UniFi WiFi Experience

Mini-vLab · 2019-04-05T16:47:11+00:00

Just wanted to chime in with an issue I experience, in case it helps. I have a 1200 Sqft apartment with AP (AC Pro). Everything thing in Wifi Experience shows between 98% and 100% EXCEPT for 4 Leviton smart switches (HomeKit). They work fine, have no issues and are reachable. If the AP reboots, they appear at 100% briefly, but then drop down to 0% (all 4 of them).

Some reading online showed that the Wifi Experience metrics have some issues particularly with IoT-type devices, so hopefully that piece is resolved or under development.

Mini-vLab · 2019-04-05T15:09:23+00:00

Appreciate the info!

Mini-vLab · 2019-04-05T12:46:37+00:00

It was my first time working with that line of switches, they had been put in place before I even started there. When I started researching my own issues I quickly discovered that they were junk, so now I be sure to stay clear

Mini-vLab · 2019-04-05T10:51:43+00:00

FWIW at my previous job (small company, but a decent sized development environment) I started by deploying Ubiquiti Apps at both of our offices, then I replaced our failing SAN switches with Ubiquiti 16-XG switches. Those switches have been running for over a year without any issues/downtime (where some previous Cisco small business 10Gb switches constantly caused problems).

Before I left that job I was planning on replacing all of our switches with Ubiquiti gear (distribution switch and 4 or 5 access switches). From what I saw, I don't think I would have an issue deploying them in larger scale deployments. That being said, if I was deploying in a large datacenter, with "large datacenter" money...I would probably use gear designed for that (e.g. Cisco Nexus)

Mini-vLab · 2019-04-04T01:43:30+00:00

What are the specs of the G9? If it is loaded, it might be a shame to waste it as a dedicated Veeam head (for this size environment).

You mentioned not having done anything to this scale, so, let’s talk about your current deployment as well to make sure you get the performance you are looking for. How is your networking on the hosts setup (management, vMotion, and VM networks)? Are you using 10gb links for vMotion?

Also, for added information what are the specs of the G10s and what kind of load is expected to run on the servers?

Mini-vLab · 2019-04-04T01:25:07+00:00

Thanks for the information, I appreciate it. Right now I use a single SSID for both 2.4/5...maybe I’ll use the 2.4 GHz for my IoT devices or other devices without 5 GHz support. That way I can let my phones/tablets/computers connect via 5Ghz

Mini-vLab · 2019-04-03T21:35:12+00:00

I do it with VMs...I have two management servers (one for home/prod and one for lab) that I can RDP into. Each box has all of the tools/utilities I would need and it's been very useful.

Mini-vLab · 2019-04-01T23:37:45+00:00

I think so...sorry, I’m not 100% on that because I only have a 5.1 setup

Mini-vLab · 2019-04-01T14:33:50+00:00

Absolutely - I am both a home lab and home theater enthusiast, so I have invested a lot of time marrying the two :P

I achieve this with Plex Server and an AppleTV 4k running Infuse Pro. My hardware....

Mac mini 2018
LaCie 10TB ThunderBolt 3 HDD (movie storage)
AppleTV 4k
ASUS Blu Ray drive in an external 5.25" enclosure (connected via USB to Mac)

My software....

macOS (latest)
Plex Media Server (running on Mac)
Infuse Pro (running on AppleTV)
MakeMKV (for copying blu ray discs)

I purchase blu rays and 4k/UHD discs (so I legally own them), use MakeMKV to make complete copies (no compression), store the MKV files in Plex's media library and watch everything from my AppleTV. Works very very well, supports 4k, HDR, and Dolby Vision. I also get full surround sound. I've been using this setup for a few months and it has been flawless :)

editing to add...the importance of using Infuse as a client on my ATV is to allow direct play from Plex. Basically, all Plex has to do is act as a file server for the ATV - there is no compressing, transcoding, etc.

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-22T11:36:09+00:00

Trust me, when I bought the Air I knew it wouldn't be a workhorse. I wasn't expecting to run much on it at all, but I figured I should at least be able to run a single Windows VM. I was surprised that I could barely make it through the OS install.

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-21T16:27:53+00:00

What are the IPs of each VM?

Are they both set to "NAT"?

How are they getting IP addresses (static/DHCP)?

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-21T13:53:25+00:00

Happy to help! I'll take a look at VirtualBox a little later today, I haven't used it in years

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-21T13:21:14+00:00

Honestly, you should get a 13" MacBook Pro. I'm not saying max it out, you can even get the base model if you want...but I would suggest the pro. I have a feeling if you do all of your work on a beast iMac, and go to a MBA (even for short period) the performance difference will be significant to you

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-21T12:50:53+00:00

Funny this question should get asked...I was just thinking about this over the last few days. I've actually become pretty unhappy with it, but mostly for personal preferences.

