Change management VLAN on Ubiquiti UniFi Hardware and Controller

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• How did you make the Unifi Controller available on both a tagged VLAN and the general untagged network? Does it live in (as in the IP address is in) the subnet of VLAN 1/untagged, but you route to it from other VLANs via a L3 device? Thanks!

  • Hi Jamie,

    Thanks for reaching out. I have a few of the subnets on different VLANs routable. I do the routing on a Sophos UTM which has multiple (virtual) adapters sitting on each different subnet/VLAN. This way it can provide routing and I can enforce strict firewall controls.

    This way, when a UniFi device is attached to the network on the default untagged network, the only thing it has access to is a DHCP/DNS server, and the UniFi controller which resides on a different subnet. It performs the DNS lookup of "unifi", provisions and then changes to the appropriate VLAN for management.

    Hope this helps!

    Cheers,
    Stephen

• Thanks Stephen. So the controller lives on a VLAN, but is accessible from the untagged VLAN 1 through an L3 device (UTM). And out of the box, Unifi gear is preconfigured to resolve the FQDN "unifi" to provision to the controller, hence the DNS record? You don't have to console into a Unifi switch for example to set the controller FQDN for provisioning? Thanks.

  • Hi Jamie,

    That is correct (the routing, VLANs, and L3 routing). And yes, provisioning is all automatic, no SSHing needed.

    You can find all the different adoption methods available here: https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/204909754-UniFi-Device-Adoption-Methods-for-Remote-UniFi-Controllers

    You can use DNS, DHCP, etc... I just chose DNS because it's easy and my Sophos UTM has a built in DNS server that I use for subnets/VLANs that I don't want or have servers on.

    Stephen

• Thanks for the theory, how about a step by step. Something that doesn't seem to exist with anything Unifi. I am starting to think there is a conspiracy or some sort of law that prevents it.

  • Hi Jeff,

    Sorry, but it's a little tricky with a how-to on this specific topic. The steps would vary depending on which firewall you're using, what router you're using to provide routing between the subnets, etc.

    In my case I'm using a Sophos UTM firewall and UniFi switches, but the setup will probably vary from person to person.

    I was hoping to go in to the theory, to teach so that readers can setup their own environments and hardware to do this.

    Essentially you just need to make all subnets routable, firewall the routing between subnets to only allow communication to the UniFi controller, and set it all up.

    If you have a specific question, feel free to ask me and I'll do my best to answer!

    Cheers,
    Stephen

• Just to say thanks again Stephen. This week I followed the guidance from earlier this year, and put the Unifi devices onto untagged VLAN to be provisioned, gave the DNS entry for "unifi" for those devices that resolves to the controller on a different tagged VLAN, and made sure the Unifi devices could route to it. Now got a fully VLAN enabled home network, thanks again!

  • Hi Jamie, glad it helped!

• Like Jeff I have spent days trying to get this setup with unifi switches and AP and a pfSense firewall. A step by step would really be helpful. Understand that each setup is different, but (at least in my case), if I try to change the unifi devices to my tagged management VLAN, the controller loses contact with them.,
  So to be clear, get everything setup on the untagged network, then transfer the controller to the management tagged VLAN? When you say " you just need to make all subnets routable" - can you be clearer. What do you mean by routable? All subnets? Does that mean IOT and Guest VLANs?

  Also when you say " the only thing it has access to is a DHCP/DNS server, and the UniFi controller which resides on a different subnet. It performs the DNS lookup of “unifi”, provisions and then changes to the appropriate VLAN for management." Any explanation of these steps would be helpful.
  Thanks

  • Hi Sam,

    It may be difficult and confusing, but once you figure out it becomes super easy to setup.

    A step by step guide is hard to create, since everyone's configuration is different not only because of their unique setup, but also because they won't be using the exact same hardware.

    You don't need to "move" the controller from on VLAN to another, you can configure it on the VLAN you want it on, the important thing is that you need to make it routable to other VLANs.

    Typically, VLANs are different networks and cannot communicate with each other unless you have a gateway or router, that routes packets and allows the different VLANs to communicate with each other.

