A worked example, not a specific customer project — illustrative reference design showing how the pieces fit.
Hardware prices verified 16 July 2026. Ubiquiti pricing changes — we confirm current pricing on every quote. Prices are indicative CAD, all-in. Contact AVNFi for a current quote.
The scenario
About ten staff. Open-plan with a couple of offices and a meeting room. Everyone’s on laptops and video calls, there are desk phones or softphones, a printer, and a few wired desks. Four cameras — front door, back door, the open floor, and wherever the servers and stock live.
There’s a closet or a corner for a rack. This is the first design where the rack is part of the build, not an afterthought.
The build
| Qty | Item | All-in each | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | UDM-Pro — gateway + camera recorder, 1U | $588 | $588 |
| 1 | USW-Pro-24-PoE — 24-port PoE switch, 400W, 1U | $1,025 | $1,025 |
| 3 | U7 Pro — ceiling access points | $257 | $771 |
| 4 | G6 Turret — 4K cameras | $307 | $1,228 |
| 1 | UPS-2U — rack UPS, 2U (see note) | $431 * | $431 |
| Hardware total (indicative CAD, all-in) | $4,043 |
Not included: rack, drive (3.5″ CMR), patch panel, cable, mounts, labour. Priced separately.
* The UPS-2U is Sold Out, so it cannot be carted and its figure stays unverified. Every other line above is cart-verified. We re-confirm every line in the cart before a quote goes out. Note: UPS-2U is Sold Out as of 2026-07-16. We’d confirm stock or propose an alternative.
Why each choice
UDM-Pro — the right size here 1U, rack-mounted, 3.5 Gbps routing, 100+ UniFi devices, 1,000+ clients, and it records 8 cameras at 4K onto a drive in its own bay. Ten staff with laptops, phones and a printer is maybe 40 clients. You are nowhere near this box’s limits, and that’s deliberate — a business gateway that’s running at capacity on day one is a bad purchase.
Why not a UDM-Pro-Max ($926)? Its advantages are camera capacity (15 vs 8) and a second drive bay. At four cameras, you’re using half of the UDM-Pro. Buying the Max here is paying $338 for a ceiling you won’t reach. That flips the moment you plan for nine cameras — and only then.
USW-Pro-24-PoE — the workhorse 24 PoE ports, a clean 400W budget, Layer 3, and 2× 10G SFP+ uplinks. Your seven PoE devices draw 113W — you’re at 28%.
That’s not oversizing. Look at what actually plugs into it: 4 cameras, 3 APs, ~6 wired desks, a printer, the gateway uplink, the UPS. That’s 16 of 24 ports before anyone asks for anything. And a small office asks — a second printer, a meeting-room display, a new hire’s desk. Ports run out long before watts do, and an office that runs out of ports gets an unmanaged switch stuffed behind a desk, which is where your network documentation goes to die.
The 8 PoE++ ports matter too: they’re what make door access possible later without changing switches.
Three U7 Pros WiFi 7, 6 GHz, 2.5GbE uplink, 21W each on PoE+. Three APs for ten people isn’t about coverage — it’s about not putting ten simultaneous video calls through one radio. Roughly one AP per zone: open floor, meeting room, back offices. Ten staff on Teams all day is a density problem, not a range problem, and density is solved with more APs, not bigger ones.
Four G6 Turrets 4K, 30m night vision, IP66 so the exterior ones are fine, 12.5W each.
The UPS 1.44kVA, ~8 minutes at half load. That’s not “work through an outage” — that’s “the gateway and the drive shut down cleanly instead of being yanked.” On a box recording to a spinning disk, that’s the difference between a blip and a corrupted array. (Graceful Shutdown needs UniFi OS 4.4.3+.)
The rack Priced separately because it’s site-dependent, but the build assumes one. UDM-Pro (1U) + switch (1U) + UPS (2U) + patch panel = a 6U wall-mount rack handles it with room. Everything terminates in one place, labelled.
Power check
| Devices | Draw |
|---|---|
| 4× G6 Turret @ 12.5W | 50W |
| 3× U7 Pro @ 21W | 63W |
| Total | 113W |
Against 400W: 28% loaded. Room for cameras 5–8 and a couple of door hubs without touching the switch.
What breaks if you undersize
A 16-port switch instead of 24. 16 ports, and you have 16 things. Day one, zero spare. The first new desk means a switch swap or a rogue box under a desk. Ports are the constraint in an office, always.
A USW-Ultra-210W ($307) instead of the Pro-24 ($1,025). Saves $718 and breaks three ways: 7 PoE ports (you need 7 now, with zero spare and no room for a desk); 202W only with its bundled adapter (16W on PoE+ input); and PoE+ max per port, so no door access, ever — the hubs need PoE++. It’s a good switch for a satellite closet. It is not an office’s main switch.
Skipping the UPS. Calgary has outages. Your recorder has a spinning drive. This one’s cheap insurance and it’s why it’s in the base build rather than the options list.
Two APs instead of three. Coverage will look fine on a survey and fall over at 10am when everyone’s on video. Density, not range.
Consumer gear for the meeting room display. Worth knowing: consumer TV warranties generally exclude commercial-premises use. Putting a consumer TV in an office as a display can void it. Use a commercial-rated display, or accept the exclusion knowingly and in writing.
The expansion path
| Want | Do | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Cameras 5–8 | Ports, watts and recorder slots are all there. | camera only |
| Camera 9+ | UDM-Pro’s 4K ceiling. Add a UNVR ($430) or move to a UDM-Pro-Max. | $430+ |
| A controlled door | UA-Hub-Door + reader. The 8 PoE++ ports are already there for it. | see Design 5 |
| Guest WiFi | Software. Already included. | $0 |
| More wired desks | 8 ports spare. | $0 |
| Beyond 24 ports | Second USW-Pro-24-PoE, or a USW-Ultra-210W in a satellite closet. | $307–$1,025 |
| 10G to a NAS/server | 2× SFP+ uplinks already on the switch. | module only |
| File storage | UNAS-Pro, 7 bays, 10 Gbps. Not a camera recorder — a NAS. Different job. | $771 |
The ceilings, in order: recorder slots (8× 4K) → ports (24) → watts (400W, you’re at 28%). Cameras hit the wall first. Everything else here has years of room, which is the whole reason the switch is a 24 and not a 16.
Prices indicative CAD, all-in, hardware at cost, labour separate. Ubiquiti reprices without notice; lead time ~7–10 days. Verified against ca.store.ui.com and techspecs.ui.com 2026-07-16.