Ubiquiti Unifi Flex Mini Managed Switch
Vložit
- čas přidán 20. 04. 2023
- A short overview of the Ubiquiti Unifi Flex mini managed 5 port switch. This low-cost and highly flexible managed switch is excellent for aggregating your devices in each room over one feed or creating VLANs on your network for additional security. It works seamlessly over your existing UniFi network, using the standalone software controller or managing it with your phone app.
Non-Affiliate link to the product: store.ui.com/collections/unif...
Check out more videos on my channel: / mikefaucher
Check out my other Unifi videos: www.youtube.com/@MikeFaucher/... - Věda a technologie
Top stuff, thank you for your informative vid mate!
Glad you like it and thanks for the feedback.
I bought this to add a budget friendly managed switch to my network. It's my first Unifi device and hopefully not my last. It integrated well into my current system and does the job nicely. I'm using one because I needed to add more ethernet ports to my Firewalla firewall.
Outstanding. Glad to hear it worked out. I am afraid there is no turning back now.. Once you head down the unifi road, it hard to take a different road. Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks, ordered one and a Ubiquiti PoE Injector - 48V 0.32A (Max 15 W)
Thanks for the update and good luck with it.
Great review of this switch! Question, what cabling are you using between the XG and mini?
I am using the lure thin cat 6A from monoprice which you can get from them or amazon. Bout any cat 6 or cat 6A will work. I just like the thin cables.
May I ask how did you label those Ethernet cables so nicely?
I used a Dymo (amzn.to/47JRBak) label maker and wire labels (amzn.to/47tuz7N). Hope that helps.
Nice review. And I have a question. Do you have an idea why I can't choose any profile on the mini flex? This option is not available in my menu. I only can select Vlans? The mini is connected to a poe16 lite from ubiquity. Thanks for your time. Greetings Dom
The mini has reduced support and I believe only supports VLANs. I have not tried profiles on the mini, but I will give it a shot. Great question.
Hmm in your video at 3:09 it shows "Profile All" and at 5:24 it shows different profiles. But in my environment I can't choose profile at all?? Greetings Dom
i can only imagine this being sufficient for a home room where maybe you don't need so many ports? Like your example your using it for your appletv. I also do something similar with that few ports in my other room as well.
Or maybe you really run few things that need ports so 5 ports might be enough to go with your pc? But at that point, routers already have few ports which you can use from already if that were the case.
pricing these days isn't a 8 port not that far off from a 5 port switch? i could be wrong.
Anyway i see that your using 2 switches. 1 for 10gbe, and other for 1gbe. But what is the power consumption cost for doing this? If it is neglible then yeah maybe doing what you did is good, but if not then maybe getting a single switch at that location could save on operating cost in the longer term? So in your case you need 1gbe and 10gbe, so there options like the qnap that have hybrid type of switches or some other option.
Great points but it would be difficult to measure but the power rating is pretty low. No perfect solution but this approach provides me with some benefits without jumping up a notch in cost or switching to a different brand. As always, thanks for your input.
That’s a great price for a managed switch. Do you happen to know if they do something similar but with more ports?
They many switches but the price goes up. Check there website to see the full selection.
They have 8 and 16 port flexes
@@meskes4059 thanks 👍🏻
Does this also count as one of 5 devices in case you use the Unifi Express as gateway?
I have a small appartment soon, I want to use the best of all worlds. The dream router only supports 700mbps and the dream machine seems like overkill.
However only 5 Unifi devices in the network are a bit too few for my usage.
This is a bit where I'm struggling with choosing the right configuration.
The dream machine (store.ui.com/us/en/pro/products/udm) supports 850 with all the protections and 3.5G without. The cost is around $299 and is worth considering. The other and arguably better option is the Unifi Express and use the controller software on your PC. It should handle 1G with everything enabled.
It will handle 4 additional Unifi devices. The count is managed devices, not total devices. If you run this in a small apartment, the express, an access point, and 2-3 switches should be fine. If that is too limiting, go to the Dream Machine Pro/SE and future-proof. Remember, the SE has PoE and 2.5G so it may actually save you money.
Awesome little device for quick setup, I too use it to connect my media devices (ps5, apple tv, wii u) in the living room with just 1 POE cable comming out from the UDM Pro SE.... They are very easy to setup, and of course very pretty ui, but they are little bit expensive imo. If you like network gears you can take a look at other brands, or older used enterprise devices, for example I got a 48 ports POE+ swich from Cisco for only $120 (C3750x) and added a 2 10G sfp+ addon card, also it has 2 x1100W redundant power supply for all the POE+ devices.... The catch is it's all CLI and the learning curve is pretty steep.
And of course Mikrotik devices, very affordable enterprise switches, I got a 24 ports 10G sfp+ plus 2 ports qsfp+ 40Gbs switch for only $430, of course they have their own OS very powerful and lightweight, and they are updating it constantly. But I think their most interesting devices are the smaller ones, like the hEX line small routers, the lite version costs around what you paid for Ubiquiti Flex, but its a full fletch router with the same OS that runs in their enterprise devices.. As far I know they are the only who offers a small router with 4 10Gb sfp+ and 1x 1G eth and they are all POE enabled.
And don't get me started with their wireless one, you should take a look at the LtAP mini and KNOT very very interesting devices for remote IOTs.
