Turn on SNMP for a UniFi site

Witina gets most of what it needs about a UniFi site from the console; see Connect UniFi Site Manager. Turning on SNMP for the site lets the customer’s gateway also poll the devices directly.

What SNMP adds

• More frequent counters. The gateway polls devices over SNMP every minute, while the console is read every 5 minutes.
• More detail on switches: hardware details and the media type of each link.

Access points add little over SNMP beyond what the console already reports.

SNMP polling goes straight from the gateway to each device, so it needs a gateway on the customer’s network that can reach the devices.

Turn it on

SNMP is a site-wide UniFi setting, so you turn it on once for the whole site:

1. Open any UniFi access point in the site, from My Network.
2. On the Actions tab, find Enable SNMP. It shows the site and how many devices it applies to.
3. Choose Run, then Apply to the site’s devices.

Enable SNMP keeps the site’s existing community string. To set a new one, use Configure SNMP Community, which also turns SNMP on. Disable SNMP turns it off again.

You can also turn on SNMP in the UniFi Network application itself. Either way, within about 5 minutes Witina picks up the site’s community, saves it as a credential named “Controller SNMP community”, and starts polling the devices that support SNMP.

Devices that don’t use SNMP

Some UniFi devices don’t run SNMP or SSH at all. Witina knows which ones and reads them only through the console:

• small managed switches, such as the USW Flex Mini
• UniFi power devices, such as the UPS Tower

Consoles, such as the UDM Pro, answer SNMP, but Witina doesn’t log in to them over SSH.