Replacing USG with UDM Pro.

In local Fablab we’ve recieved Unifi Dream Machine Pro to replace our old USG. After looking at some articles and videos I got worried slightly - I didn’t want to reconfigure the whole LAN from scratch, I really wanted to keep the old configuration and simply swap the devices (especially considering access to server room is limited).

Luckily it has turned out there was nothing to worry - the whole migration went without a hitch. The hilarious part is that the only issue I’ve encoutered was with regular setup (more on that later), not the thing I thought could be tricky.

So here are the steps I’ve went through:

1. After logging in into the old network with USG I’ve updated all the devices.
2. I’ve went into settings and downloaded the config.
3. I’ve written down the IP of the USG.
4. Did the initial setup of UDM Pro - the goal was to do initial setup and prepare for the swap. So it has been connected to existing network via WAN port. With that done I’ve connected my laptop directly to UDM Pro with a cable. This allowed me to start the usual Unifi config - and that’s where I’ve encountered some problems. Two times I ended with white, empty page and in the end had to reset it to factory defaults. Mind that with this device you need a Unifi cloud account - even though you can create a local account later on. When I finally got to the settings I’ve set it up with the same IP and name as the USG had.
5. After I’ve logged in to freshly setup UDM I’ve uploaded the config from the old network.
6. With this done I simply went to server room, disconnected USG and replaced it with UDM Pro. Looking how all the devices from the old network show up in the new panel was a pleasure.

The only step left was to turn off LXC container that had panel for the old setup on the server (having the panel “built-in” into device was one of the selling points of USG… maybe not as important as the much better performance, but still super cool).