UniFi makes affordable access points that we often use in house and with our clientele.

One of the most common requests is to have the UniFi Controller start as a service. Most of the time this controller is installed on a server. It can be a bit daunting to remember that the controller needs to be manually started whenever the server is restarted. Setting the controller as an automated service will cause the controller to re-launch every time the server is started.

Here’s how we go about setting the UniFi controller as a service.

1. Make sure UniFi is not running

2. Locate your java installation directory. On 64-bit, it’s usually at “C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin”; otherwise “C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin”.

3. Add the complete directory path that we located in step 2 to the PATH variable by accessing the system variables – Computer(right click)->Properties->Advanced system settings->Environment Variables. Be sure to add this at the end of the list and to precede the path with a semi-colon “;” to separate the previous path with this path.

4. run a command prompt as an Administrator, right click on ‘Command Prompt’ and choose ‘Run as administrator’

5. cd “%userprofile%/Ubiquiti Unifi” – (including the quote marks)

6. java -jar lib\ace.jar installsvc

7. Start the service: net start “Unifi Controller”

That’s it! You have now created a service that will start the UniFi controller each time the server, or computer, is started.

If in the future java is updated to a new release you will have to modify the PATH settings again and you may also have to re-install the service. In order to re-install the service it would be a good idea to remove the old service first. Below you’ll find instructions on removing the UniFi service should you want to re-install it for a new release or remove the controller completely.

1. Hit the windows key and type regedit and press enter.

2. Find and delete the registry key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/UniFi”

Alternately you can delete the service by the using the command prompt:

1. sc delete UniFi