I’ve previously covered my home setup, mostly Ubiquiti powered; I’d bought the UDM (UniFi Dream Machine) myself as my security gateway which was working fine. However, after moving house and acquiring a rack, I asked Ubiquiti if there was any chance of send me a UDM Pro SE to try out – thankfully for me they obliged!
My rack was filled with non-rack items, beyond some shelves that I’d bought. Functional, but a bit sad, and I’d hit capacity on the Switch 8 PoE previously provided.
Beyond going from a giant pill shaped device to a 1RU rack mountable device, what’s the difference between a UDM and UDM Pro SE? And what about the UDM Pro?
Here’s a breakdown of the differences – full specs of each device on the hyperlink title:
| Hardware | UDM | UDM Pro | UDM Pro SE |
| Networking interface | (4) LAN 10/100/1000 RJ45 Ports (1) WAN 10/100/1000 RJ45 Port | (8) 10/100/1000 RJ45 LAN Ports (1) 10/100/1000 RJ45 WAN Port (1) 1/10G SFP+ LAN Port (1) 1/10G SFP+ WAN Port | (1) WAN: 2.5 GbE RJ45 port (8) LAN: 1 GbE RJ45 ports (1) WAN: 10G SFP+ (1) LAN: 10G SFP+ |
| PoE | N/A | N/A | (2) PoE+ (pair A 1, 2+; 3, 6-) (6) PoE (pair A 1, 2+; 3, 6-) |
| System Memory | 2 GB DDR RAM | 4 GB DDR4 | 4 GB DDR4 |
| On-Board Flash Storage | 16 GB | 16 GB eMMC | 16 GB eMMC Integrated 128 GB SSD |
| Wi-Fi Standards | 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ac-wave2 | N/A | N/A |
| IDS/IPS Throughput | 850 Mbps | 3.5 Gbps | 3.5 Gbps |
| TouchScreen | N/A | 1.3″ | 1.3″ |
| UniFi OS Applications | Network | Network, Protect, Talk, Access | Network, Protect, Talk, Access |
Calling out the specifics between the three – the UDM is a more self contained solution which is why it includes inbuilt Wi-Fi, but will also happily manage downstream devices.
The UDM Pro lacks Wi-Fi because really, who needs Wi-Fi coming from the inside of a rack? But it does bring more ethernet ports, RAM, higher IDS/IPS Throughput (threat management traffic), and a niftly little 1.3″ touchscreen to perform simple tasks like rebooting the device. It also has NVR storage capabilities, meaning it can manage and record supported cameras. There’s also IP Phone support, and access support (like card reader through door access).
Finally, the UDM Pro SE really is a ‘special edition’ of the UDM Pro, giving the ethernet ports PoE support. It also brings 128GB of integrated storage for a bit more wiggle room for the UniFi OS Applicaitons. The ethernet WAN port gets bumped from 1GbE to 2.5GbE for those who somehow have the internet data coming through at speeds greater than gigabit.
My experience on migrating from the UDM to UDM Pro SE was an easy one. Using the admin web interface is pretty much the same as before, apart from having the extra options around the extra OS applications:
The always entertaining Lars Klint made a video around upgrading from the UDM Pro to the UDM Pro SE which is pretty much the same process as going from the UDM to UDM Pro SE:
You could also just take the upgrade approach of starting from scratch, plugging everything in – downstream devices will still be detected, but require either takeover with the old password, or a factory reset on each device physically to allow you to re-set up.
I am still really happy with the Ubiquiti stack of devices, the central view and management of the entire network the platform gives me (including making it easy to see a problem where my wife’s work laptop was constantly uploading data due to a corrupt Outlook profile), making sure the 34 active network based clients are behaving and having a good experience.
