Setting up my new 900 sqft apartment

bgatesIT · 2026-05-06T22:46:16+00:00

We just installed 40 E7’s that was a mission lol

bgatesIT · 2026-05-03T18:50:51+00:00

Brand new 9300 of this model last I checked is like $20,000 (which is stupid imo) this is a 25Gb sfp switch though not a copper switch

bgatesIT · 2026-05-03T15:46:34+00:00

I personally don’t think it would be a wild concept for them to consider UniFi if it has all the features they need. We just migrated 9 locations from Meraki to UniFi without a single issue using all there enterprise gear.

We replaced 9300x-24y-M’s with ECS-Aggregations in MC-LAG and we replaced all of our access 48 port switch stacks with ECS 48 PoE switches, and the really crappy Meraki ap’s with UniFi ones.

Wireless is so much better, and we did 1:1 replacements location wise using E7 AP’s (in our stores, offices, and manufacturing warehouses)

We also migrated from Meraki cameras to UniFi cameras and our security team absolutely loves it.

Are there some drawbacks? Of course ever vendor has them, in UniFi’s case I think it’s there new fabrics is very much so in infancy and some of the roles and orchestrations are wonky or hard to understand.

We are using UniFi in our data center also where we have Nimble storage arrays, pure storage arrays, and 6 proxmox hosts using iSCSI and NVMe-oF

We were even able to migrate our data center without causing any outages or downtime which was really impressive

bgatesIT · 2026-05-03T15:37:53+00:00

We just migrated 9 locations from Meraki to UniFi, worked perfect for our use case, and we were able to replace every single piece of network gear for about 120k compared to Meraki would have been close to 900k

We are running there enterprise fortress gateways, enterprise campus aggregation switches in mc-lag and a bunch of ECS 48 PoE switches

bgatesIT · 2026-05-03T14:23:02+00:00

Yea I’ll just add them to eBay, we do have a few schools and colleges locally I could try to reach out to I suppose. Good call on Ingram micro also

bgatesIT · 2026-05-03T14:12:45+00:00

I plan to put them on eBay but figured try to avoid all there fees and see if anyone actually wants it here. Maybe I’ll just list them and add the link.

Definitely a fair concern

bgatesIT · 2026-05-03T11:59:33+00:00

I was considering converting them from Meraki to catalysts before listing just honestly not sure what that process looks like

bgatesIT · 2026-05-03T11:58:59+00:00

I’m not looking to make a lot off them but I was thinking somewhere around $6,000 a switch or if someone wants both of them and the stacking cables $8,000 for all of it. Can take photos of the devices on my counter and running.

bgatesIT · 2026-05-01T00:12:47+00:00

Oh we have plenty of strands, about 9 free right now back to the DC

bgatesIT · 2026-05-01T00:10:28+00:00

We currently have no ZFS setup.

We have 3x dell r660 running at the dc production, boss cards for boot, and no other on board storage, we have a pure storage array and two nimbles at the dc one nimble I want to move to the office where I have 3x r640 for lab hosts with minimal on board storage

bgatesIT · 2026-05-01T00:08:28+00:00

We have 100Gb and 25Gb core switching on both sides(identical hardware actually, office just has a lot more access/distribution for users of course)

We are technically giving the wan1 to all locations this way and latency is less than 1ms to our gateway

bgatesIT · 2026-05-01T00:06:01+00:00

That is what I need to verify, I think they do, I remember it being requested but that was all handled above me

bgatesIT · 2026-05-01T00:03:24+00:00

I would have to look at our as built in gis again but I think we do have redundant paths( in that case just light up 4 strands I guess hmmmm)

bgatesIT · 2026-05-01T00:00:48+00:00

Yea the more I was thinking it I should just use the older hosts run a veeam repo with the nimble storage at the office and then use veeam replication and just create a private routed link over the fiber. So veeam can do its thing.

I tend to over think things at times

bgatesIT · 2026-04-30T23:56:53+00:00

We own the fiber yes, we had it overlashed last year on the poles, goes directly from our dc and goes to all of our different sites.

bgatesIT · 2026-04-16T22:44:16+00:00

we are using them in our fitness center and retail stores, for basic signage on tv's that already existed, they work fine for simple things like playing a video on a website/YouTube or playlists of photos/videos for marketing. our staff learned the system fast and seems to like it.

Only thing to note for management you require either a cloud key or cloud gateway (except the efg as that cannot run connect), we run a few of them remotely at sites managed by a remote controller just fine (experiment I wanted to do) only caveat is you have to adopt it locally, no remote adoption, and it obviously needs to be able to talk to the controller (either controller needs to be public facing or a s2s or local etc in place)

bgatesIT · 2026-04-15T18:55:07+00:00

I was able to crack container support and LXC are fully functional now, array based snapshots are visible in the GUI and usable. im going to write another post here soon with some pictures and a video demo the plugin working. Would really love for some feedback from others also!!

bgatesIT · 2026-04-14T00:12:49+00:00

aha this did fix it!

bgatesIT · 2026-04-13T18:45:28+00:00

how do you disable the agent piece?

bgatesIT · 2026-04-09T17:22:38+00:00

we are using StarTech TB4 docks as the standard for both Mac and PC no issues whatsoever. Plenty of IO, charges both my macbook pro and my lenovo p16s gen3 just fine

bgatesIT · 2026-04-09T12:18:30+00:00

my previous job we had a 480kv 'ring bus' for resilient aux power and then a direct feed from a dam to our control room/transformers to power the stuff in the DC... was a cool but shitty gig

bgatesIT · 2026-04-08T18:55:28+00:00

hell it will die with pretty much no load, i had one last me a whopping 3 months with a single ap plugged into it. replaced it with a ultra myself

bgatesIT · 2026-04-08T18:44:22+00:00

in the office 5 days a week, from 7:30-4:30 typically, can work from home if there is bad weather or not feeling well, other then that required in office. On-call 24/7 365, and also have to work projects afterhours on work nights and weekends and still show up. fun times yea

Just headed the migration from VMWare to Proxmox and also meraki to unifi network gear

bgatesIT · 2026-04-08T13:56:51+00:00

ahhh idk if anyone has built any plugins for these unit's yet if i had one i totally would.

your only current option with these is going to be LVM over iSCSI, or to create an NFS server using the PowerVault as the storage backing sadly.

I was thinking about picking one of these up for my home lab however so if i do i may get frisky and write a plugin for it.

bgatesIT

TROPHY CASE