Unifi controller on pfsense?

johnpoz

I have a lite in the guest room - works fine.. The pro in the center of the house is the normal work horse with the most clients on it. And then have a LR in the kitchen near the patio door that covers that side of the house and also good coverage of the patio that is off the kitchen. They make a nice AP... But if you don't really have to run the controller if you don't want to.. You could just leave it on windows, if you happen to have a windows machine - and just fire it up if you want to make a change, or troubleshoot something.

I leave mine up all the time because I like the info that provides you.. But its not really a requirement to have the controller up and running 24/7 if you don't really have a place to do what on..

edit:
While I use to run the free esxi version, last couple of years I just use the VM Manager on my synology nas.. Even if you can not take "snapshots" with the vm software your using - you can always just export copy of the VM before you make changes, so you could always put the VM back to how it was, etc. But pretty sure even with free esxi you can do snapshots - you can't do vmotion without lic for that.. Been a couple of years :(

kiokoman

@bingo600
you can take snapshot on free version of esxi without any problem

johnpoz

^ yeah I thought you could.. I remember doing it, and I only had the free license..

bingo600

@kiokoman
Cool
Will try ASAP

Thanx

kiokoman

the only limitation afaik is that you have to use vmxnet3 / emulated network card, it does not work with passthrough

bingo600

@kiokoman said in Unifi controller on pfsense?:

the only limitation afaik is that you have to use vmxnet3 / emulated network card, it does not work with passthrough

For the snapshots ?
Aren't they Disk copy only or ?

bingo600

@johnpoz said in Unifi controller on pfsense?:

^ yeah I thought you could.. I remember doing it, and I only had the free license..

Sorry JP
I just made a snapshot
Why didn't i try that before now ... In my mind snapshot was crippled on free

kiokoman

it's a limitation, I don't remember the details but if you have something configured as passthrough (network card or video card or something else) you can't take live snapshot only offline snapshot

bmeeks

A VM running UniFi Controller is nice, and is what I use at home currently. However, if you have a PoE switch I would very seriously consider running the CloudKey USB dongle. I use one for our church setup. Works great.

Yeah, it's more expensive than a VM if you already have the hypervisor hardware, but it you don't have the hardware, then the cost of the CloudKey is pretty reasonable (assuming you have a PoE switch already for your UniFi APs). Of course with no PoE switch to plug the dongle into, then a VM is a better option.

JKnott

@johnpoz

I live in a condo, which a single AP covers well. Even the TP-Link did that. What VM are you referring to? I have VirtualBox on a couple of computers and had considered an Ubuntu VM to run the controller.

viragomann

@johnpoz said in Unifi controller on pfsense?:

I leave mine up all the time because I like the info that provides you.. But its not really a requirement to have the controller up and running 24/7

Isn't it necessary for seamless roaming to run the controller 24/7?

JKnott

@viragomann said in Unifi controller on pfsense?:

Isn't it necessary for seamless roaming to run the controller 24/7?

With only a single AP, I wouldn't have a lot of roaming.

viragomann

@JKnott
But @johnpoz has multiple.

bingo600

@viragomann said in Unifi controller on pfsense?:

Isn't it necessary for seamless roaming to run the controller 24/7?

Can the UBI's run seamless roaming ?

I know my Cisco WLC's can but they tunnel every endpoint back to the controller. And the WLC's have hefty CPU's for the encapsulation.

JKnott

@bingo600

That's one thing I didn't care for about the Cisco APs. On a large network, that's going to be a lot of traffic through the controller.

bingo600

@JKnott said in Unifi controller on pfsense?:

@bingo600

That's one thing I didn't care for about the Cisco APs. On a large network, that's going to be a lot of traffic through the controller.

Right .. But in a multi floor building w. a Vlan for each floor. It's pretty cool to just be wandering around with your lappy , and a VoIP call wo. a drop.

I don't like the price (WLC) , but love the feature.

serbus

Hello!

The unifi controller runs great on a raspberry pi.
Compact, reliable, and cheap.

John

johnpoz

You don't need the controller to roam.. To answer that question.. Only thing you would really need the controller for is if you were using the captive portal stuff, guest network stuff - hotspot, etc.

But if its not running you will not have the history of what your clients were doing, how your AP(s) were doing, etc. etc..

JKnott

@bingo600 said in Unifi controller on pfsense?:

Right .. But in a multi floor building w. a Vlan for each floor. It's pretty cool to just be wandering around with your lappy , and a VoIP call wo. a drop.
I don't like the price (WLC) , but love the feature.

I first heard of such a system about 11 - 12 years ago. I don't recall the make, but they called it a "blanket". Each AP had to be connected directly back to the controller, without even a switch in between.

Back in 2005 I was working at IBM (my 2nd time there) supporting a major U.S. telecom. One woman called in complaining that the Wifi didn't work in the parking garage, an area that specifically didn't have Wifi. She didn't want to accept that as an answer.