    When your networks are routable and can communicate, it won't matter what VLAN they are on, they will be able to communicate with the controller, the important part is to have a DNS entry for "unifi" on the DNS server that services both the untagged VLAN and the destination VLAN you want to move APs and switches to.

    When you attach a new device, and the networks are routable, the unifi switch or AP will connect, allow provisioning, and when you move it it to your destination VLAN should continue to be available.

    I hope that clears it up.

    Cheers,
    Stephen

• Great article, I've just built a largish (15 VLANS) network using UniF and Fortinet, first time using both products for a ground up build. I used a similar setup having been learning UNiFi's native VLAN idiosyncrasies, and wanting a MGMT VLAN that was not the default native VLAN1 UNiFI employ.

  I currently have to SSH to inform adoption, not practical given amount of kit I need to deploy. I was also wondering how to make adoption/discovery much smoother, and this article seems to be the answer.

  I'm going to work through these suggestions and hopefully see some nice results. Found another useful article that links with this for Fortigate users, re: DHCP option 43 and Cloud access ports for the controller, I hope you don't mind me linking here:

  https://forum.fortinet.com/tm.aspx?m=167433

  • Hi Dom,

    Glad to hear if the post helped! By the way, I have another blog post covering the best adoption methods for UniFi, check it out here: The Best UniFi Device Adoption Method.

    Cheers,
    Stephen

• Hi Stephen,

  first of all, thank you very much for that very helpfull post.

  I was nearly in despair to get a switch back running, after resetting. Make the native VLAN rotuable was the key. Although this is logical, sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees.

  But now, I`ve got another problem. I was updating all devices to the newest firmware and now my CloudKey isn´t reachable anymore. For me it seems, that you`re always sawing on the branch you are sitting on. The Cloud key is the one, who is resonsible for updating a device and in addition to that, spreading the configurations. This in turn leads to problems, when the CloudKey is updating the switch it is directly connected to and get`s itself "out of the game".

  Now I am not able to reach it anymore and the only way to get it back running seems to be a hardreset and some experimentation....

  Do you have any idea or advice?

  I would be very grateful!

  Thanks in advance,
  Armando

  • Hi Armando,

    We're you updating the cloud key? Or just the other devices on the network.

    If it was a failed upgrade, you should be able to reset it and restore a backup to get it to the state it was in prior.

    Cheers
    Stephen

• Hi Stephen,

  thx for the quick reply.

  First I was updating the CloudKey. Everything went fine.

  Then I wanted to update all other exisiting Unifi-Devices in my network (3 Switches, 2 APs). After clicking on "update" on the Switch, the CloudKey is directly connected to (via Port 8 PoE), the webinterface stuck after a while an now the CloudKey isn`t reachable anymore.

  Not reachable means the webinterface. Pings are partilly - not consistently - sucessful. Doesn`t look good in any way,...

  BR
  Armando

  • Hi Armando,

    Since the unit is being powered by PoE, was it gracefully shutdown before the switch restarted (and possibly restarted the cloud key)?

    I'm wondering if it may have been corrupted, if it was reset without a proper shutdown.

    If troubleshooting fails and you can't get it working by doing the usual (restarting it), then I'd recommend restoring your last backup after a reset.

    Cheers,
    Stephen

• Good question. To be honest, I don't know. I think I already ran into that Problem, the last time I was updating my UniFi Devices, but then have been busy with adopting that switch after resetting (glad I found your article ;) and forgot it.

  So this is a behavior, which should be corrected by Ubiquiti, I would say. Otherwise everybody, who's connecting a Cloud Key this way, will ran into that problem. Failure by design?

  Will give a feedback after reset and restore of the Cloud Key - when I'll find time to it.

  For now, thank you very, very much so far!

  BR
  Armando

  • It's just a consideration that needs to be taken in to account when updating the infrastructure.

    I hope the post and responses helped! :)

    Cheers,
    Stephen

• Hi Stephen,

  it took a while to get back to this.

  I found out the following.
  I have two different versions of US-8 Switches (USW-8P (old) | USC-8P (new)). Ubiquiti changed to ARM processors some time ago and so the Switches, which look exactly the same (and are labeled the same), differ from the old ones (cli VS. icli etc.).

