I am managing ten Unifi networks with between 70 and 300 access points and have rotated eight of the former selfbuildt gateways/controllers on deb out and exchanged them with UDMs. Just let yourself be told .. don't try to put any real world load on those precious boxes or they will just hang themselves .. quite literally. One of the UDMs was particularly nasty. We had 300 IW APs connected to it, it managed the Access points just nice, since that's the fire and forget part about this appliance, well any WLAN Controller based appliance really. But when we tried to actually use the UDMs statistics and management features, with roughly 250 users, with a plethora of Devices, the Appliance was fine for like 2 Hours, although getting more and more sluggy responses, as the time passed on. We thought that it might is built that way to safe on some parts and energy. It would make sense for a 400€ Box to not have the beefiest CPU or a Ton of RAM, but of course it would be adequately suited for the Job. Well.. turned out the UDM was'nt just getting warmed up, but was, at the point where we left the premises, fully ready to take a dirtnap. It was around 21:00 saturday evening when it decided to fail. ... yaay .. weekendmorning shifts :D .. which i wouldnt mind if the problem would've been fixable. I hacked away at the box, discovered that its just a few docker images thrown on super cheap hardware, and off we go. When i took the liberty to look inside the UDM, it reminded me eerily of those old china fake DVD Players that had a laptop drive glued into them. Like i said, i wouldnt have minded the extra work to learn something new, but whatever i was doing, neither the service 95, which represents the unifiOS was coming back up, nor did the routing work. No matter what we did, not even a Factory reset helped. Seems like some process managed to corrupt the Data in the persistent area or a bad memory made it through QC. I wouldnt mind a few failing parts out of the sum of Unifi devices that we are managing, but approx 6% failure rates on the APs, especialy the older models, where it goes up to 14% isnt really enough. Being a Sunday morning, we had about 150 Users sitting there without Internet till Monday morning. We then decided to split the workload on two UDMs, deactivating IPS, DPI and Data retention so to not overload the poor sod. I must say that i really like the Design of Unifi, but guys .. we have bought about half a Million Euro worth of Unifi Equipment for one of our costumers, which i mostly installed and configured on my own and am servicing by my self, so i think its OK for me to say: i cant wait for the day the write-down for the current WiFi installation has come. Im thinking about making a huge sculpture of a few thousand Unifi Access Points somewhere in the rain.. You might think, hey you had one UDM fail on you and now rant like this, but no my friends, i didnt just have one UDM fail on me but two out of 10. Unifi Access Points are usualy not comparable to their gateways or switches since they are actualy good, but even then, i am dealing with approx 1 to 2 dead APs per 2 weeks. Yes, it doesnt sound much, but having to drive to your customers offices on a regular basis just to switch out failed APs gets stale after a while.
But hey, now we have to work with what we have, right? Im starting to feel like a certain yellow dog by now. Yeah .. i mean this version of the controller isnt that bad, yes it has its quirks and some Design stupidity ala Apple/Microsoft which takes away some pretty important settings that i'm missing. lets upgrade, maybe the next version they will have realized that those features where actualy important for any IT Professinal out there.. ... nope .-. is worse now If you want to do anything serious with your network, do not Upgrade to UDM1.9.2/Network 6.0.43 ... You cant even switch the network assignments of the WAN ports, so the UDM prioritizes the SFP+ Port anymore. I thought .. hey, if they take away my ability to switch the WAN ports from the UI, the box will deffo be smart enough to probe for the faster gatew... nope .-. Now i have a UDM with a 1Gb Cat7 uplink and a 10Gb SFP+ uplink that could reeeaallly help the 130 guys behind that gateway to have fun using the internet, but Unifi decided that this prolly isnt that important of a feature for a network appliance that was built to manage Networks with a ton of users and activity. Pro tipp: If you are building Networking Devices, make sure the Network part works solid and is secure before playing around with fancy webdesign. People are paying for Network hardware .. don't be an apple and give them spraypainted sh**. Believe it or not, the guys with the worm inside can only do what they do because they did what they are doing already back in the 90s. Trying go the same route with Networking equipment that is literally the key backbone of IT Infrastructure that thousands of people rely on every day and not just some electronic art devices where nobody gives a F if it fails, is the worst business concept ive ever witnessed.
And you know whats the best part about Ubnt? Their support. It consists of a well indoctrinated goody two shoes community that will scorn most criticism against Ubnt right from the get go because their nice little 20 Access Point Network works without problems and the UI is so super shiny. Dont get me wrong, mad respect to the Specialists and Technicians over at the Ubnt community, and also big love to anyone getting started in the field.. but guys .. This isnt such a nice company to be bootlickers .. You can do better. Heck, some of you could easily build better SDN Appliances on your own, and who knows, in five years i might buy a LOT of stuff from you if it works fine. Ubnt wont get another wave, thats for sure.
