Installing Photon OS and running my first Docker container…

I finally got around to working with Photon OS after some recent updates to my home lab. My network equipment was in need of an upgrade so I went with a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X and two of their wireless APs. The APs require a “Cloud Controller” for management and their just so happens to be a Docker container for it. Previously I had been running the controller on a Windows VM.

The first step was to deploy the Photon OS ova: https://github.com/vmware/photon/wiki. This URL has all of the instructions on getting started as well as running Docker which only requires two commands:

1. systemctl start docker
2. systemctl enable docker

From this point I had to locate the correct version of the Ubiquiti Cloud Controller which I found after a quick search on Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/explore.

Here are the commands/steps necessary to deploy the container:

1. This command will download the container: docker pull goofball222/unifi.
2. Once the docker pull is complete you’ll need to run this command along with the arguments for your Cloud Controller to be discoverable:

    docker run --name unifi -d \
    -p 3478:3478/udp -p 6789:6789 -p 8080:8080 \
    -p 8443:8443 -p 8880:8880 -p 8843:8843 \
    -p 10001:10001/udp \
    -v /path/to/data:/usr/lib/unifi/data  \
    -v /path/to/logs:/usr/lib/unifi/logs \
    goofball222/unifi