one and had to
| supplement it with another device in front of it temporarily.
| Once things are in production, we usually don't look for
| reasons to touch it.
|
| If your internet is 1 gig or less, I'll still vouch for the
| trusty littel EdgeRouter X, there's a great guide on setting up
| a nice little home network on it to learn which direction your
| next steps will be like.
|
| Hopefully this proves itself in a year and it's an easy
| decision.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| It turned out to be surprisingly annoying to do this on Debian
| due to the MongoDB requirement. I forget the exact difficulties
| but I ended up having to punt and run the container from
| linuxserver.io.
| beembeem wrote:
| What hardware were you using to host it?
| johann8384 wrote:
| How is this different than the docker container I am running now?
| I must be missing a detail or two.
| bri3d wrote:
| You're probably running what's currently called, I think, UniFi
| Network Server (at one point it was UniFi Controller?).
|
| That lets you configure networking devices but it isn't the
| "full" Ubiquiti ecosystem (Identity, Site Manager/SD-
| WAN/Teleport).
|
| Basically before you could run one "app" (the network
| management one) locally, but Unifi ship a grid of cloud "apps"
| that you see when you log into unifi.ui.com .
|
| Now they're shipping the thing that hosts the grid itself
| (enabling multi-site stuff like SD-WAN and the firmware update
| server), some more of the apps (Identity) and presumably
| they'll roll out more apps in the future.
| JCBird1012 wrote:
| 1. This is an official Docker image/container from Ubiquiti
| themselves - no more relying on LinuxServer.io/jacobalberty,
| etc...
|
| 2. With the "UniFI OS" branding, the door is open to the
| possibility of being able to run Talk, Protect, Access, etc...
| on your own hardware in the future.
| jp191919 wrote:
| I'm not seeing an official docker image...
| dan_pixelflow wrote:
| I've been self-hosting a Unifi controller (now called 'Unifi
| Network') for years in a Docker container, and before that I'd
| run it on a Windows machine whenever I needed to make changes to
| the configuration - I assume this pivot to call the self-hosted
| version 'UniFi OS' implies a future where more than just the
| Network application can be self-hosted.
| accrual wrote:
| What do you like to use the UniFi controller container for?
|
| I've tried hosting the same container before but it never
| seemed to properly "marry" to my UniFi AP, or it would forget
| the AP the next day, etc. For now I just use the iOS app which
| is sufficient to update the AP firmware occasionally, but I
| wish I could get all the insights of the controller.
| nirav72 wrote:
| I had that problem before. You can fix that by SSH'ing into
| your AP and setting the inform IP to point to your
| controller. Just make sure the IP address of the host that's
| running the controller container is static.
|
| https://www.unihosted.com/blog/how-to-set-inform-in-
| unifi-a-...
| irusensei wrote:
| I'm curious how is this different from the controller software.
| bri3d wrote:
| It's the level above; it's the thing that hosts the "grid of
| apps" you see on unifi.ui.com or on a Dream Machine, for
| example. The Network / Controller app is just one "app" in the
| "grid of apps." (I get the feeling that the current Controller
| app was also forked at some point and this might clean that up
| too, but I haven't looked into the software to see if that's
| the case yet).
|
| To start, it seems to allow for the multi-site coordinated
| tools like MD-WAN to work with self-hosted OS installation, and
| they added Innerspace and Identity (which I suppose is
| necessary since I think that's how the login works) as "launch"
| apps. Presumably they'll roll more out in the future - ideally
| you could fully self-host stuff like Protect.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I set up a small Ubiquiti setup with Pi-hole, then moved into a
| home serviced by AT&T Fiber, which comes with an all in one fiber
| modem and WiFi hub. I started using it before I could unpack,
| then did a little research on how I could disable WiFi, DHCP,
| and/or DNS in order to use my own equipment. The WiFi isn't great
| in all parts of the house so I planned on setting up APs at
| strategic points. But of course laziness, fear of stuff breaking
| and my family getting mad at me, and WiFi entrenchment has
| stopped me from using any of the equipment I bought. I would one
| day love to switch back over, but I just don't see it happening
| soon.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| There was a guy on dslreports selling certificates for $10
| each, and you could just load it up into one of the cheap sfp
| modules off of aliexpress. Plug it straight into the router of
| your choice. No reason to use their junk. I've done the same
| with a different provider.
