Ubiquiti has today released the brand new ‘Switch Mission Critical’ for the UniFi Network line of products. This switch only has eight PoE ports and costs $999 in the US. However, this switch does have a trick up its sleeve, it has an integrated 368Wh lithium-ion battery which will power itself, as well as the devices powered by PoE and whatever devices are powered from the AC mains sockets on the back.

The main selling point for this switch is to power critical infrastructure in the result of a building power cut, given that four of the PoE ports are capable of 802.3bt – something like a few UniFi Access modules would be the best thing, as well as some critical UniFi Cameras in the building and the networks gateway or UDM from the AC plug on the back.

The battery here is a 368Wh unit, so running it at the max consumption of 240W means the integrated battery could run for over seven hours. However, there are some extra battery terminals on the back of the switch for hooking up one of a few 48V DC batteries for additional capacity for running equipment.

Thanks to the AC plug outputs, it could be possible to use this as the main UPS in your network rack. By connecting up two power strips and powering everything up, how much load it can take remains to be seen, it does suggest here 0.8A max on each port. Ubiquiti does suggest that those ports are to be used for the modem and gateway in the network.

The new UniFi Switch Mission Critical is on sale now from Ubiquiti’s official store on store.ui.com in the US for $999. No word has been mentioned as of writing when this will come to the EU or UK.