  Having the CloudKey connected to the USC-Switch (Port with PoE pass-through) leads to the known probs.
  Then I changed the USC with the USW-Switch and now everything works fine...

  Maybe someone else is facing the same problems.

  However, now I can do updates without "kicking myself out".

  Hope that helps.

  BR
  Armando

  You can read more here for example:

• Hi Stephan,

  I am in the process of migration my network from mikrotik to unifi, the first question which came up was how to handle provisioning without a native vlan. So your write up helps a lot. thx

  I run a Sophos XG in front of the unifi switches but I realized that I can't set up an A Record without a suffix.
  e.g. "test.dns.com" resolves fine if set up as static dns host in Sophos. But "unifi" doesn't work this way, since a suffix is missing.

  How did you solve that?

  Best
  Pete

  • Hi Pete,

    Happy to hear you're moving to UniFi, it's great!

    As for your question, on my internal network I have a full Active Directory configured with a domain name. My Domain controllers actually handle DNS and DHCP for my network.

    Additionally, I have a Sophos UTM, which provides DHCP and DNS for a few other VLANs/Subnets, such as my native untagged VLAN.

    What I would recommend, is just choose something that has relevance that doesn't actually exist. For example "MyLAN.local" or "StephenLAN.local", and use that as an internal domain. Then from there, configure your DHCP/DNS to use that as the domain for IPs issues, DNS records, etc.

    I've never actually been asked this, so I just came up with that, I'm not quite sure if it's best practice nor not.

    Alternatively, if you do own a domain, you can use that internally as well, and just make sure you replicate the real DNS records on to your internal DNS so your external lookups function.

    Hope this helps!

    Cheers,
    Stephen

• thanks for your quick replay.

  maybe I misunderstood the concept of provisioning with unifi.
  On every new device there is the address "http://unifi:8080/inform" preconfigured. I thought that is where the new device expect the unifi controller. Is this correct?

  I could set up a static dns entry in Sophos like "unifi.local" which does resolve fine. But then I need to change the inform address on every new device via ssh to "http://unifi.local:8080/inform. Which is not the best way to provision.

• Hey Stephen,

  I couldn't make DNS on Sophos work but DHCP 43 does work well.

  However while testing several provisioning scenarios I figured out the following:

  I put my unifi switch as well as the unifi controller in VLAN2 which is my management network. Whenever I deploy a switch I set up dedicated access ports for each and every VLAN available on in this network. Just for the case that something goes really wrong.

  I plugged in a brand new 8 port switch into the dedicated VLAN2 access port and immediately the switch showed up in unifi controller and I could adopt it.

  So my questions is, why do you then still need vlan1 as well as routing on your firewall between VLAN1 and VLAN2 (or whatever your management vlan is)?
  Furthermore this way, I also don't need static dns entries or DHCP 43.

  Best
  Pete

  • Hi Pete,

    I did it my way so that any UniFi device could be plugged in to an untagged network port, and be able to be adoptable. Also, so that if any other devices were plugged in, they wouldn't have access to any network resources. The Untagged network is strictly locked down and only allows traffic to the controller in my environment.

    By having "access ports", this allows any device to plug in and have access to network resources, which I did not want.

    In an office environment, this would help protect against unauthorized users, or people plugging devices in to the network, as they would be on the untagged VLAN and have access to nothing.

    Also, in my environment I have many VLANs with different purposes, so with them being routable, I can configure firewall rules between the different VLANs and subnets to restrict traffic for security.

    Hope this helps explain.

    Cheers,
    Stephen

• alright,

  I see your point. thx
  It's a matter of having devices in untrusted environments where strangers could plug in devices by their own, while having many VLANs with different purposes is a different topic and not necessarily related to VLAN1 and provisioning of unifi devices.

  • It's that, and I just like to have everything organized and a process for everything :)

• I totally agree.

  As I said, I am new to unifi coming from cisco, mikrotik etc. and when reading about the provisioning part of unifi I felt like this could become complicated. Especially if you like to run a dedicated management vlan, as I usually do.
  So far, unifi deployment is maybe too easy and if you have the common networking theory in mind, this seems to make things rather more complicated than reality is. ;-)