UniFi Switches in an Enterprise Environment

How we simplified switch management for a quarter of the price.

Replacing an entire fleet of switches is a big task and choosing the right solution for your network is one that should be left up to your team, not the sales guys.

In the lead up to 2017 we came to the realisation that our switch network was getting old, clunky and inefficient to manage.

We began our search for the most suitable fit and the sales calls started rolling in. We considered all the big guys such as D-Link, HP, Aruba, Cisco, Meraki, Dell and Juniper.

With Cisco becoming more expensive and convoluted as ever, we considered Juniper and Aruba, which would land us at a price point of $2,000–$4,000AUD per switch, with the added benefit of a better management experience.

We also had another contender. Despite many doubts around their gear being suitable for enterprise networks, UniFi started to look like a viable option for us.

And at a quarter of the price, we had little reason not to consider UniFi.

Why we decided on UniFi

The most important factor in our decision was an easy-to-manage system. With so many team members and so many changes day to day we wanted it to be easy to deploy VLAN’s across the entire network, as well as per node.

We didn’t require any layer 3 capabilities, as our core switch handles all VLAN routing. Just a simple layer 2 switch capable of carrying VLAN’s will do just fine.

Learn a bit more about our switch topology in Matthew’s article here.

What was it like before?

Beforehand, our switches were all D-Link DGS series devices, which had all the capabilities, but were an absolute nightmare to manage.

Although the learning curve was not massive for your average technician, they still required specialised knowledge from all team members to be able to configure correctly and efficiently, and even with the knowledge required, we often spent hours troubleshooting VLAN issues across our network. Most of our time was spent logging in to 5 or so switches through separate interfaces just to tag or untag one port.

To configure a VLAN, these were the steps required:

• Configure the VLAN on the core switch
• Log in to the web interface of each individual switch in the network
• Add the VLAN ID and name to each individual switch
• Tag the VLAN on each trunk port on each individual switch
• Untag each port where the VLAN is required on each switch required

What it’s like after the rollout

As we were rolling them out, we found ourselves blaming the UniFi’s for every single unexplained network annoyance, but found we were wrong each and every time.

If anything, the new hardware made the network run a lot smoother and the UniFi controller made managing devices and VLAN’s a whole lot easier and far less time consuming. Having a central view of what is active and what VLAN the port is on really revolutionised how we view at the network as a whole.

To configure VLAN’s on the UniFi’s, these are the steps required:

• Configure the VLAN on the core switch
• Log in to the web interface of the UniFi controller
• Add the VLAN ID and name to the Settings > Network menu, making sure to tick “VLAN Only”
• Select each switch from the list in the controller, tick all ports required and select your VLAN

Where’s my lifetime warranty?

If you’ve looked into the UniFi range at all, you may have noticed that they only ship with a 1 year limited warranty.
At the price point we paid, we really didn’t see an issue with this and we didn’t see a need for a support contract.
In the unlikely event that we replace the all of the switches once in their lifetime, we’ll still have a solution for half the price. We’ve also found that when it comes to enterprise support, 9 times out of 10 we’ll end up fixing the issue ourselves anyway.

Would UniFi be a suitable fit for your network? Maybe, maybe not — let us know in the comments.