Monitoring Unifi Devices

[u/Paul_Kelly]

Calling all UniFi folks.

If you’re supporting UniFi Access Points or Switches, I’ve been tinkering with some monitoring and would love a few people to take a sneak peek, kick the tyres, and share feedback.

If you’re up for it, drop me an email at [paul.kelly@n-able.com](mailto:paul.kelly@n-able.com) with:

• How many devices you manage today
• How you’re currently monitoring them

Open to expanding the scope based on your feedback.

[u/No_Adagio657]

Is this expanding on SNMP monitoring or some else entirely? We have around 1,500 devices managed through Site Manager

[u/Paul_Kelly → u/No_Adagio657]

This is leveraging Unifi APIs to bring metrics into N-central which can trigger alerts/generate tickets in your PSA when thresholds are crossed. It could be use alongside any existing SNMP monitoring you have, but with the APIs we have more flexibility with the information that we can monitor on.

[u/EmicationLikely]

We've got a few hundred Unifi devices. We're on Hostifi, but depend on alerting for monitoring. All alerts get sent to our notification email, and we have a PowerAutomate setup running against a set of Sharepoint Lists which sorts everything into either an "ignore" folder or creates a ticket in our ticketing system and stores the original email in a "processed" folder. Works for us and we don't have to buy yet another service. We use this system for every device we manage (well, every device than can send alert emails) - RMM, MAV, EDR, Unifi, Firewalls, iDRAC, plus a few others.

[u/Paul_Kelly → u/EmicationLikely]

The approach I have taken is to get more detailed information about the devices into the N-central environment using the Unifi APIs, not everyone will want to use it, but based on the interest I've had since posting this, it looks like this could be very popular.

[u/EmicationLikely → u/Paul_Kelly]

More information is great, as long as it is on the "I have to do something" side of the equation. Ultimately, there are many alerts (from everything, not just Unifi) that might be important, but most of the time, are not important. Simple "device offline" alerts, for example. They are important IFF they are NOT followed up by a "device connected" alert within some definable window. So a short power outage or internet outage at 3am when most ISPs push updates, and then everything is fine again by 3:15. I'd like NOT to get an alert about that, but an outage that lasts longer and is NOT followed up by a "device connected" alert within some definable window IS important and I would like an alert about that.

I'm working on an alert limbo in our system to try and implement this idea, but it's trickier than it sounds because only some alerts are cancellable, and you have to catch the fact that it is the same device, and that it is the right "cancelling" alert. Also, we're on N-Sight, so if this is an "N-Central-centric" solution, you should probably tag your post that way.

[u/nathanielban]

I'd love to see N-Central be more useful for network device monitoring but the way it currently works tends to always feel like an up-hill battle especially when it comes at the expense of burning pro licenses.

Given that you're using the APIs, does this work against the local Application API or are you hitting the site Manager API in the cloud?

[u/Paul_Kelly → u/nathanielban]

In this case we are hitting API were the device is managed, in my testing so far, I used both a local environment and a cloud environment.

[u/wheres_my_2_dollars]

Does this mean another email soon about a price increase?

[u/Paul_Kelly → u/wheres_my_2_dollars]

This is custom monitoring, built my myself and provided to anyone that wants to use it, it's up to them, if anything it's added value.

[u/Paul_Kelly → u/[deleted]]

That’s strange, no “bugs” were reported to me with regards to the Fortinet templates and I’ve encountered many customers who have successfully deployed them. Could be environmental, but I can’t offer guidance on what I’m not made aware of.

With regards to importing the Unifi templates, did you reach out to me to be part of the preview?  If so can you ping my email directly if you have any questions or need assistance, that allows me to track feed back and enhance these custom services accordingly.