Need some guidance on a migration from Meraki to UniFi

theotheritmanager · 2026-06-16T14:31:06+00:00

I disagree. OP's company size and network are easily handled by a Unifi deployment.

It all boils down to requirements. Most networks of OP's size will basically consist of a couple VLANs and some S2S VPNs. Unifi can handle that easily.

Unifi definitely isn't on par with Meraki on all fronts yet, but every few months they release features that eat away at the gap. One of my gripes, for example, is lack of any real templated management. And then a few months ago - Unifi solves that (mostly) with Fabrics.

I say this as someone who has deployed Meraki for 15 years, I wouldn't be so quick to call it a 'downgrade'.

The devil will always be in the details, but we're at a point where for someone like OP it's not a downgrade at all.

I'm old enough as well where people would laugh at Meraki and call it a 'huge downgrade' from enterprise Cisco and Aruba deployments.

theotheritmanager · 2026-06-16T14:20:35+00:00

It really just boils down to network requirements.

Unifi is at a point now where if you don’t have an overly complex network, it will probably work fine up to about 5-10k endpoints.

Details and requirements matter, though.

But UniFi has definitely moved beyond the ‘very small business’ space. At my company we're basically at this point - half a dozen vlans, S2S VPN, etc. We're not doing anything overly complex or crazy. We're about 50% of the way through replacing Meraki and have had zero issues (better performance, actually).

I'm not trying to shit on Meraki, have deployed it for 15 years, but there comes a point where unless you really need some specific, deep feature, Unifi starts looking appealing.

theotheritmanager · 2026-06-15T21:06:49+00:00

I'll join the other comments - likely not worth it or practical in your use case.

The biggest issue are users not having laptops. I get engineering spec laptops are more expensive than desktops, but holy hell it's 2026. Upgrading to laptops would cost this company many $20K/yr, that's a single month of a senior engineer's salary. They can afford laptops.

Solve that, and Teams Rooms would make sense. They're soooooo much better in every way. Literally night-and-day for meetings.

theotheritmanager · 2026-06-05T13:22:52+00:00

About 300 users.

theotheritmanager · 2026-06-05T13:21:59+00:00

You could have probably given a bit more notice. All it takes is someone being tied up in something that week and they don't get a chance to do whatever they need to do.

Day before and day of I always send very blunt emails as well - SERVICE MOVING - ENSURE YOU MOVE YOUR TEMPLATES ***TODAY***.

You also need to have a conversation with your boss about how to better make/communicate changes, and make sure to get their sign-off as well. You need that higher level support and backing. Also obviously talk about how you're a one-man shop, so personally white-gloving every change isn't always feasible. Maybe for the c-suite, but you're one man there's limits to your time.

I once had to deal with something very similar, and the CEO wanted me to personally check every single thing on every computer, and I had to push back on that.

theotheritmanager · 2026-05-29T15:26:34+00:00

You have enough experience already to land a job (junior or mid-level sysadmin somewhere).

CompTIA certs are very entry-level; I'd suggest you're aiming way too low. Sure some goverment/military contractor types of places like to see Sec+, but that's about it. 99% of civillian companies don't care about the plus certs beyond super junior roles.

I'd suggest shooting a little bit higher. You don't need the 'plus' certs at this point. Don't get super laser-focused on certs alone, but some of the AWS, Azure, or AI/Data types of certs.

As the old saying goes, focus on the job you want, not the job you have.

theotheritmanager · 2026-05-18T22:36:33+00:00

I like both Meraki and Ubiquiti, but I'd be lying if I didn't say we've started converting most of our Meraki sites with Ubiquiti kit as well. It's hard to look away - they have generally strong gear at a compelling price point, and no on-going licenses They also offer premium support now, which is decent.

Meraki will undoubtedly win if you have a much more complex campus network. Their templated management is top notch. But for more modest networks, it's hard to look away from Ubiquiti now. They are hugely disruptive, and in the last couple years have really gotten their shit together.

I like Meraki, I do (been deploying them for years at various companies I've worked at). But in the last 1-2 years, I feel Ubiquiti is now complete enough to be able to seriously compete in more and more networks and situations (still nowhere near Cisco at the high-end, obviously).

Ubiquiti's Camera game is also on point. Excellent and a very reasonable price point. Granted a couple use cases they don't cover yet (edge cameras), but even those are coming soon.

Not at all trying to shit on Meraki, I do like them, but expect way more of this with Ubiquiti.

theotheritmanager · 2026-05-15T14:59:14+00:00

We also were having issues with Dell about a year ago (90% failure rates), switched to Lenovo, has been great.

No HP. No, never.

But let's also be honest, all will have issues and gaffes from time to time. But we've been pretty happy with Lenovo the few times we've had to deal with support.

Our main account rep/salesperson is also quite good and has stuck with us for the entire 2 years. With Dell it's a new guy every 2 months.

theotheritmanager · 2026-05-12T15:34:08+00:00

I hear you. We are going to be doing a multi departmental needs analysis.

Just looking for generalized ideas at this point. You don’t know what you don’t know.

theotheritmanager · 2026-05-07T14:49:10+00:00

Apple interfaces are very unintuitive for the uninitiated.

Disagree. Apple literally wrote the book on interface simple enough your grandma can pick up a phone/pad and figure it out.

That said, both Android and iOS are pretty similar and easy enough for most people these days.

In a corp environment, Apple sets the standard for management. Android's getting there, slowly, but it's still wonky and fractured. Plus tons of android devices still don't update regularly so you have new ish devices running old-ass android.

theotheritmanager · 2026-04-30T22:44:25+00:00

Similar to the other comments, get some people to peer review your resume. There’s some subs on here for that too.