Thanks for your input. I have been investing in UniFi for more that a year and just love the one stop approach. Makes it so much easier to manage and change. I am into it about 16 devices now have not regret it and have slowly replaced much of my other hardware. Thanks for the feedback!
just wondering but why do you use a 48 port switch? are you running it for a homelab? or an office space with many pcs i wonder?
Yeah if it's cli .... probably not ideal to the newbies like myself. I tend to prefer using the web ui for managed switches.
what specific microtik enterprise switch model are you referring to? I would like to find out more. Any downsides to using 40gbs ports vs 10gbs?
@@MikeFaucher Of couse, at a production level sure it's easy to setup and like you say one stop approach. What I'm saying is sometimes due to budget constrain we might need to look elsewhere for the best bang for buck. It may not be pretty but it does work. For example depending on the budget I used to build around UAPs only using other brand cheap POE+ switches and some obsolete PC for PfSense and host unifi controller on Linode or DigitalOcean as different sites. And if the budget goes up I could change it to a ubiquiti swith and then a USG pro or as of latest UDM and so on.
And there are times that USGs or UDMs doesn't offer some advance routing feature so I had to take it out from the network and install and Edge router or PfSense or OpenSense as gateway...
Couple years ago I moved everything to Mikrotik CapsMan, the initial investment are cheaper so does the operation costs but it does require that IT dept are trained on Mikrotik, btw, it's also one stop approach just not that fancy hahaha
@@kaede15 Great points. There is always more than one way. My last setup was that way. Sophos firewall, TPlink and QNAP switches. Worked well. Thanks for the insight. Appreciate the detail.
@@MikeFaucher Late into the discussion but I am in your side of the camp. I actually replaced a bit of Cisco small business switches which were quite time consuming for updating as well as when I made changes to my VLANS. Also trying to control client addresses a royal pain in the neck. Unifi is so user friendly and simple. I also added several Mini switches and have 13 total Unifi products. Don't like their closed approach for cameras so there have gone Synology with Hikvision. I am now replacing some Mobotix and older Hikvision with the Hikvision ColorVu which are fantastic at night. Actually following you video on VLAN for the cameras. Very good content in your videos, thank you.
Does it have the ability to turn IGMP snooping and DHCP guarding on and off like the bigger switches?
Those are mostly global settings set on the gateway and not the individual switches.
Well for instance, on my 48 port unify switch. When I set up a VLAN, I can turn that on or off, so was going that’s an option on the little 4 port guy. Hate to but it to find out it won’t.
@@lorneshantz4892 You are correct in that these settings are part of the VLAN setup however I do not believe they are device specific. It should flow down via the VLAN settings. I could be wrong, as I do not use either of these settings.
when you say you log into the unifi controller what do you mea? can i actually download this controller??
Yes you can download the free controller (ui.com/download) toward the bottom of the page. Hope that helps
Can this switch be used to set up VLANs without using any other Ubiquity equipment? Basically, can I plug this switch into a LAN that has no Ubiquity controller to adopt it, log into the Flex switch itself and assign VLANs for the individual ports? I guess I am asking if this Flex switch is an L3 switch (if that is the right name for such a managed switch to do what I just said).
It is not an L3 switch but you can setup VLANs with just the free phone app or controller software.
@@MikeFaucher So I would plug the Flex switch into a LAN, connect the phone to the LAN via wifi, fire up the Unifi app, select the Flex that will show up in the app, and configure the VLANs on it? It would be very informative if you can do a video on this.
@@jasonluong3862 That sums it up. I will do a video on the topic, good suggestion.
@@jasonluong3862 That is correct. That is a great suggestion for the video.
@@MikeFaucher I am looking forward to it because I have tried this on my own but the Unifi app on my iPhone only detects my Dream Router but none of the Flex Minis. This is true when a Flex Mini is connected to a different wireless router. The only way the Flex can be detected and adopted by the Dream Router is when the Flex is behind the Unifi Dream Router.
Basically the Unifi app doesn’t do anything other than configuring standalone Unifi access points. I am hoping the app can also configure standalone Flex Minis, particularly creating VLANs on these switches that are connected to a “stupid” router that is not made by Ubiquity and one that does not do VLANs.
The one problem I've had with these is every once and a while I had to restart the switch to get the unifi software to see it. The switch was still working before the restart and if I'm wasn't making a port change I don't really need to see it in the software anyway.
Interesting. Assuming you are using the software controller? I have not seen this using the IUDM. Thanks for your input.
does this do POE out
No, just to power the unit. They do have a model call a Flex that has PoE out for about $99.
welp@@MikeFaucher
NO POE PASS-THRU!! That's the only downside I have with it. Nice switch that doesn't need a power supply if you're plugged to POE from a Unifi device.
Their Flex switch has PoE pass through. Thanks for the feedback.
Missing information about how this switch Handel vlan.
VLANs in Unifi are set by the port profile (2:40). I will be glad to answer any specific questions. Thanks for the feedback.
@@MikeFaucher in flex-mini you don't have full compability of Vlan. That can lead to disappointment when you buy one of this unit's. I believe it's only path Through or Vlan 80. That info could be good to have in the video as well. 👍
@ They are more limited than their larger switches but I have 2 VLANs a the main network on the I use. Thanks for the feedback.