The UNAS Pro was Ubiquiti’s first attempt at a NAS appliance, and it shows. If your requirements are SMB shares, NFS exports, RAID, and snapshots, it handles those reliably—the 10GbE connectivity is a genuine strength, and once a share is configured it works like any other file server. But the software shipped before it was fully baked and arguably still isn’t: no iSCSI, no built-in rsync or scp in the UI, sparse feature additions over time, and an admin interface tied to UniFi Identity that adds friction to what should be straightforward. If you’re coming from Synology or TrueNAS expecting a rich ecosystem of packages and services, recalibrate your expectations. The UNAS Pro is best understood as a UniFi-native file server that does the basics well, and the newer UNAS Pro 8 is a better buy if you don’t already own the original.

What It Is

This is a file server. SMB/CIFS for Windows shares, NFS for Linux (v3 at minimum, probably v4 eventually). It does what a basic NAS should do: present storage over the network.

The filesystem supports snapshots. You can configure various RAID levels up to RAID 6. Backups can go to another UNAS or to cloud services. Mac Time Machine integration exists for those who need it.

If all you want is network-attached storage that handles SMB and NFS, the UNAS Pro delivers. Once a share is configured, mapping a drive doesn’t require any UniFi Identity login—it just works like any other file server. The admin interface does require the UniFi Identity login.

There is support for getting user information for shares from LDAP, but it’s a batch import on a cron, not dynamic.

There is support for automatic backups to another UNAS or your choice of cloud storage providers. It’s not very polished.

What It Is Not

This is not an application server with lots of storage. It’s just storage.

No iSCSI support for block-level access. No built-in rsync—though you can SSH in and install it yourself if you’re willing to run it as root, since it’s not exposed in the UI. Same story for scp. If you’re coming from Synology or TrueNAS expecting a rich ecosystem of packages and services, recalibrate your expectations.

The feature set is limited to core file serving. Whether that’s refreshing simplicity or frustrating omission depends on your needs.

The Software Story

The software wasn’t ready at launch. It’s stable now, with limited bugs, but the feature set remains sparse. Updates have been slow to add the capabilities power users expect.

The management console runs independently of the Dream Machine, though they merge if you use the UniFi hosted interface. For web-based file uploads and downloads, you’re forced into the UniFi Identity system—adding friction to what should be straightforward. The UI for non-admin users is particularly weak.

This feels like a product where Ubiquiti shipped the hardware first and planned to catch up with software later. They’re catching up, slowly.

The Hardware

The first-generation UNAS Pro has a front-mounted network interface: a 10GbE and 1GbE pair. This design separates file access traffic from management traffic, which is useful for network segmentation if you want to configure it that way. If you don’t want the headache you can simply connect the 10GbE port and leave the 1GbE port alone.

The tradeoff: that front-mounted interface occupies space that could have held another drive bay. Ubiquiti acknowledged this in the next version of the product, the UNAS Pro 8 , which reclaims that space by moving network ports to the back. If drive count matters to you, the original model’s layout is awkward. The new model also adds M.2 device support. Both decisions seem like clear improvements.

The Drive Lock

Ubiquiti wants to sell you its own relabeled disks to use; the ones I got from their store were Western Digital. If you put in your own drives, it works but displays a warning. When I checked, it was roughly a $20 markup over similar size drives on Amazon, which isn’t awful. When Synology hinted at a similar path recently, the reaction was dramatic and hostile, enough so that they backtracked. I have seen no signs of either that scale of a reaction, nor of Ubiquiti backtracking. That said, displaying a warning is pretty mild; you can just ignore it. Unless that changes, this is a minor point for me.

Privacy

Tying your file storage into a cloud managed identity provider is less private than keeping it locally. The UNAS does support encrypted drives, but if you unlock them, anyone with access to the UI – controlled by UniFi, not by you – could browse your data. This feels less private than the Synology UI which runs purely locally, though if Synology really wanted to, they could probably get around that. If you want truly private data, encrypt it on a drive you can unplug physically and access it on an air-gapped system. And don’t taunt the NSA.

My use cases

Network backups

I use BorgBackup (encrypting, block-level deduplication) via NFS on multiple Linux hosts. Once set up, this works fine. I originally intended to use rsync script-based backup, but lack of support for either an rsync daemon or a non-root ssh login foiled that plan. I’m ok with the result, but the lack of rsync support still stings. I use rsync a lot when copying bulk data around.

Plex / Jellyfin

Probably my primary use case is storing a large media library for Plex and Jellyfin. The UNAS provides the space and performance (both disk and network) to host a tiny N100 NUC that reads media from NFS and streams to clients with transcoding over two 2.5GbE ports. This worked well until the NUC died, which had nothing to do with the UNAS. I replaced it with a much beefier Proxmox box.

Proxmox

I was able to configure proxmox to store container disks on the UNAS via NFS, as well as accessing media files to serve via a jellyfin container. The media library was fine. I wasn’t able to test this at full 10GbE speeds, but it easily saturated 2.5GbE.

Storing container disks remotely seemed pointlessly slow compared to local nvme storage. I’m just starting out with proxmox, but in theory, you don’t need to use a SAN to migrate between hosts, so local storage is fine. When I did try it briefly, it worked. There can be UID/GID issues, though, and you would need to be careful about who could see the NFS network traffic.

The Wishlist

  • Native user management without UniFi Identity.
  • iSCSI support for virtualization workloads.
  • Built-in rsync and scp in the UI rather than requiring manual installation. These may yet come in future updates—the platform isn’t abandoned—but they’re not here today.

Comparison to Synology

I have a couple Synology devices. The UNAS is faster (partially because it’s newer), but can’t compete with the software ecosystem or maturity. That said, every time I’ve tried to use Synology-packaged applications, they are either buggy, out of date, or not quite what I’m looking for. I like that the UNAS is making a play for “just storage”.

Verdict

The UNAS Pro is a competent basic NAS that integrates into the UniFi ecosystem. If your requirements are SMB shares, NFS exports, RAID, and snapshots, it handles those reliably. The 10GbE connectivity and clean hardware design (except the front-mounted network ports) are genuine strengths. That said, the UNAS Pro 8 is a solid upgrade on all fronts and if you don’t mind nearly doubling the price (still a budget price for a rackmount NAS with M.2 and three 10GbE ports) you should just buy that one. The UNAS Pro hardware feels like a first draft.

If you need iSCSI, application hosting, or a mature software ecosystem, look elsewhere—Synology and TrueNAS remain stronger choices for those use cases. The UNAS Pro is best understood as a UniFi-native file server that does the basics well. The CPU Ubiquiti chose to use is focused on power efficiency rather than application support, so don’t count on ever seeing significant application support on these devices unless they change that decision. This model shipped with 8 GB of RAM, clearly anemic for a modern application server. About half of that was used for caching on mine when I checked.

Something that may surprise UniFi users is that the NAS runs its own user interface instead of offloading that to the Dream Machine or cloud. While this is probably a necessity for selling the product to users as a standalone device, it’s an unusual separation in the ecosystem, and given the push for efficiency and not running user applications, I’m somewhat surprised by the decision.

I’m mostly happy with it. With more software maturity, I could be enthusiastic. I can’t recommend buying the original over the UNAS Pro 8, which is a better hardware platform in every way. I bought mine before the UNAS Pro 8 was available, and I’m happy with it for most purposes.