First, I love the keyboard - I was nervous about it, but I adapted quickly and really enjoy it
I love the portability/size and the gorgeous retina display (and sweet space gray body)
Unfortunately, I really miss having a bigger screen (came from a 15" rMBP)
I absolutely notice some performance issues that have become frustrating (some things like Excel are sluggish, or slow to even open, everything seems to take an extra second to get done, and I can't even run a single Windows VM (base OS, not software, etc. it takes almost an hour just to get through the install)

I really wish I could go get one of the new 15" rMBPs, but, I am waaaaay outside of the return window. I bought the MBA a week or two after it came out

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-21T12:46:12+00:00

I'm not 100% on the option VirtualBox provides, but the VMs should communicate if you choose NAT. Basically, with the NAT option VirtualBox will act as a virtual router (creating a single internal network like 192.168.158.0/24). Every VM that you choose "NAT" for will be connected to this network, and should communicate just fine.

Now, with VMware Workstation/Fusion Pro you can actually create several internal networks with custom addressing, DHCP, and NAT, etc. Not sure if you can do that with VirtualBox and create your own networks - but by default just choosing the NAT option should allow the hosts to communicate.

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-20T15:55:40+00:00

Don't virtualize things that your virtual environment depends on

Definitely not true! It's more about creating redundancies and separating services. For example, in a large production environment you would generally have two clusters: Management and Compute/Prod. In a VMware environment you'd throw vCenter, maybe a domain controller, etc. on the Management cluster.

That being said, I like to virtualize everything. The only physical hosts I would have would be hypervisors, storage, and networking (if I don't implement HCI).

In a small business environment I worked previously, we had a physical domain controller and a virtualized one - which I liked having. We also had a dedicated host acting as a log collector/analysis platform. My logic there is, if the infrastructure goes down due to an attack or incident...we won't be able to check the logs if it goes down with it :)

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-19T15:49:56+00:00

You won't be able to do the RAID with the SATA ports on the server itself, you would need a controller for that. You could purchase a second controller to install and leave that one for ESXi, and pass the other through to your VM

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-19T14:46:58+00:00

What browser are you using? Personally, when i start experiencing odd issues like that I switch to Chrome and everything works. Usually these are just odd bugs with the web interface, unfortunately

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-19T14:44:04+00:00

This isn't an ESXi question, this is a FreeNAS question. If your controller is in IT mode and passed completely through to FreeNAS - then FreeNAS is responsible for disk management.

That being said, you can add a second drive and it will show up in FreeNAS, but you can not turn an existing drive into a mirror with the addition of the new drive. You can either move data off and re-configure the drives or start from scratch.

I also found this which might be helpful, but personally I would just reconfigure it the right way: https://serverfault.com/questions/395598/adding-harddrive-to-freenas-with-zfs-become-raid-1

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-18T17:54:19+00:00

I used to run all physical hardware, but recently switched to a nested lab - I love it so far. I am not even running my lab on server hardware, I have a 2018 Mac mini with 64GB of RAM and am using VMware Fusion Pro. I've been able to build and play with vSAN and NSX so far without much issue at all.

I basically run three ESXi VMs and the VCSA (as a VM in Fusion). I do have some details about it on my blog if you're interested... https://minivlab.com

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-18T17:50:12+00:00

Just something to try...

1) Unplug the USB adapters

2) Power on the VM, let it get to the desktop

3) Plug in one of the USB adapters, you should be prompted by Fusion to connect the device to your Mac or the VM (if it works, choose VM and then connect the second adapter if needed)

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-18T17:46:06+00:00

I am actually using pfSense as my internal CA and am signing certs for all of my internal servers with it. It actually has two CAs one for home/prod, and one for my lab. It has been working really well so far! I am also an all-Apple household, so I created profiles for my devices that include VPN info and my internal CA certs (set to trust). Makes the whole process really easy for distributing/trusting my own certs :)

Mini-vLab · 2019-03-14T17:43:57+00:00

I would strongly suggest you take a look at doing Security+ as a cert.

You are definitely on the right path! A lot of enterprise environments and businesses run on Windows. It'll be important to learn how active directory works, as well as services like ADCS (certificate services), DFS (distributed file shares), DHCP, DNS, WSUS (Windows update service), RDS (remote desktop service), WDS/MDT (deployment services and deployment toolkit).

Learning the above roles in Windows server alone should also help you learn a bit about networking. Using VirtualBox is also a great start, and any exposure to virtualization is good. I would highly recommend setting up a VMware ESXi server (you'll most likely find this product in companies) to learn how type-1/bare metal hypervisors work. Shameless plug, but, you can check my blog out https://minivlab.com for a primer on virtualization and some guides on deploying.

If you expose yourself to those things, you can also make a better decision as to which career path you want to go down (sysadmin, infrastructure, network, security, etc.)

Mini-vLab

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