| a2tech wrote:
| This is interesting--do you have a link to the sale or
| instructions as to how that was working?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| http://dslreports.com/
|
| You'd have to poke around in the forums. I'm not sure what
| the best keywords to search with would be. The gist of it
| is only AT&T ONTs can connect, because it's using
| certificate fuckery, but there was a guy buying those up
| for $1 or $5 or something on ebay, jtag-ing the certs off
| of those, and selling them for $10 each. There were
| instructions for how to program the sfp module to use
| those, and when I got mine those modules were only about
| $50 each (no idea what they're now with the tariff
| nonsense). You'd need a router that can accept those, I've
| got a Mikrotik. I think Ubiquiti has a prosumer router with
| one too that's not too crazy.
|
| At the time (3 years ago-ish), no one had figured out a way
| to do it with AT&T 5gig service. But for that you'd need
| something with SFP+ slots, and those are seriously pricey.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| I use ATT Fiber and using the pass-through mode has worked
| pretty well for me. The main problem is their box is still a
| piece of shit that they introduce bugs/regressions into
| sometimes. But that'll affect their own service as well,
| regardless of whether you use your own device w/ passthrough.
| So you might as well hook your stuff up.
| tcdent wrote:
| Original announcement from UniFI:
| https://blog.ui.com/article/introducing-unifi-os-server
| Arrowmaster wrote:
| ># src: Mirano Verhoef ># Go into root >su - > ># Install all
| required dependencies apt update ; apt upgrade ; apt install
| podman -y ; cd ~ ; mkdir 4.2.23 ; cd 4.2.23 ; wget https://fw-
| download.ubnt.com/data/unifi-os-server/8b93-linux... ; chmod +x
| 8b93-linux-x64-4.2.23-158fa00b-6b2c-4cd8-94ea-e92bc4a81369.23-x64
| ; ./8b93-linux-x64-4.2.23-158fa00b-6b2c-4cd8-94ea-e92bc4a81369.23
| -x64 install
|
| This is some of the jankiest install installations I've seen in a
| long time. Not even using && to stop on an error, just plowing
| ahead for more errors to stack up.
| arm32 wrote:
| Their code must be perfect and thus no need to worry about
| pesky errors.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This is awesome because of how un-Apple-like it is. With Apple,
| they leverage the ecosystem and force you to buy everything to
| make a cohesive experience. Want to have cellular on your Mac? We
| expect you to buy an iPhone and a laptop and tether.
|
| If you want to have unifi WAPS without the UCG - this enables
| that. It's awesome that they do that, even though right now, it's
| the cohesiveness of the Unifi ecosystem that is a big driver in
| their success.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > If you want to have unifi WAPS without the UCG - this enables
| that.
|
| You could always do this. UniFi Network always had a self-
| install option.
| JCBird1012 wrote:
| Even better - you don't even have to run Network - UniFi APs
| have standalone mode - https://help.ui.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/12594679474071-Standal...
| victor_vhv wrote:
| I love the idea of centrally managing network infrastructure that
| can be 'self-contained' in a local service (whether a device, VM,
| or container).
|
| TP-Link offers a similar solution via their 'Omada'-enabled
| devices. Unfortunately, mixing different brands can feel
| counterproductive, so there's significant vendor lock-in.
|
| Does anyone know of a similar solution for OpenWrt devices?
| random3 wrote:
| So UniFi stack is the better alternative to Ring
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44620002)?
|
| Is UniFi the sweetspot for prosumer networking if one wants
| switches, APs, cameras, etc. without a CCNP?
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| I've been a unifi user for quite a few years, enthusiastically
| at first and with somewhat more trepidation as of late. They
| seemed to have some kind of hardware talent exodus a couple
| years ago, and also when they stopped having self-hostable
| unifi video and network. I ended up capitulating and just
| bought a cloud-key but wasn't thrilled.
|
| But yes, they still seem to be the best for small business /
| homelab type people who want something more than "the AT&T guy
| put a box behind the couch in 1998 and i don't know where it
| went after that" but also doesn't want to have to do opnsense
| or a bunch of that stuff.
|
| And they've managed to regain my enthusiasm a bit by adding
| plain-ole wireguard (not even teleport, though i do like
| teleport for my phone) to their managed VPN options, and now by
| bringing back self-hosting.
