Core Network - UniFi?

[Olliedawg]

Looking to upgrade our core switch to something more modern, hopefully without breaking the bank. Currently we have a HP 5406ZL J8697A. We only have 5 VLANs & do our routing through our XGS, so our 5406ZL is just used as a L2 switch.

 

Does anyone use UniFi kit at their core?

 

From a quick browse UniFi's website, I'd seen these

 

I was thinking of using this as the aggregation for the fibre connections

Switch Hi-Capacity Aggregation - Ubiquiti Store United Kingdom

 

This for 10Gb backbone for servers

Switch Pro XG 24 - Ubiquiti Store United Kingdom

 

This for physical management instead of software controller 

CloudKey+ SSD - Ubiquiti Store United Kingdom

 

I've seen the enterprise editions, but these seem overkill for our network & what we actually need.

[DalekSec]

Yes, but we run the full Enterprise kit so cant comment on the above. 

 

Personally dont use the CloudKey, either spin up a server running UniFI OS or get a Dream Machine.

 

Had a couple of CloudKeys die over the years! 

[Mark182]

We have two Switch Hi-Capacity Aggregation - Ubiquiti Store United Kingdom for our core and then two Dream Machine Pro Max - Ubiquiti Store United Kingdom set up in shadow mode Shadow Mode High Availability on UniFi Cloud Gateways – Ubiquiti Help Center

[TheHyperTechie]

UniFi throughout here, mixture of the Pro 24/48 port PoE switches. Never had any issues, 10GB backhaul from each cab back to the main cab via the SFP ports. I have thought about adding an aggregation switch, but to be honest, it isn't really needed right now (unless we gain more cabs in the future).

 

We use a physical Cloudkey, with the rackmount kit (makes it look tidy!) - never had any issues. It has been in place for about 4/5 years.

Edited March 12 by TheHyperTechie

[Olliedawg]

4 minutes ago, DalekSec said:

Yes, but we run the full Enterprise kit so cant comment on the above. 

 

Personally dont use the CloudKey, either spin up a server running UniFI OS or get a Dream Machine.

 

Had a couple of CloudKeys die over the years! 

 

The enterprise kit does look nice spec wise, dual PSU's are nice too... shame it's so expensive.

[Koldov]

Aren't dual PSUs mandated now by the DfE guidance for network switching...?

 

How are you all getting on with having less warranty than the guidance? I've read that by default, UniFi hardware does not meet the DfE standard of a 5-year manufacturer warranty.

[DalekSec]

Just now, Koldov said:

Aren't dual PSUs mandated now by the DfE guidance for network switching...?

 

How are you all getting on with having less warranty than the guidance? I've read that by default, UniFi hardware does not meet the DfE standard of a 5-year manufacturer warranty.

 

Not Edu, but we have 1 site where we use the Unifi RPS to act as the second PSU

[TheHyperTechie]

4 minutes ago, Koldov said:

Aren't dual PSUs mandated now by the DfE guidance for network switching...?

 

How are you all getting on with having less warranty than the guidance? I've read that by default, UniFi hardware does not meet the DfE standard of a 5-year manufacturer warranty.

Add on the additional warranty - https://ui.com/ui-care

[Davit2005]

I'd 2nd not going for a cloudkey+ . Had one go bad with the battery bulge issue and no longer powering off PoE. Removed the battery and powering via the USB port now.

[Boredguy]

Using Unifi kit for most of our sites, and we have the both the 8 port and 32port Aggregation switches at some, using the smaller 8 port for the servers and the 32 port at the core for all the fibre links for our larger sites.

 

I'd also not bother with a cloudkey but just spin up a Unifi OS server as does the same job and you don't have to pay for the kit as long as you have some virtualisation capacity for it.

 

We've started to move some of our primary schools over to a central Unifi OS Server for ease of management with Fabric

[Olliedawg]

Thanks everyone appreciate the input, got some more ideas now 😃

[dhicks]

1 hour ago, Olliedawg said:

Does anyone use UniFi kit at their core?

 

Yes, we use Ubiquiti switches (core, edge, and additional edge-edge switches where we don't currently have enough ports available) and WiFi. An issue to be aware of: Ubiquiti's managed WiFi access points can do meshing, where an access point can act as a bridge between sections of the network if there isn't a wired connection available (or a cable breaks, etc). This works very well, and seems to be turned on by default. It works so well that, after we lost a section of cable due to (best guess at the moment) mice, we didn't notice for several weeks. It turned out that the network had basically self-healed and all the network traffic for a floor's worth of traffic was going through a WiFi access point instead of through a cable. When the cable was replaced, Ubiquiti's system spotted a network loop and disabled the (10GbE fibre) wired connection rather than simply stop meshing, so all the traffic was still going through the WiFi. We've turned off the meshing feature on most access points now as it was causing confusion - very handy feature for some situations, but best turned on as needed.

[BKGarry]

15 minutes ago, dhicks said:

 

Yes, we use Ubiquiti switches (core, edge, and additional edge-edge switches where we don't currently have enough ports available) and WiFi. An issue to be aware of: Ubiquiti's managed WiFi access points can do meshing, where an access point can act as a bridge between sections of the network if there isn't a wired connection available (or a cable breaks, etc). This works very well, and seems to be turned on by default. It works so well that, after we lost a section of cable due to (best guess at the moment) mice, we didn't notice for several weeks. It turned out that the network had basically self-healed and all the network traffic for a floor's worth of traffic was going through a WiFi access point instead of through a cable. When the cable was replaced, Ubiquiti's system spotted a network loop and disabled the (10GbE fibre) wired connection rather than simply stop meshing, so all the traffic was still going through the WiFi. We've turned off the meshing feature on most access points now as it was causing confusion - very handy feature for some situations, but best turned on as needed.

Make sure you have set your spanning priority in the your switch settings.

 

0 for core

4096 for the next lot down

then 8192 etc etc 

 

This will help prevent that in the future

 

I also believe there is a switch in the console settings > Wifi that is a global switch for all WiFi Meshing that you can turn off too.

[BKGarry]

Also, I have not gone fully Unifi to the core, just because of historical reasons. I am pretty sure @localzuk has though.

 

The core is a HP Modular switch that has some key phones and APs plugged in and the uplink connection to the firwall but it is mainly there to do the intervlan routing at Layer 3.

That is on a 10gbps uplink, to a unifi aggregation switch that is then 10gbps connection to all other switches and then to WiFi APs and Cameras.

 

Been running unifi for at least 10 years now starting with the AC Pro, and now in the 6 Pro in most places (some still have an AC HD in there) average on about 700 clients connected at most times with a large majority being chromebooks but also Staff have full windows domain joined laptops, as well as a selection of about 125 Windows Specialist Student Laptops with full domain login.

 

It has been doing me well for all that time. Had 2 total bring downs but that was actually misconfigured windows DHCP on the VLAN that the Switches and APs are on and not Unifi's fault (always make sure that the default gateway is not in the DHCP Range to be allocated because windows will allocate that and cause fun)