I bought into the ecosystem while taking my networking cert classes back in 2017. They were much cheaper than Cisco gear for business-grade networking, and overall I’ve been happy with them.
Their security offerings are locally managed, and you can make local accounts, but I just bought a NAS from them and I had to sign in with my ubiquiti account first before I could make a local account, and it seems the cloud account has some privileges that you can’t give to local super admins.
So now I’m having second thoughts. I figure since it’s enterprise-grade stuff they can’t really make it cloud-dependent like you see on the consumer side since a lot of companies need air-gapped networks. On the other hand, on those occasions that I didn’t have internet access and hadn’t yet made a local-only account, I was locked out, so…
Regarding the NAS specifically, I use a TruNAS system at work and it works well enough on a rack server, but since it uses ZFS I don’t know it would be good for home use. What alternatives are there?
Are there any truly FOSS networking options? I figure especially on the switching side you need purpose-built hardware, right? There aren’t generic motherboards with 48 network ports you can buy.
I like my Unifi setup, I’m just scared of a rug pull.
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Wifi: Neat
Anything else: Havent tried.Abstracting so much away from the admin by automagically comnfguring everything is neat but also dangerous as you’ll never know what it has configured for you.
That’s not really how it works
How so?
Exactly how I have it at home right now.
We use it exclusively at work, it’s great for almost anything
Not a fan. Absolutely not.
They had multiple security incidents which they kept under the rugs for a long time, they have the tendency to EOL devices without warning (which then means you need to replace your sometimes 9month old device or your whole enviroment can’t be updated), their lock-in into their ecosystem is much more complete as they can’t be used properly without their enviroment.(e.g. Omada devices can work without the Omada stuff, with Unifi you will always need a controller for some functions).
So if you realy need SDN features like Unifi look at Omada,otherwise Mikrotik is a solid alternative. (And OPNsense for firewall)
TPLink had security issues all the same
Absolutely, but unlike Ubiquiti they did not keep them under the rug that long. (Nevertheless: Both are shit for firewalling. Put a OPNsense before it?)
Actually unified got a new firewall package that works great
Still mediocre compared to OPN/pfsense, IPfire, VyOs,etc.
New Report Slams Ubiquiti for Products That Keep Showing Up on the Front Lines of the Russia-Ukraine War: What Investors Should Know https://finance.yahoo.com/news/report-slams-ubiquiti-products-keep-203750691.html
This sounds like a good thing for consumers.
According to Hunterbrook, Ukrainian military sources and Russian vendors interviewed for the story say Ubiquiti devices are favored because they are inexpensive, easy to deploy, and difficult to disable remotely.
How is this a good thing? Getting extremely rich selling products to the Russian military despite sanctions?
I’ll be avoiding Unifi products until they stop doing this.
I don’t think it was on them, I thought from reading the article it was 2nd hand not directly from the company itself. I’m saying the reasons listed are good for consumers especially as the US gets more oppressive against its own citizens.
This situation is not unique to Ubiquiti. Many technology manufacturers face similar challenges: Once products are sold through distributors, resellers, or secondary markets, control over final destination becomes limited. Sanctions enforcement often focuses on exporters and sellers, not manufacturers alone. Networking hardware is inherently dual-use, meaning it can support both civilian and non-civilian applications
That’s still on Unifi. They’re responsible for where their products are sold.
Actually they are not, only who they sell to, if it’s an official distributor they can put that in their policy and stop giving them product if the distributor breaks the policy. If I buy 10 switches and then sell them to some guy in Russia, that’s on me, not ubiquity.
Semi-related: companies advertising “military grade” like it means something other than “made by the lowest bidder”.
I’ve been running the original Unifi Dream Machine (the can, not rack) since it released in 2019. Been pretty solid, no complaints; it replaced my trusty Asus RT-N66U w/Tomato firmware; I think the UDM has been deployed longer than the Asus at this point.
The single built-in AP on the UDM was getting a bit overwhelmed, so recently I bought a U7 Lite AP to help split the load a little better. Working great so far, but now I’m looking into adding an NVR for cameras.
I like my Unifi setup, I’m just scared of a rug pull.
Same here.
I am quite satisfied with the unifi ecosystem so far as networking and CCTV systems go. They are cloud enabled without being cloud dependent. Since the early 2025 networking update, their routers are pretty good now. The UDM SE is a pretty compelling router/POEswitch/NVR in the home context.
Their NAS ecosystem is still very new and I would not it a viable option yet. They are also leaning towards the vendor lock-in direction with drives. Its the same reason I would stay away from Synology and QNAP.
Personally, I run a old desktop as a NAS/homelab running Proxmox(FOSS based hypervisor). I run ZFS on it and its “fine”. It performs fine even with a mixed bunch of disks, provided you have them in pairs or groups of 3 that perform close to identically. I just run a Debian container on the Proxmox as my fileserver and a few VMs for homelabbing.
One player that works well in a home environment is UnRAID. It a Linux distor that runs on commodity hardware and handles redundancy with “just a bunch of disks” better than most. The UI is friendly to non technical users. The catch is that UI is commercial software. Many consider it a fair exchange for the convenience it brings.
I have a QNAP NAS in addition to the unas2 mentioned in the OP. Both have WD red drives. I also run Proxmox on an ancient laptop. How does virtualizing a file server work?
