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UniFi Full-Stack High Availability is a platform-level approach designed to eliminate single points of failure across the control plane, gateway, and network edge without licenses, subscriptions, or external dependencies.
In this topic, we will cover the first three foundations of UniFi High Availability, focusing on control plane resiliency and gateway redundancy.
Unlike most of the industry, UniFi does not rely on a single cloud service provider for control plane availability.
Site Manager provides resilient, cloud-based access for remote visibility and management, but cloud connectivity is never required for network operation or administration. If internet connectivity is lost or a cloud service becomes unavailable, full local access remains available directly through the UniFi console IP. Configuration, monitoring, and recovery capabilities continue to function without interruption.
If you choose not to use UniFi cloud services at all, remote access is still available through a variety of VPN technologies. No cloud, no problem.
UniFi Gateways support multiple WAN connections with SLA-based failover, allowing administrators to define service-level thresholds for each uplink.
Failover decisions are driven by real performance metrics, such as latency, packet loss, and jitter, not just physical link state.
When a WAN path becomes degraded or unavailable, traffic is automatically redirected to the healthiest available connection. This enables consistent connectivity for VoIP and other connection-sensitive traffic, even during partial or upstream service disruptions.
The result is high availability at the WAN edge.
UniFi Shadow Mode enables the deployment of two gateways in an active and standby configuration.
If the primary gateway becomes unavailable, the standby gateway automatically assumes operation. This transition occurs without re-provisioning, manual intervention, or configuration changes.
Network continuity is maintained and services remain accessible. In most cases, calls will pause and resume, but will remain connected during the failover process. This removes the gateway as a single point of failure.
The UniFi web interface guides you step by step through the Shadow Mode setup process. First, navigate to Network > High Availability > Shadow Mode.
Together, these components form UniFi’s end-to-end, license-free high availability architecture designed to support reliable network operation at scale.
In upcoming episodes, we will extend high availability into the network topology layer.
This includes MC-LAG for dual-gateway and aggregation redundancy, as well as switch stacking to provide resiliency across the access layer.