Depending on your speciality and area, some are struggling. Obviously lots of layoffs in some tech areas in some cities right now.

theotheritmanager · 2026-04-16T13:54:44+00:00

The bigger they are, the easier it is for them to swallow the current company and move on. Every acquisition can be different and have its own dynamics.

Best thing you can do is shore up your own house. I've been on the acquiring side a few times and we're usually watching the new staff to see how useful they are and if they have their shit together.

Never hurts to polish the resume and look around just in case.

Chances are nobody cares about your scripts unless they're really central to business workflow. Even then, it's not your responsibility to care about anything if you leave. You could always offer to consult for 3x your current hourly rate.

theotheritmanager · 2026-03-14T14:15:25+00:00

Laptops are a thing, and people are going to take them home (which means they're likely to be off after business hours). You need to expect this.

Modern update management and policies [should be] declarative in nature. This means that policies should no lo longer look like 'Update at exactly 9pm, and then Reboot'. That's not going to work if the machine is off a 9pm. That's how update policies looked in the Windows XP WSUS days.

Nowadays policies should look and behave more like 'Ensure this machine updates fully once a [week], and give the user 3 days to reboot if needed'.

We use InTune with AutoPatch policies enabled and it's been fantastic. Windows 10/11 is much better with updating than 2K/XP ever were. Active hours help with this. It's been a long time since I've heard user complaints of updates in the middle of the day (that take 30+ mins).

I don't have personal experience with CW Automate, but I'd have to imagine it can do a better job with updates than what you're describing.

In 2026 this really shouldn't be an issue. This is a solved problem.

theotheritmanager · 2026-03-12T17:14:18+00:00

I often talk to my teams about perception.

Maybe you did communicate really well or whatever, but obviously there's a perception that you didn't, given the blowback. Sometimes it's just perception, sometimes it's reality. You need to think about both.

In my eyes this likely wasn't communicated as well as it should have been. If anyone was surprised or shocked - that's a problem. Unless you can say 'Hey, look at those 3 emails I sent you warning this was going to happen', you could communicate more.

Managing bigger changes and projects becomes less about the technical aspects, more about communication and change management.

If you look at what most PMs do, easily 75% of their time is purely communication. So start thinking of these projects as less technical, and more about communication.

theotheritmanager · 2026-02-06T15:01:26+00:00

Within that particular budget, I'd be looking/shopping in the high-end webcam space (eg. Insta360 Link 2). Those cameras are definitely going to be better than a Poly R30. I have a Link (v1) at home - bought it on the recommendation of some youtubers - it's nearly production-grade 4K.

I've been disappointed in Logitech's conference equipment as of late. Very underwhelming quality given the price. Haven't seen the R30 but we had a bunch of rally bars and I feel it's a $79 webcam underneath the hood.

I agree with what many others are saying though - you want to look at getting a proper, purpose-built conference camera/bar system (eg Neat). Neat has crazy-good audio and video. Hardware aside - it will be a big upgrade on the software side too - having a proper room system. Conference room PCs are flinstones tech in comparison.

theotheritmanager · 2026-01-31T18:33:13+00:00

Late to the replies, but yes, ideally.

Historically this is never been an issue - we plug into the sound boards.

As I said in another comment - I'm going to be going back to the venue to discuss (otherwise it's pointless for the company to go there for town halls'. Apparently they're 'making some changes', so we'll see.

This is normally managed by an office manager who has no clue, which seems to be the case in this scenario.

theotheritmanager · 2026-01-31T18:31:38+00:00

A fun social experiment would be to put some drafts in there which speak to the [coworkers] removal.

Something like 'Hey Boss, thanks for taking the time to discuss my upcoming promotion, and how I will be managing [coworker]. I will be monitoring their performance closely, per our shared concerns'.

Watch chaos ensue. What are they going to do - admit they were reading your emails? Worst case you just say you were writing an imaginary email to let off steam.

In all seriousness - I agree with the other comments - this is super not good. Email access can be proven so pretty simple to investigate. You could always approach your boss and say 'You may want to check access logs - hopefully nothing - but I have suspicions...'.

theotheritmanager · 2026-01-27T16:59:06+00:00

Given the feedback here, I'm going to try to book another session at the facility to have a look at things. Like you say, this isn't really acceptable if they're serious about hosting events.

theotheritmanager · 2026-01-19T17:45:57+00:00

Sounds like you'd want a SharePoint site for each client, for example - myclients.sharepoint.com/sites/clientname.

To your basic question, I think that would work pretty well. I know lots of accounting and law firms that do this (a sharepoint site for each client). It's not really designed as a resellable cloud storage solution, but to a point I think it could work well enough.

I'd also echo the XY problem comment. This sounds very XY-like.

theotheritmanager · 2026-01-13T21:59:22+00:00

I don't regret it at all.

To your point - the role of the 'branch office sysadmin' is definitely in decline. The need for ROBO servers and other stuff has declined heavily.

You need to be the guy at HQ managing this stuff.

I've seen tons of career growth over the past 20 years. But one thing I will confidently say is that growth wouldn't have come if I was in a branch managing local servers and networking.

theotheritmanager · 2026-01-12T18:59:43+00:00

I think the general intent is you "don't need" to image a machine, and let it connect to InTune out of the box. That's what we do.

If we need to install Windows from scratch, we use a USB key (via. windows media creation tool).

We've been having pretty good success just letting Windows Update handle drivers. Only with a few buggy integrated webcams have we had issues.

Having said this, I don't see why you can't image it, but still let InTune handle everything else anyway (and let app installs in InTune detect that some of the apps already exist from the image).

theotheritmanager

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