[OT] Proxmox IP address on UniFi Controller - Does yours have one?

Can someone please confirm whether their Proxmox server shows its IP address in the Unif Controller?
Mine doesn’t (always) and according to someone on the UniFi Forum this is expected if the device has an IP address fixed by itself (rather than reserved by the Router). But it isn’t possible to do this for Proxmox as it asks for a fixed IP when setting it up.

I am having all sorts of issues with my Network since migrating to Proxmox and I am desperately trying to avoid the nuclear option of rebuilding Everything from scratch (Network, HA etc.).

I don’t have a lot of faith in what the controller is reporting as it is clearly impossible for the controller to be up for longer than the (Proxmox) server it is running on!

I can confirm, but I assume my setup is different than yours :slight_smile:
Is the Unifi Controller in a standalone VM or in the same VM as HA? How do you run HA? Did you install the image or supervised install on generic linux VM?

Would it make much of a difference if you would see the IP? I guess you know the IP address so there would actually be no need for the unifi controller to show it to you no? Or does it rely on something.

Btw, reading your message makes me think that you find proxmox a bit complicated. In this case I will highly recommend to try Unraid instead (which does the same thing, however it has native docker support). I have tried all of the most common hypervisors (vmware, hyper-v, virtualbox, proxmox and unraid) and from all the hypervisors Unraid is definitely the easiest to setup and use and the native docker support is a big bonus (e.g. I run over 40 containers and 0 vm’s, my cpu usage is around 8% and RAM around 8GB out of the 32GB). When using a VM as I did in the past, cpu usage would sit at around 25% and RAM would be at least 8GB as I had that much dedicated to HA alone. Since docker only allocates the resources that are actually needed it is a lot better optimized.

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@Burningstone

The UniFi Controller is in a standalone VM (well, it is in a container actually)
HA is in a VM installed following the guide by kanga_who:

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I had zero network issues until I migrated to Proxmox from Ubuntu/HA and now I think there is something somewhere that UniFi doesn’t like.

The issue is manifested in all my ESPHome devices becoming unavailable for a few seconds at virtually the same time and following a suggestion by tom_l I did catch my HA device becoming unreachable by a ping at about the same time (I’m waiting for mere events so that I can confirm that.)

@jimz011

Thanks and I don’t doubt anything you say but I am much more comfortable with Proxmox than I am with Docker. I had never even heard of Docker until I was introduced to it by HA but I have used VMs before. Conceptually a VM is very simple to my mind whereas Docker is a virtually (no pun intended) whole new architecture to learn.

Historically I moved from a Pi to Proxmox and only went to Ubuntu/HA because I wanted Bluetooth. I must say I am relieved to have made the move back to Proxmox where I am far more comfortable. I know very little about Linux so having VMs compartmentalised at a high level allows me to have some confidence I can’t break everything with my ‘just-enough’ Linux knowledge!

I would say try the trial (which is 60 days). I also had no experience with docker. But the unraid approach isn’t quite the same as docker on ubuntu. Lets just say that it is super simple. There is a community store which has prebuilt containers which most of the time is a simple click and done solution. I am certain you can get Unraid up and running and install HA within 10 minutes (a fresh install ofc).

It can do even better (and is how I did it), you could simply run HassOS in a VM and slowly migrate to docker on Unraid (they can run simultaneously and you wont need to download Ubuntu for example to do this).

To summarise, I still have no idea how docker works, I do know how Unraid works as it makes docker pretty straightforward (e.g. you can quickly map a drives folder to a single or multiple containers with a mouse click, no docker-compose needed).

Besides that you get a great and easy to use interface.

If you like help on proxmox, unraid or vmware (or Home Assistant in general) I will suggest joining our discord community (not official) with over 800 members. To join you can click here

Are you running the Unifi Controller and the HA VM through the same virtual network bridge? Are the ESP devices on the same VLAN as your HA instance? Do you even have VLANs? Do you see any errors in the home assistant logs?

I have a similar setup, but I run HA supervised in Proxmox and the controller on a separate Pi and this works flawless. While I agree with @jimz011 that it’s easy with UnRaid, I myself would not pay for this, first because I don’t pay when I can have the same functionality for free and second you can learn a lot about the systems involved etc when doing it yourself, but that’s just my two cents.

