So, I just took over managing a school that had a rough go with their last tech guy. They do not have passwords for anything and its a total mess. They left them hanging out to dry. I've worked with unifi domes before but I am not an expert on them. So there are 10 AC Pro domes in total and 7 are working fine. The other 3 are not. 2 are blinking and the other is on but not pushing out wifi. There is no cloud key and nobody knows the email and password it was setup with so I can't get into the software to see or tweak anything. Is this as easy as putting a cloud key in, creating a new account and readopting all the domes? Thanks in advance.
HCHTech
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With no credentials, I'll bet you are going to end up just starting over. Factory reset everything, add the cloud key and setup from scratch. It sucks. At least then, you'll know it's setup correctly.
Markverhyden
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Don't forget to test all the cabling.
Sky-Knight
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Screw the cloud key, just install the admin software on a server somewhere. If you don't have a machine to do it, make a VPS in Azure. Cloud keys are just another failure point.
Then track down your DHCP server, and your DNS server. The DHCP server is going to handout a dns suffix, unifi.dnssuffix needs to resolve to the IP address of the controller.
Then you're free to setup a new controller on whatever device you need, aim DNS at it, and run around doing factory resets and readoptions. Honestly, I could probably have all 10 WAPs back online in a few hours. Someone somewhere no doubt knows what the WPA key is, otherwise they'd not be able to connect, and the SSIDs broadcast.
So unless there's VLANs in play, this is pretty trivial to just rebuild. It's busy work, but mostly just moving ladders around so you can push the appropriate buttons. All of this also assumes the cabling is intact.
Then track down your DHCP server, and your DNS server. The DHCP server is going to handout a dns suffix, unifi.dnssuffix needs to resolve to the IP address of the controller.
Then you're free to setup a new controller on whatever device you need, aim DNS at it, and run around doing factory resets and readoptions. Honestly, I could probably have all 10 WAPs back online in a few hours. Someone somewhere no doubt knows what the WPA key is, otherwise they'd not be able to connect, and the SSIDs broadcast.
So unless there's VLANs in play, this is pretty trivial to just rebuild. It's busy work, but mostly just moving ladders around so you can push the appropriate buttons. All of this also assumes the cabling is intact.
HCHTech
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Yep - better answer when you have a server onsite. I'm so used to doing "too small for a server" installs, I lean on the cloud keys.
Sky-Knight
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Then why not host an Azure VPS with the controller in it, and "lease" access to it to your customers? You're walking away from recurring revenue. And if the client wants their own VPS, you just export their site and import it into the new VPS, and change the unifi. DNS record that serves their LAN.
I hate those little cloud key things... too many problems for me.
Mercenary Roadie
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The new Gen 2 Cloud Keys are lightyears better than the original ones.
We host ours in AWS for $3.50 per month. I have almost 100 sites on it and don’t charge the end users for it, but we do bill to make changes to their stuff.
We have no cloud keys anywhere. If a customer just wants access to the settings, you can grant them admin access to just their site rather than making them go to their own VPS.
we just did our first controller to controller migration and it took less than 10 minutes and EVERYTHING was done. It imported all data and pointed the ones away from the old and to ours. I was impressed.
We have no cloud keys anywhere. If a customer just wants access to the settings, you can grant them admin access to just their site rather than making them go to their own VPS.
we just did our first controller to controller migration and it took less than 10 minutes and EVERYTHING was done. It imported all data and pointed the ones away from the old and to ours. I was impressed.
Markverhyden
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Care to share the specs on the VPS? Thanks in advance.
I mis spoke, mine is in vultr but my specs are
- 2 GB RAM
- 1 core CPU
- 40 GB SSD
YeOldeStonecat
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For small to medium networks, I don't mind putting them on our cloud controller.
Esp for smaller networks with just 1 or a small handful of Unifi devices.
But for medium to larger networks, especially those with higher need for uptime, put in a local Unifi controller.
While I'll admin that the "first generation" of Cloud Keys were problematic.(the mongoDB was very prone to corruption mostly from rude shutdowns), the newer base models (has a power button on the side, larger CPU, and faster storage media)..as well as the newer Gen2 models (has built in battery backup for graceful shutdown when sudden power loss) are rock solid!
Simply bind them to your FREE unifi.ubnt account and you have an excellent multi tenant portal to manage all of your various clients unifi networks.
We have nearly 100 clients of each type...meaning, a bunch on our cloud controller, and a bunch more using Cloud Keys or on prem controllers running on a server (often virtualized ubuntu). So we're long familiar with both sides of the coin..both have pros and cons. Again..the newer versions of CKs are reliable. Most of the issues in the first versions were due to sudden power loss. It's a small computer running an OS and a database. Do people think unplugging servers running databases are a good idea? I'd say not. You prefer to gracefully shut them down, right? Well...same thing with the Cloud Key.
For important networks I use a CK Gen2. For larger important networks we spin up an Ubuntu LTS box with Unifi on it. Due to Java stuff over time, you end up troubleshooting issues.
Esp for smaller networks with just 1 or a small handful of Unifi devices.
But for medium to larger networks, especially those with higher need for uptime, put in a local Unifi controller.
While I'll admin that the "first generation" of Cloud Keys were problematic.(the mongoDB was very prone to corruption mostly from rude shutdowns), the newer base models (has a power button on the side, larger CPU, and faster storage media)..as well as the newer Gen2 models (has built in battery backup for graceful shutdown when sudden power loss) are rock solid!
Simply bind them to your FREE unifi.ubnt account and you have an excellent multi tenant portal to manage all of your various clients unifi networks.
We have nearly 100 clients of each type...meaning, a bunch on our cloud controller, and a bunch more using Cloud Keys or on prem controllers running on a server (often virtualized ubuntu). So we're long familiar with both sides of the coin..both have pros and cons. Again..the newer versions of CKs are reliable. Most of the issues in the first versions were due to sudden power loss. It's a small computer running an OS and a database. Do people think unplugging servers running databases are a good idea? I'd say not. You prefer to gracefully shut them down, right? Well...same thing with the Cloud Key.
For important networks I use a CK Gen2. For larger important networks we spin up an Ubuntu LTS box with Unifi on it. Due to Java stuff over time, you end up troubleshooting issues.
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