Unifi controller on Azure free VM slow and often unresponsive

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ghettomaster

387 posts

Ultimate Geek

#295895 3-May-2022 09:09

Hi,

I stood up a free VM in Azure and installed a unifi controller on it.

The problem I have is that the machine is quite unreliable. The machine will lock up to the point that connecting via the webpage or the app will lock up, and even an SSH session will become unresponsive. If I leave it for a bit it comes back but only for a little while.

I did put the VM over in East Europe for my own amusement, but if the latency is an issue for the app it doesn't explain why SSH is even locking me out. Does anyone know what this could be or where to start diagnosis?

Cheers,

GM.

mentalinc

3196 posts

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#2909559 3-May-2022 09:25

Have you sized it correctly?

does it have the RAM required based on the system requirements?

CPU: AMD 5900x | RAM: GSKILL Trident Z Neo RGB F4-3600C16D-32GTZNC-32-GB | MB: Asus X570-E | GFX: EVGA FTW3 Ultra RTX 3080Ti| Monitor: LG 27GL850-B 2560x1440

Quic: https://account.quic.nz/refer/473833 R473833EQKIBX

ghettomaster

387 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2909563 3-May-2022 09:33

Like I mentioned it’s just the freeVM so a b1s. Happy to abandon it if that’s the problem but wanted to know more first.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79145 posts

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Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#2909565 3-May-2022 09:42

I know it must be amusing but surely a network controller would require the minimum of latency, so why not in Australia?

lxsw20

3530 posts

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Subscriber

#2909566 3-May-2022 09:45

The Unifi controllers are not "Active" as such, so latency shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Is there an option to temporally scale it to a better spec'd VM, just to check if it is that?

BarTender

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#2909567 3-May-2022 09:45

You have to realise that 150ms or even more depending on the interconnect will mean that everything will be slow for no good reason.

Move it to somewhere closer to you (NZ, AU, West Coast US). As further away you are just asking for pain and suffering.

ghettomaster

387 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2909569 3-May-2022 09:48

Like I said I put it over there for my own amusement. I’m not opposed to moving it or bumping up the specs, but I’m curious as to why it’s locking up so much. Maybe I’ll tinker with a performance monitor to see what I can see.

Does anyone know if azure will throttle the cpu after a certain amount of cycles?

roobarb

652 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#2909571 3-May-2022 09:58

Is the VM attracting unwanted traffic from other miscreants?

Eastern Europe would certainly not be the best place given what is going on there.

Can you restrict access to the network ports of the controller to just the range of IPs from the actual APs themselves, and whatever you are using to manage them?

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

Peppery

919 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#2909585 3-May-2022 10:07

I've been running my Unifi controller (via Docker container) on the Oracle Cloud "always free" tier in Sydney for over a year now and I haven't had a single issue with it.

As far as troubleshooting your current instance - what's the load look like? Memory? Do you have enough swap space? A tool like htop would be a good place to start.

ghettomaster

387 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2909586 3-May-2022 10:09

So I only have one AP in there and the firewall is locked down to my IP. Not to worried about the war in Europe. Worst case I factory reset the device and start again.

I did just read about burstable credits on the B series. I think that may be my issue so I’ll start tracking those and see what I find.

ghettomaster

387 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2909589 3-May-2022 10:13

I also don’t think the latency is a big issue because even ssh is fine then locks me out. The more I think about it the more I think it’s those credits.

Peppery

919 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#2909599 3-May-2022 11:11

The Unifi controller doesn't take a lot of CPU to run (a Pi can handle it easily) so I would be surprised if the burst credits were the issue

Varkk

643 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2911798 9-May-2022 11:27

In the past I have had issues with the controller getting slow due to RAM usage. I think it was an issue with the logs not being cycled correctly and if they got too big it could blow the RAM usage right out. You may have to manually clear the logs in the DB, then ensure you have a routine maintenance task clear them up to prevent it happening again. This was several years and Unifi controller versions ago so I can't remember the exact details.

djtOtago

1141 posts

Uber Geek

#2911819 9-May-2022 12:18

To see the VMs credit usage,

Log into the Azure portal
Select the VM
Select Metrics. (About half down the left menu under Monitoring)

Then you can build a graph showing you the credits remaining or consumed over time.