|
| My main gripe about lack of self-hosting is, I have a bunch of
| terabytes just sitting around i could put my video footage of
| my front lawn on, and it's free real estate. but since i can't
| (couldn't) self-host video on it, I would've had to pay like
| hundreds of bucks (or is it thousands?) to get the rackmount
| video server from them. But now that this is back, hopefully I
| can switch back to self hosting if my cloudkey ever dies. So
| that's nice.
| exabrial wrote:
| If I were a hospital, financial brokerage, etc, I would use
| Cisco.
|
| But since we're a small business < 50 employees, with 4 sites
| (office, call center, colocation, cloud) Ubiquiti makes it
| unbelievably easy to administer, even though I know I'm leaving
| plenty of performance on the table in terms of switching
| performance, latency, QoS, and throughput.
|
| Surprised at S2S VPN performance at these price points as well!
| More than adequate!
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I really wish PC with some good m.2 wifi cards in it were more of
| an option for wireless. PC based routers are awesome, there's
| great software. It's just the wifi situation keeping us tethered
| to very special boxes.
|
| Even openwrt has severe limits. It's up to you to flap on all
| manners of optimizations and tweaks to what is basically a
| hostapd.cond file. Hostapd.conf is the gatekeeper of one of the
| most important connective channels on the planet, and we
| collectively know so so so little of it.
|
| At least the m.2 & m-pcie cards have finally started getting
| somewhat better availability. It's still 90% Compex reference
| designs, but they're somewhat purchaseable, after years of this
| stuff being super hard to get ahold of. Seems usually to be
| ~$200, for a card that'll do wifi-7 2x2 5+5GHz (ex: Compex
| WLTE7002E55, using Qualcomm's QCN6274).
| seany wrote:
| That market is pretty small I think, and it's split with the
| people that jump right to used enterprise aps for their radios
| (I'm using 3 rukus 850s for instance)
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| I use OPNsense with a Ruckus standalone AP. It has been
| bulletproof.
| redleader55 wrote:
| This is great and I hope they release all the other apps that
| right now can only be added on a Dream Router/Dream machine, etc.
|
| What I would like to see:
|
| 1. IPv6. I tried for several days to patch various warts in the
| Unifi Network Server (the unofficial docker container), to make
| it run on IPv6 only. Everytime I managed yet another horrible
| hack in some library they are using, I discovered 4 other bugs
| that prevent IPv6 only operation. There's always stuff that
| expects an IPv4 address in Unifi.
|
| 2. Managing my own hardware gateway from Unifi UI. I get it that
| Unifi doesn't make money from supporting this, but it would be
| very cool. Their gateway is not super complicated, and there are
| materials explaining how to "adopt" some random device, in the
| end you still need a cert from the company to make it work.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Next, we need to log in with our Ubiquiti account.
|
| Right. They don't learn.
|
| > You can also proceed without an Ubiquiti account
|
| Can you? Or you _have_ to make one and only then maybe possibly
| to some extent run the thing without one?
| psyclobe wrote:
| I have nothing but good things to say about ubiquiti. I run their
| cameras door bell and network switches at my house and have had
| nearly 100% uptime for years. Their ui constantly improves and
| it's very well integrated into home assistant.
|
| Lotta haters out there but this is just advanced as I want to get
| in my home lab; and the racks are just so cool even with their
| gimmicky front touch panel, it's just so sexy when all the
| displays in the rack sync up on their animations. Whoever
| designed these things really had an eye for design.
| Already__Taken wrote:
| I just think PS360 for an IP camera is too steep, half would be
| a no brainier over ring. Their new Lite switches replace stuff
| that was rack-mountable, not there's no ears are far as I can
| tell.
|
| The gateways are awesome value.
| Macha wrote:
| They have a lot of camera models, including a lot of cheaper
| models, starting at EUR180 for the G6 turret/bullet if you
| want 4k or EUR80 for the G5 turret if you want 1080p.
| philjohn wrote:
| Looking at the various options, PS360 is on the upper end
| (until you get into the insane DSLR lens one)
| baby_souffle wrote:
| > Lotta haters out there but this is just advanced as I want to
| get in my home lab
|
| IN all fairness, that hate is reasonable. Ubiquity has _some_
| things done super well. As long as your needs are addressed by
| the config/options/UX/API that they expose, you'll have a
| pretty good experience. As soon as you need to do something
| that isn't easy, you're going to be fighting your core network
| infra the entire time and that's a miserable place to be.
|
| Stick to unifi for switches and *basic* routing. Use their LED
| lighting / Cameras / Access Control and other side-projects at
| your discretion.
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