Unifi Network Rack Cleanup!

I'm tired of looking at this mess so it's time to rebuild my home Ubitquiti Unifi network rack. OCD

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[WhoWeAre]

Very nice, Jerry. I find it satisfying to watch these types of videos. There’s no greater feeling than building your own home network.

[Kjaywest]

This is a good setup if I do say so myself. The color coding was a niche touch for knowing what was in the rack. Good job.

[Polkster]

I like the color coding of the jacks and cables. That is what I did on mine, but I used punch down RJ-45 jacks instead of pass through jacks. This eliminates one more failure point. I also did the patch panels above and below. You should also consider putting on small zip ties around the Ethernet cables and attach them to the strain relief bar behind the patch panels.

[RamonOchoaMusic]

I hate crimping cables, especially the thicker Cat 6A. I had the electrician do that for me while adding Ethernet to a build in an ADU. I still checked though to make sure it was running at the right speeds.

Those slim cables are nice! I need to get some to clean up my small 8 port patch panel at home.

[CORNAD]

I like the setup! I am also looking forward to seeing the ultra line of products. More compact, same delivery hopefully from UniFi.

[VijayPatel-vj]

I have a similar setup with the Enterprise POE24 and I was able to snag a Unifi UCI. The only difference is I ran everything through the Agger, and ran a 20G LAG to the Switch.

[bobbytaylor]

I am looking at adding an aggregation switch also. I was under the impression you are supposed to run from your UDM Pro into the aggregation switch with 10G. Then from your aggregation switch to all of your other switches. It looked like you went from your UDM Pro to your 24 port switch and then into the aggregation switch. I may be wrong but wanted to mention it.

[maxd]

Looks clean. Unifi cable modem is back in stock btw

[spacemanwho]

Loved this video. I guess the dev mounts won't work for 3u stuff. It's a shame they don't do a mix bag..

[fwzmhmd]

Those ethernet cables are not crimped correctly., the blue jacket has to be inside the rj45 connector

[med]

@JerrySchulze this video has me reminiscing about working in the WOC.

[Steamy_Dumpling]

Do you do a budget video on building a home server rack? Then explain how each one works with each other

[Saintel]

Not ideal in the closet but never the less great setup. :)

[aRndBelgianGuy]

Looks nice ! If you add a Unifi Modem, you wont have enough rack spaces :p

[JoeGibbs]

Curious about what security cameras you use.

[davidjoelhall]

What a difference that made! Well done, Jerry! Question for you... Is there any particular reason you're going from your aggregation switch --> 24-port switch --> UDM Pro instead of 24-port switch --> aggregation --> UDM Pro? that way your aggregation switch is, well, aggregating all other switches and feeding that into your firewall?

[theloopylizardkingirvine]

I would have had the 10 gig port on the UDM-Pro go directly into the Aggregation Switch and then connected the 24 Port switch to the Aggregation Switch, definitely not essential just a slightly more standard way of doing it.

[petervandebeek]

I think you made two "mistakes". (Big word, you not doing it that bad). You should have gone with (toolless) Keystones with connecting the cables directly to the back of the Keystone, instead of couplers with RJ45's. You got another point where contacts van fail, and they are easyer to put on then a RJ45.

And I think that you should do, from top to bottom:
UDM > Agg > and then to all devices from there. I also think that you should have put it in that way, physically. And get the SFP+ card for in the back of that Synology and use a DAC between the Agg and the Synology. That works great (have done it at two customers like that, works great).

[Chris_In_Texas]

If I could make a suggestion, first off you had a routing loop in the pre-work by wiring out two ports to two ports on the switch (P1/2). While they could be different vlan's it was accomplishing nothing of any value. The reason is that the way the UDM works, those 8 ports are a switch, with a 9th(phantom) port on the motherboard you don't have access to that runs to the CPU. That phantom port is only link to the rest of the network. So the total bandwidth of those 8 ports maxes out at 1Gbps leaving that 8 port switch. That is the reason that you couldn't LAG any of those 8 ports together as they are just a layer 2 stand alone switch. There are 4 ports that tie to the CPU, port 9/10/11 and the one hidden port (from the 1-8 ports).

In the final layout, I would like to suggest a change for increase performance.

* Take the 10G LAN port (11) from the UDM directly to the 8 port Agg switch and make sure that is set to VLAN 1 (which is all vlans trunking port). Then take port 25 SFP+ port to the 8 port agg swtich again on VLAN 1 as a trunk port. This will allow you to actually LAG together by taking port 26 there as well. So in this example you can Port 25/26 to port 1/2 of the 8 port agg and then port 11 from UDM to port 8 lets say. Then you can use all other ports for specific devices on the agg switch. What this will do is allow a 20Gbps LAG from to 8 port agg switch and any 10G devices to go faster. You could also move the layer 3 routing of the VLANs to the 24 port switch off the UDM. This will allow faster line rate devices not to have to go back to the UDM for routing and that traffic would stop in the 24 port switch.

Don't do the intermediate hop from 8 port to 24 port to UDM. Make the aggregation switch actually aggregate all the traffic. It will help optimize the network. I normally take all the 10G ports from each switch and LAG them together for either a 20G port or 40G port to the aggregation switch. With the pro aggregation switch it has Layer 3 ability vs the only layer 2 of the 8 port so all the routing can be offloaded there and keeps that routing off the UDM all together.

Like in your final config I don't use any of the ports on the UDM's either, one reason is that Ubiquity has really reduced the overall EMP/ESD capabilities of the UDM. The older switches were rated much higher than the newer series, and way more than the UDM's. With lightning and long cable runs the induced voltage can be high. I have had the switches panic and restart the power supplies for POE because of close by lightning. It really stinks because of course all the cameras reboot as well, so you never see anything of the actual strike except a bright flash and then no signal while the switch reboots.

Otherwise great job. Looks much better and also your equipment will love you better because it will run cooler as well with the gaps (patchpanels) between them. 🤠👍

[pbrigham]

Gosh, you are using 10GB adapters for the Uplinks !? :), please put some DAC cables there, much less heat and latency.