monotux.tech

Ubiquity EdgeRouter Infinity ER-8-XG

Hardware Ubiquity Networking Primer Ansible

I got my hands on an used Ubiquity EdgeRouter Infinity ER-8-XG this summer, and in this entry I will try to document any discoveries when evaluating this device for homelab use.

And yes, this is overkill even for my homelab ⎛⎝( ` ᢍ ´ )⎠⎞ᵐᵘʰᵃʰᵃ

This entry will be updated intermittently as I’m working with it, and at some point reach some kind of conclusion regarding the device. I’m currently not sure if I should use this as a switch or as my main router.

Table of Contents

2025-10-21 – unpacking

I connected the device to a ‘smart’ outlet in order to measure it’s idle power use, which is my first item to investigate. After resetting the device, the device uses approx. 50 W when in idle, nothing connected aside from a serial console. This is a bit high for my taste, as I’d like to keep my homelab power usage reasonably low.

The system fans are relatively loud but can be tuned down:

# 5 might be the default? Anything below 4 seems to kill the fans entirely
echo 5 > /sys/module/ubnt_platform/global/fan_ctrl

Temperature goes up if the fans are disabled, below is with fan_ctrl set to 5:

$ show hardware temperature

Temperature:
CPU:67.25 C
Board 1:30.75 C
Board 2:34.50 C
PHY 1:56.74 C
PHY 2:61.18 C

20 minutes after fan_ctrl set to 4:

Temperature:
CPU:75.00 C
Board 1:32.50 C
Board 2:37.75 C
PHY 1:61.44 C
PHY 2:65.14 C

To make this setting permanent, I found this configuration snippet which installs a cronjob that runs after reboot:

task-scheduler {
    task set-fan-speed {
        crontab-spec @reboot
        executable {
            path "/bin/echo 5 > /sys/module/ubnt_platform/global/fan_ctrl 2>&1"
        }
    }
}

2025-10-23 – automation?

I started researching how I should operate this device using infrastructure-as-code, but the options are not many and they aren’t maintained properly. :-(

My first option is (as always) Ansible, but earlier this year the entire community.network collection was marked as deprecated and users are referred to Ansible Galaxy instead:

Just about every major networking vendor has their own collection hosted in Ansible Galaxy. (thread)

Ubiquity is not one of those vendors, tho. I can’t find anything reasonable expect for running old, unmaintained roles from community.network (and staying on an old Ansible version) or try to make something better myself.

This is…not great.