In my case, I setup a ZFS pool of my disks in my old desktop PC running Proxmox. Then I allocated some storage to an LXC container running Debian and Samba for file sharing.
In your case, since the QNAP already runs Samba, it would be best to run it directly on the NAS.
But if you want to do it for the learning experience, you can setup an NFS share on the QNAP and link it to the Proxmox. The Proxmox can then use the NAS for storage and you can have VMs or LXC contsiners use for virtual disks.
I have a UCG-Ultra driven network infrastructure with 3 switches and 7 APs at home. I wouldn’t use their NAS options though. For NAS I just have 20TB of spinning disks sitting there attached to my ProxMox for all my data, and have all services in VMs or LXCs. I set up an UnRaid (before it was a subscription) in my brother’s house to backup off-site and sync it once per week.
I’m in the process of updating m homelab. Threw out the qnap nas, replaced it with a homebuild nas on Truenas (4x8TB HDD, 4x1TB SSD). Replacing my ubiquity edgerouter pro 8p with a Mikrotik hEX refresh. About a 10x speedup for throughput, 20x smaller, 1/4 power consumption. Next I’ll be looking to replace my edgeswitches. I can run them stand alone, so there’s no rush.
I am not going to buy myself deeper into ubiquity. I’ll just try to optimize for the current needs.
If you want true foss, run pfsense or opsense on your own hardware.
My whole work and home networks are all Unifi stuff. I absolutely love them. Way more reliable than anything else I’ve ever tried.
Opinion wise: love unifi for networking equipment. Especially since that equipment doesn’t require the web account. For a Nas, I’m in too deep already, I’ll only use equipment I fully control. I wouldn’t buy a Unifi NAS just like I wouldn’t buy a Synology, but I’ll keep leaning on my Unifi stuff as long as it keeps doing its job well.
As for using TrueNAS w/ZFS at home, go for it if you know and like it! I actually was recently given my boss’s old home NAS that used to run his Plex server. When I got it it was still on FreeNAS (same thing, just a few versions behind) and it’s using ZFS. Worked for him, and now works for me, no problem. Both of us also use Unifi equipment for our networks. The only problems we’ve ever had were our own doings.
This is an opinion on the WiFi access points.
I took the unifi pill in 2018 on the advice of my devops coworkers that ubiquiti is set-and-forget. I also was sold on the unifi network controller I deployed and used until last month being easy to use and local only.
The single pane of glass to control and update the access points is nice. Wifi works OK. There are, however, several downsides:
- channel and power management are not automatic and tweaking WiFi settings with unifi is not intuitive.
- similar to your nas experience unifi advanced metrics are locked behind paying for other unifi equipment or an official controller.
- network appliance is built on mongodb and its performance is pretty abysmal (Up to 2.5GB memory to run it)
- the network appliance is now discontinued and self-hosting the network appliance can no longer happen software-only, you have to use their “server os”, which can’t be run in a container.
After the unifi Debian repo stopped updating properly, I decided to install openwrt on my APs.
Not only did it work well, but performance is now much better with openwrt.
I’m personally stepping away from brands that have their own ecosystems from now on, if I can help it. The enshitification is just too tempting for them, it seems, and it it’s always at our expense.
the network appliance is now discontinued and self-hosting the network appliance can no longer happen software-only, you have to use their “server os”, which can’t be run in a container.
Of course it can, they just don’t provide a pre-containerized version but other people do. The server software just a regular program that you can install on any Linux OS. I use the linuxserver Docker version, it’s regularly updated and works without issue. It uses about 1.2 GB of RAM, so a little heavy, but nothing crazy.
https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-unifi-network-application/
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express Plex Brand of media server package RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage Unifi Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
8 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
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@early_riser I use #unifi for #switching and #wifi. I enjoy those products. I don’t like their #NAS and #routing options.
I ran #pfsense for over a decade, but since the 2.8 release you can’t do an offline install. So I switched to #opnsense.
I’ve fully invested into UniFi equipment and cameras. I love having a centralized dashboard for my entire network. Network wise you can completely disable the cloud functionality, but then it’s not as easy to remotely manage your equipment. Depends on your security risk acceptance or privacy concerns. So far Ubiquiti hasn’t given me any reason not to trust them…yet. NAS wise, I’ve been running TrueNAS for a few years and it’s worked out great so far. I’ve been hosting container apps within TrueNAS more recently. B2 Backblaze for off-site backups. Unifi has Wireguard built right in and I have Tasker on my phone to auto VPN back into my network when I disconnect from my home WiFi. Overall, I’m happy with my setup. Not having the latest equipment sucks, but why upgrade for the sake of upgrading if everything still works?
Not so much to the content of your post but to your title:
Their web interface is nice, reasonably priced (not cheap) prosumer sort of gear. I have 2 APs and 1 router, 1 AP is flaky, it’s the 7 XGS which should be a high end AP. It gets pretty bad coverage with it and it’s flaky, randomly going offline once a week. RMAed it, replaced Ethernet cable, poe injector (ubiquity branded) and tried tweaking settings. Still happening
So to the subject, some good in the web interface but I will not buy again. That said, most network gear has some sort of jank in my experience, flaky, or just bad management interface, etc…
I’d say they offer prosumer options for sure, but they also have what I would consider enterprise offerings as well. Even a large campus can easily be run off their enterprise gear.