Yes, Is that the right answer? I’m at the edge of my understanding here. :slight_smile:

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Yes and no, not at the moment. I did but part of my troubleshooting this was to simplify my setup so I removed them until I have everything stable, then I plan to reinstate them

Not that I can directly relate to this but I do get this from an Android tablet

Login attempt or request with invalid authentication from 192.168.1.223

and they do appear to possibly coincide.

This may be an issue due to port conflicts (meaning HA and Unifi Controller want to access the same port). If this is the issue, you need to create iptables (assuming you run this on something like an Intel NUC with only one ethernet port) to define which external port will be mapped to which internal ip/port combination.
An example, let’s say HA uses port 1234 to access the web interface and the Unifi Controller uses port 1234 as well to access the web interface. HA and the Unifi Controller are both accessible through the same IP, let’s say 192.168.1.123 from outside Proxmox. Now if something tries to access 192.168.1.123 with port 1234, you have a conflict, because there are two services (HA and Unifi) that serve this port at this IP address. The iptable would then for example be to route the external port 1234 to HA port 1234 and the external port 1235 to Unifi port 1234. I can guide you through the steps for creating a virtual bridge and the iptables,but would be preferable to find another solution.

Are you doing something specific when the network fails, like always when you try to access the HA interface or whatever?
Did you try the Unifi-Add-on for Home Assistant already? Do you have a spare Pi laying around to be used as a unifi controller?

No, not knowingly, I have been trying to watch out for some kind of cause but nothing has flagged itself to me. It can happen overnight while no one is using any device. It can also go 24hrs without doing it.

Yes. This story begins when I was on Ubuntu/HA and everything was perfect. Unifi Controller was the HA add-on.

I migrated to Proxmox, put the Controller in it’s own VM (Container) and this seems to be when I started getting problems.

I do wonder if somewhere along the line Unifi has got its knickers in a twist. I do have spare Pi I could use to see if that makes the problem go away but long term I’d rather make use of my NUC. Also, I am not sure if you can adopt UniFi routers etc into a new Controller without factory resetting them first which I always have in my mind as way to at least eliminate any issues caused by me during my migration to Proxmox.

Also, if I understand you correctly I don’t think the ports are a problem because HA and UniFi are separate VMs on different IPs

Why did you move the Unifi Controller to a VM instead of using the add-on?

I think you should be able to just backup the controller and restore on the new device. At least that’s what I did in the past without factory resetting.

They have different internal IPs but externally they both are reachable through the IP of the proxmox host. When you access the Unifi web interface is the IP different than the one when accessing the HA web interface?

Simply to move all my eggs out of one basket. Ok, so they are all in one Proxmox basket but at least the Controller wasn’t then reliant on the HA VM.

Yes you can, I’ve done that a couple of times but if I am right and the whole setup has somehow been confused and got out of synch then that would just propagate the problem.

I access Unifi via 192.168.1.9:8443 and HA via 192.168.1.25:8123


This morning something didn’t happen that should have so I checked the HA logbook only to find this:

image

Proxmox is wired ethernet on 192.168.1.10

Something is definitely up with my network…

Just a quick update out of courtesy as you took the time to try and help.

I bit the bullet and factory reset my entire (a rather grand word for one router, one switch and one AP :wink: ) network, my Proxmox server and hence both my UniFi controller VM and my HA VM.

I have to say that 24hrs in, everything looks rock solid.

I’m pretty sure that the UniFi network was messed up with all the migrating and IP changes and reuse.

Anyway, thanks for your input, sometimes it is really useful to have a different view on things even if it doesn’t provide a direct solution. In this case it at least gave me a bit of a sense check that I probably wasn’t overlooking something obvious.

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Hi @klogg, I am curious how you resolved this. I believe my network is configured properly, but struggle to get updates working on my Proxmox (Intel NUC). I have a static IP assigned, but does not work well with my Unifi Dreammachine SE.

Thanks in Advance – sorry I know this is two years old.

I am sorry but have no recollection now.
I do have an IP address showing for Proxmox in UniFi Network but I don’t remember actually ‘solving’ it.
If I remember correctly it ‘just started working’ at some point.

Sorry I can’t be more help but this was nearly two years ago.

Thank you anyway.

SOLVED: Turns out my Unifi gear was blocking at MAC address. Unblocked via the mobile app.
Walking backwards now holding my face in my hands…

~Bryan