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Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting

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Re: Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting

#81
post #72
post #2

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-hostin…

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.

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.

Re: Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting

#82
post #2

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-hostin…

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.

IIRC some Sonos issues are related to STP. AFAIK it's, like you said, Sonos being Sonos. Lol.

Re: Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting

#83

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 fo…

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.

Re: Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

The v8 firmware for the U7 Pro APs has been a mess.

Re: Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting

#85
post #79
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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...

There are off-the-shelf all-in-one Asus home routers that do VLANs?

Re: Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting

#86
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/c…

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.

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.

Re: Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting

#87
post #46
post #2

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-hostin…

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 — Un…

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.

Re: Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting

#88
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 C…

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.

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.

Re: Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting

#89
post #46
post #2

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-hostin…

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 — Un…

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.

Re: Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting

#90
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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